Culture and Organization, September 2005, Vol. 11(3), pp. 181–193

How Objects Believe for Us: Applications in Organizational Analysis PETER FLEMING*,a and ANDRÉ SPICERb a The Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK; bWarwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK Culture 10.1080/14759550500203094 GSCO120292.sgm 1475-9551 Original Taylor 302005 11 The PeterFleming +44 [email protected] 00000September Judge (0)1223 and & and Article Francis Institute (print)/1477-2760 Francis Organization 760471 339701 Group 2005 Ltd of ManagementUniversity Ltd (online) of CambridgeTrumpington StreetCambridgeCB2 1AG

This paper analyzes the concept of belief in contemporary organizations. Most studies tend to envisage belief as something internal to the thinking and feeling person. We argue, however, that belief does not only reside ‘inside’ the individual subject but also in an external economy of objects and rituals. What we call the ‘objectivity of belief’ highlights how various things such as commodities, artefacts, machines and even other people may believe in our place. We develop these ideas by drawing on a rich tradition of social theory that includes Marx and Zˇizˇ ek, and apply it to the study of objects, belief and power in contemporary organizations. Z [ocarn]

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Key words: Belief; Commodities; Objects; Reification; Subjectivity; Transference

INTRODUCTION Tony:

We’re in a team, we must have something in common.

Lionel:

We do.

Tony:

Well, what?

Lionel:

A desire to help people.

Tony:

And?

Lionel:

A belief.

Tony:

Yes. Are we making that clear? And in what?

Lionel:

In God everlasting. As I understand it. And his Son, who came so that people might know God was close. And in the Holy Spirit. Who of the three always seem to me much the most mysterious. Much the Shadiest, as you might say. (Hare, 1990: 19)

In David Hare’s (1990) play, Racing Demon, we are confronted with a typical member of the Church of England clergy. Lionel Epsy is a vicar who fastidiously prepares sermons, works on ecclesiastical matters late into the night, and neglects his family because of it. Judging from his objective activities we would certainly conclude he is a man of God. But when he is pressed by colleagues about what the Church of England believes in, the answer he gives is mechanically repeated with a wry smile that belies the surprising truth. Ironically, Lionel does not subjectively believe in God or the Church—but this does not matter to him because he is secure in the fact that ‘objectively’ (in his actions and behaviours) he does believe. Of course, this vicar is not alone when one surveys the modern organizational landscape.

*Corresponding author. Tel: +44 (0)1223 760471; Fax: +44 (0)1223 339701; E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 1475-9551 print; ISSN 1477-2760 online © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/14759550500203094

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Alongside him stumble a silent crowd of lawyers who do not really believe in justice ( Zˇ izˇek, 1989), bureaucrats who do not really believe in instrumental rationality (Jackall, 1988), committed employees who do not believe in the corporation (Fleming and Spicer, 2003) and strident politicians who do not believe in democracy (Bewes, 1997). What is so strange about this disbelieving mass is that although they are subjectively indifferent or even incredulous towards their calling, objectively they perform it, and some in an exemplary manner. Hare’s figure of the incredulous vicar seems to comply almost perfectly with Peter Sloterdijk’s (1987) diagnosis of the modern cynic. Having subjectively unmasked the real world, cynics see through the obfuscations to the naked truth of the matter. What Sloterdijk finds fascinating about the modern cynic, however, is that when they arrive at this bitter truth, they often continue to act ‘as if’ they did not know it. Like the vicar, they are subjective disbelievers, but objectively (in deeds, actions and behaviours) they ardently believe. For us, this poses some intriguing problems about how we theorize organizational belief: is it possible to argue that someone’s beliefs, commonly presumed to be internal and intimate to them, can be objective and not even pass through their psyche? What might this mean for how we understand and research belief in organizations? In order to address these perplexing questions, we would like to explore the objective dimensions of belief in the workplace. Given that there has been very little research in organization studies on this topic, the research question guiding this conceptual paper is necessarily broad: how can objects believe for us in organizations? In tackling this question, it will be argued that our findings have some interesting implications for how scholars approach the relationship between belief, objects and power in organizations. The article is organized in the following way. First we give a brief overview of current conceptions of belief in organization studies. Research relating to how the subject (be that a worker, manager, consumer, etc.) comes to believe in and identify with current organizational forms tends to rely on a classic image of belief as something internal. One of the more perceptive explanations of the objectivity of belief is forwarded by the Slovenian social critic, Slavoj Zˇ izˇek (1989, 1997, 2001), who we will use to explore belief in organizations. In order to grasp the full meaning of his analysis we must outline the predominantly Marxian tradition of social theory from which he gains significant inspiration. We therefore discuss Marx’s theory of the commodity fetish, Lukcás’ concept of reification before moving onto Zˇ izˇek’s analysis of ideological transference. This exegesis shows how the notion of belief as a psycho-centred phenomenon can effectively be turned on its head, revealing the strange and sometimes ethereal nature of objects and their connections with subjective processes. Having discussed this history of thought, we endeavour in the last part of the paper to develop a framework for analyzing the objectivity of belief in contemporary workplaces (especially in relation to power, an enduring preoccupation in the social theory we are investigating). Z [coarn]

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BELIEVING IN ORGANIZATIONS Although organizations have been classically conceptualized as rational or structural economic entities, it is now well recognized that subjectivity and belief are equally important for understanding work relationships. In the majority of research that explicitly or implicitly theorizes belief, it is overwhelmingly conceptualized as an internal state. More recent literature is comfortable with the idea of a decentred subject (conditioned by environmental or external factors), but even here the final expression of belief is still assumed to flow from a point ‘inside’ the person. This inside/outside spatial metaphor is seductive because it feels intuitively correct (where else could belief be expressed?). It almost defies common sense to

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suggest any other image when examining the mechanisms of belief, internalization and identification in contemporary employment situations. For example, organization psychology approaches belief as an internal disposition to accept or reject externally available options (e.g., Rediker et al., 1993; Pisnar-Sweeney, 1997; Sparks and Schenk, 2001). Scholarship inspired by cognitive psychology similarly theorizes belief as a mental map that mediates how actors perceive and make sense of their relationship with the organization. While malleable and even capricious, belief is something that is literally carried around by organizational members (Labianca et al., 2001; Owen-Smith, 2001; Phillips, 1994). Indeed, this cognitive understanding of belief can be traced back to a classic statement on the subject by Herbert Simon (1945/1961). In organizations that have aligned the cognitive assumptions of individuals’ with those of management, organizational ‘values gradually become “internalized” and are incorporated into the psychology and attitudes of the individual participant. He (sic) acquires an attachment or loyalty to the organization that automatically—i.e., without the necessity for external stimuli—guarantees that his decisions will be consistent with the organization objectives’ (Simon, 1945/1961: 198). Critical studies of corporate culture have examined how systematized beliefs (like those described by Simon, for example) are actually imposed upon individuals in high commitment organizations. Here, the decentred self is assumed to the extent that it is not the master of its own home. While induced designer-beliefs and feelings may or may not be adopted by organizational members, research in this area still envisages their experiential expression as an internal process. Ray’s (1986) celebrated examination of cultural controls, for example, distinguished it from earlier forms of influence that merely targeted the behaviors of workers. She writes: ‘while bureaucratic control may prompt individuals to act as if the company is their source of meaning and commitment that is an entirely different matter from seriously believing in it. In other words, control remains externalized rather than becoming internalized’ (Ray, 1986: 293). Subsequent research exploring the mechanics of cultural indoctrination and organizational identification has similarly conceptualized belief as a phenomenon that is inside people’s heads and hearts. Gideon Kunda’s (1992) influential analysis of normative control in a high-tech organization is a germane case in point: Under normative control, members act in the best interests of the company not because they are physically coerced, nor purely from an instrumental concern with economic rewards and sanctions. Rather they are driven by internal commitment, strong identification with company goals, intrinsic satisfaction from work. (Kunda, 1992: 11)

In a similar manner to Barker (1993) and Casey (1995), Kunda understands identification and its intersection with relations of power in a very traditional way. Power that guides action is transparently obvious, while power that influences our identities is often difficult to perceive because it operates inside us. As Mitchel (1990) has explained in another context, this approach to normative or ideological forms of power rests on the assumption that it largely targets our minds rather than our deeds. Recent research both supporting and critiquing spirituality in organizations represents another good example of this method of analyzing belief in organizations. Enthusiasts typically approach spirituality (and its attendant beliefs) as an ineffable aspect of the working individual, something that generally exceeds externally imposed barriers (e.g., Burack, 1999). Spiritual belief wells up in an individual and can be harnessed in productive ways if the environment is conducive to enlightened self-actualization. In their excellent critique of organizational spirituality, Bell and Taylor (2003) treat ‘spiritual management’ as a form of control that bears fundamental similarities to culture engineering. They identify how such programmes ‘enable managers to exercise pastoral power over their subjects through disciplinary technologies that focus on the scientific governing of the soul using primarily psychological techniques’ (Bell and Taylor, 2003: 345). It is when employees internalize the

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manufactured discourse of New Age obscurantism that they become normatively manipulated. But again, once subsumed, these designer-beliefs become a feature of the employees’ soul, an outward expression of an inner-realm that defines who they are (Ashmos and Duschon, 2000). All of the above research assumes that belief is ultimately experienced ‘within’ the confines of the individual. Even though belief may be substantially influenced and shaped by external forces, as the critics of culture management convincingly demonstrate, in the last instance and regardless of origins, believing is always seated inside an individual’s psyche or what is archaically called ‘the lair of the skull’. Otherwise, how could we reasonably define it as a belief? The assumption that belief only operates within the subject has been scrutinized in a number of debates in cultural studies and social theory (e.g., Latour, 1987; de Certeau, 1984, 1985; Knorr-Cetina, 1997; Pels, Hetherington and Vandenberghe, 2002; Suchman, 2005). One fascinating area of discussion concerns the suggestion that belief might also reside outside the subject, on the side of objects, be they things, commodities, cultural props or even social rituals. We want to unpack this idea and use it to understand belief in organizations. In order to do this, we draw upon a tradition of social theory that has been neglected in organizations studies. It begins with Marx’s (1867/1957) analysis of the commodity fetish, moves through to Lukács’ (1923/1971) theory of reification and is expressed in its most radical form in Zˇ izˇek’s (1989) notion of ideological transference. Although there are many ways to interpret this stream of scholarship in relation to organizations, we focus specifically on what we call the ‘objectivity of belief’. Having discussed this history of thought, we endeavour in the last part of the paper to develop the concept of the objectivity of belief in a manner that may provide insights for contemporary organizational research.

THE OBJECTIVITY OF BELIEF In order to develop and explain the concept of ‘objectivity of belief’ in a manner that may be useful for organizational research we will mobilise three key ideas in the aforementioned tradition of social theory: commodity fetishism (Marx, 1867/1976), reification (Lukács, 1923/1971) and ideological transference (Zˇ izˇek, 1989, 1991). The purpose of this section is to present these ideas in a way that lends itself to the study of belief, objects and power in contemporary work organizations. Commodity Fetishism Marx’s analysis of the commodity form and its fetishization provides a number of enduring insights about the objectivity of belief that have been very influential in social theory and cultural studies. In Capital, Marx (1867/1976) contends that the commodity has a magical and supernatural character that is often missed in mainstream economics. This can be identified in how the commodity often comes to stand in for the social relations that produce them. Even though capitalism strips away the sacred and mysterious veneer that veiled feudalist social relations, the cold cash nexus still remains enigmatic because value is necessarily mistaken to reside in the actual commodity rather than the social relations that produced them. According to Marx, social relations are sucked up into the ‘spectral’ commodity/ money form, and come to be imagined as agents of value in and of themselves. He writes: The commodity-form, and the value-relations of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relations between men (sic) themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. (Marx, 1867/1976: 165)

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Marx recognises that even though the commodity is nothing more than the material or virtual expression of social relations between people, there appears to be an enigma at work. The commodity is strange and even ghostly for Marx because we forget that, in its objective form, it is the product of subjective labour. Although prima facie it appears to be just another thing, the commodity is extremely subjective at the same time and this is why it returns to haunt the worker and consumer. For example, we may treat a beautiful table we purchase as just another object among the supermarket of commodities. Even if we are told about the personal quirks of the elderly furniture maker, these merely serve to increase the exchange value of the commodity rather than remind us the table is still ‘alive’ with an invisible network of labour. Just as we assure ourselves that the table has value only by virtue of its own inanimate properties, it ‘evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will’ (Marx, 1867/1976: 163–4). Marx fixes on the systemic forgetting which is imbued in the commodity form, framing it as an important phenomenon that must be explained. In order to understand it, ‘we must enter into the nubilous world of religion’ where ‘products of the human mind become independent shapes, endowed with lives of their own, and able to enter into relations with men and women’ (Marx, 1867/1976: 45). The analogy leads Marx to suggest that the commodity form has a fetishistic character. Indeed, it is this fetish that we create everyday when we happily purchase designer clothes without any connection to the conditions of labour under which it was produced. What is crucial here is how the commodity fetish is not something that can simply be revealed and done away with. Belief in the commodity-object is more systemic than psychological, and the entire edifice of the capitalist exchange process continues even if we do not have the courage to actually believe in the commodity. For it is endowed with that particular ability itself and the human subject is almost relegated to a superfluous bystander. Indeed, this is what Appadurai (1986) after Marx called the social life of the commodity. Marx’s insight provides the first crucial step in moving away from the assumption that belief is internal, resting on the side of what has typically been called ‘the subject’. Marx does this by highlighting how the most prosaic and mundane object—the commodity— requires a certain external belief system in order to maintain itself. Belief in capitalism and the virtues of labour does not only lurk inside the heads of believers, but also within the commodity itself (be that commodity a table, a gun or a software package). That is, when the commodity appears and is treated as an object in a certain set of social relations, it is able to continue a felicitous belief in itself, no matter what its deviant consumer may individually think about it. Reification One of the most influential applications of Marx’s analysis of the commodity form can be found in Georg Lukács’s (1923/1971) essay, Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat. Lukács contends that Marx’s central insight is the commodity fetish in which ‘relations between people takes on the character of a thing, and thus acquires a “phantom objectivity”, an anatomy that seems so strictly rational and all embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature; the relation between people’ (Lukács, 1923/1971: 83). When employed within the capitalist system a worker objectifies their labour power by selling it on the labour market. Important here is the concomitant objectification of their social relationships as they themselves become commodity-objects (i.e., wage labour). The capitalist production and exchange system objectifies the relations between people and assumes the appearance of apparently immutable laws. The centrepiece of Lukács’ analysis is the concept of reified consciousness. This is a mode of experience that misrecognizes the contingency of social relations behind the commodity form, perceiving objective laws instead. Lukács

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(1923/1971: 93) writes, ‘the reified mind has come to regard [the commodity] as the true representative of his (sic) social existence…and—as reified consciousness—does not attempt to transcend it’. Lukács maintains that a key structure underlying the commodity form is its rationalization into a calculable and predictable entity. Echoing the arguments of his erstwhile teacher, Max Weber, this rationalization process further consolidates the perception that the market and production process resembles ahistorical scientific rules. As a result, capitalist power relations come to be seen as an indubitable and God-like law in which the worker structurally places their faith in its sanctity whenever they bring their labour to the market. There is a double mechanism of belief operating here. In believing that the commodity form represents a universal law, the commodity itself sympathises with this belief and acts as if it is an independent and alien life force. Consciousness therefore creates its own master that then takes on an apparently objective form: Because of this situation a man’s (sic) own activity, his own labour becomes something objective and independent of him, something that controls him by virtue of an autonomy alien to man. (Lukács, 1923/1971: 87)

A significant implication of Lukács’ theory of reification is the startling realization that the objects we have produced (such as consumer products, machines, and resources) begin to live our lives without us. This rather schizophrenic dimension of capitalism is evident in the way it creates a double consciousness: the first is the specific one experienced by the individual worker/consumer/manager, their private aspirations and needs. The second is the universal commodity form that believes in capitalism for them irrespective of their gripes and misgivings. While Marx focused on the ways objects operate as if they are conducting meaningful relations among themselves (believing, trading, valuing, emoting, etc.), Lukács attempted to closely unravel the dialectical mechanics of this ‘as if’. He did this by ascertaining how belief in and identification with the commodity-object is hypostasized within the social practices of the workforce. The reified consciousness always proceeds on the principle of acting as if the commodity form is a universal rule, the ultimate reality of social life even though it is obviously not. Lukács’ break through was the suggestion that when we act as if the commodity is universal, it becomes exactly that and dominates us like the iron law of nature it purports to be. The ‘as if’ is objectively constitutive of the very reality the person might subjectively deny (through cynicism, scepticism, etc.). The mystification is not on the side of individual cognition, but in the social consequences of acting ‘as if’ the commodity market is an inexorable rule (that is, on the side of calculable objects, things and actions).

Ideological Transference Drawing on both Marx and Lukács, Zˇ izˇek argues that the ideological secret of the commodity fetish can be found in the fact that relations between people—intimate exchanges of discourse, cooperation and identification—are displaced onto objects that then go to work in the marketplace, as if endowed with ‘metaphysical subtleties and theological whimsies.’ Key here is the opening gulf between the formal subject of belief and the objectivity of the things that believe in our place. In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zˇ izˇek (1989) applies this formula to the quintessential post-modern figure of the enlightened cynic. As a central persona in today’s skeptical Western culture (also see Sloterdijk, 1987; Bewes, 1997), the cynic is immune to the typical charge of commodity fetishism expressed by Marx (1867/ 1976) in the almost biblical phrase, ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’. The bourgeois cynic is well aware that there is nothing mysterious about the commodity form, that it is

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merely the symbolic manifestation of social relations and dead labour. But herein lies the potential ideological function of cynicism. As Zˇ izˇek argues, ‘cynical distance is just one way to blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them’ (Zˇ izˇek, 1989: 32, original emphasis). Drawing on the importance Lukács attributed to the ‘as if’ of belief, Zˇ izˇek unpacks the principles of cynical disbelief in Western and Soviet culture. For instance, the enlightened consumer knows that the pair of Nikes they purchase is made under sweatshop conditions, but in the last instance act as if they do not know this. Zˇ izˇek accordingly reformulates the Marxian idiom, ‘they know very well what they are doing and do it anyway’ (see also Zˇ izˇek, 1991). The fetishistic illusion of the commodity-object is not on the side of the cynics’ consciousness, but is present in the objective activity of trade, purchase, consumption and exploitation. As Zˇ izˇek puts it, the illusion of the commodity is ‘at the level of what the individuals are doing, and not only what they think or know they are doing…the problem is their social activity itself’ (Zˇ izˇek, 1989: 31). According to Zˇ izˇek, the fetishistic fantasy props up the commodity form in a two-fold manner: first, by infiltrating our practices so that we act as if we are fervent believers in capitalist relations. Second, by perpetuating the error that ideology only works on our internal thoughts and opinions: ‘what they do not know, what they misrecognize, is the fact that in their social reality itself, in their social activity—in the act of commodity exchange—they are guided by a fetishistic illusion’ (Zˇ izˇek, 1989: 31). The subjective distancing or detachment that cynical reason entails is the very stuff of ideological incorporation because it creates a schism between what we believe we are doing and what our doing believes, the concrete beliefs embodied in our external actions. Perhaps more seductive than any appeal to the direct identifications of the subject is the comforting autonomy that may be garnered from this fissure. Amidst the structuring fantasy of the marketplace, Zˇ izˇek suggests, the subject is completely free to have all the radical and deviant thoughts he or she wants because, in their actions and institutional supports, they are still identifying with the commands of authority. Zˇ izˇek explains: Contrary to the usual thesis that a belief is something interior and knowledge something exterior (in the sense that it can be verified through an external procedure)…it is belief that is radically exterior, embodied in the practical, effective procedures of people. It is similar to Tibetan prayer wheels: you write a prayer on a paper, put the rolled paper into the wheel, and turn it automatically without thinking…. In this way, the wheel itself is praying for me, instead of me—or, more precisely, I myself am praying through the medium of the wheel. The beauty of it all is that in my psychological interiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because whatever I am thinking, objectively, I am praying. ( Zˇ izˇ ek, 1989: 34)

What we see at work here is a process of ideological transference in which belief in an authority is placed onto a set of objects that perform the necessary rituals of submission for us. Belief does not need to pass through the cognitive apparatus of the worker, consumer or bureaucrat because it can be transferred onto a structural or institutional matrix. This external network can then perform the ‘objectively necessarily’ function of belief for them. In elaborating this idea, Zˇ izˇek mentions Althusser’s (1971) celebrated reference to Pascal’s Jansenist meditation on religious belief. If you do not believe in God, then ‘kneel down, move your lips in prayer and you will believe’ (Althusser, 1971: 168). Act as if you believe in God and you will then believe. Here the dialectic of belief subverts the common rationalist fallacy that action is a product of cognition—indeed, the opposite is just as true, belief is a corollary of action. For Althusser, ideological belief takes hold of the subject in a manner analogous to Pascal’s (1966) depiction of religious belief because the external ritual of ideology has a material element that precedes our subjective identifications, or in Zˇ izˇek’s case, dis-identifications (cynicism, satire, humour, etc.). This process should not be thought of as a sequential

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chain of events—I act and then believe—but a tautological loop insofar as the subject is ‘always already interpellated’. What differentiates Zˇ izˇek from Marx and Lukács is his questioning of the assumption that there is an original believer before the process of transference. As far as Zˇ izˇek is concerned, the subject who believes should not be conceptualized in terms of reification because ‘there are some beliefs which are from the outset “decentred” beliefs of the Other’ (Zˇ izˇek, 1997: 41). Indeed, he attempts to avoid the humanist error of positing an originary or a priori agent of belief behind the event of transference. Zˇ izˇek’s concept of displacement is qualified with this anti-humanist caveat: …the crucial mistake to be avoided here is, again, the properly ‘humanist’ notion that this belief embodied in things, displaced onto things, is nothing but a reified form of direct belief, in which case the task of the phenomenological reconstitution of the genesis of ‘reification’ would be to demonstrate how the original human belief was transposed onto things. The paradox to be maintained…is that displacement is original and constitutive: there is no immediate, self-present living subjectivity to whom the belief embodied in social things can be attributed and who is then dispossessed of it. ( Zˇ i zˇ ek, 1997: 44, original emphasis)

This represents a crucial break from Marx and Lukács. Zˇ izˇek’s understanding of how belief is displaced from the subject onto the object is not a variant of reification (in which original beliefs escape the believer and dominate them from the outside). This is not a case of ‘the creators, have bowed down before their creations’ (Marx and Engels, 1845–46/1932: 4), in which the manufactured monster returns to dominate and ultimately destroy those who made it. Central to Zˇ izˇek’s theory is the lack of any original agent of belief. Just as the Althusserian subject is ‘always already interpellated by ideology’, even before they are born (for there is no pure subject prior to the appearance of ideology), so is the Zˇ izˇekian subject of belief. Zˇ izˇek calls this the paradox of ‘belief without a believer’. This does not necessarily lead to a form of hyper-structuralism that dissolves the agential subject. The subject still exists, but is forever decentred, postponed and always to come—or as Zˇ izˇek argues, is never fully present but should be tentatively supposed (Zˇ izˇek, 1997, 2001). Zˇ izˇek therefore provides the third, and arguably most radical, step in theorizing the objectivity of belief. Like Marx and Lukács, he questions the assumption that the subject is the centre of belief. But unlike them, the objectivity of belief is not propped up by escaped subjective processes (a la Marx) or reified objects that can be traced back to an original believing subject (a la Lukács). Instead, belief is always already at work in the sphere of faithful objects. Zˇ izˇek perhaps gives the clearest expression to the idea we have called the objectivity of belief; objects such as commodities, technology or cultural artifacts may uncannily believe for us, in our place, even if we have never privately held these beliefs.

CHARTING THE MOMENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BELIEF Having traced the notion of objectivity of belief through to Zˇ izˇek, we now develop an analytical model that helps apply his approach to the study of objects and belief in organizations. We propose that in endeavoring to chart the ‘objectivity of belief’ in an organizational context, we need to consider three moments in the believing subject/object process: (1) the construction of the believing subject, (2) transference of belief to the object, and finally (3) the barring of the believing subject. We will examine these moments of belief with the aid of examples drawn from current research on corporate culture, spirituality and the discourse of the entrepreneurship. We step out these moments in a linear fashion for the purpose of analytical clarity only. As Zˇ izˇek (1997) argued above, ascertaining a beginning point in the sequence is difficult. It is likely that empirical investigation will find these moments of belief occurring simultaneously.

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Object Figure 1.

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Believing Subject

Construction of the believing subject.

The Construction of the Believing Subject At the most elementary level ‘the subject’ does not come to believe on its own, but is always located within a set of power relations that often involve an economy of objects. These objects are socially inscribed with meaning and significance, interpellating the individual by providing them with a material context that makes certain beliefs more probable than others (see Fig. 1.) This moment, of course, has been the basis of innumerable accounts of belief and control in Foucauldian studies of new management technologies (Knights and Willmott, 1989; Deetz, 1992; Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992), Weberian conceptions of legitimacy (Perrow, 1986) and Marxian ideology critique (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980). This aspect of belief has been perhaps most rigorously analyzed in studies of culture management in which ‘designerselves’ (Casey, 1995) are rendered more amenable to the contemporary labour process. Here it is clear that the ritualistic nature of commitment and participation programmes rely upon an array of objects that are imbued with messages of loyalty, dedication and identification. For instance, in Kunda’s (1992) study of a high-tech firm in Silicon Valley the culture campaign utilized objects such as stickers, signs, colour schemes, office layout, TV monitors and newsletters in order to induce feelings of commitment. This dizzying array of objects constitutes the conditions in which it is hoped (by its architects, at least) that belief in the company and its products will ensue. Of course, it may not always work out this way, as analyses of cynicism and irony have highlighted (Collinson, 1992; Fleming and Spicer, 2003). But as Kunda (1992), Casey (1995) and Barker (1993) demonstrate, when the culture assumes a preponderant material reality, belief is more likely to develop. Figure 1. Construction of the believing subject.

Transference of Belief to Objects It is important to note that objects are not merely the prop or inanimate structure for facilitating an expression of belief among organizational members. The relationship between the believing subject and the objects that structure or channel that belief is more fluid than simply a one-way process. Drawing on the tradition of thought that we outlined in the first part of the paper, it is possible to discern how the objects of say, culture management, may perform some of the labour of belief. In other words, the object of belief is not simply internalized and reflected by the labouring subject. Belief is expressed, enacted and partially transferred to the side of the object. At this moment, as we explained earlier, belief changes from something that is sited within the subject to something located in an external arrangement of objects and rituals (see Fig. 2). We can see this dimension of belief work in consultant and managerial attempts to spritualize the contemporary bureaucratic office. The New Age drive to re-enchant and reintroduce belief in a higher purpose in the workplace relies heavily on a matrix of artifacts. For instance, Casey (2002) documents how initiatives to sacralize the modern employment situation witnesses the appearance of a plethora of objects such as crystals, tiny Buddha’s, chi charts and mantra cue cards. Not only is the spiritualized office bearer communicating their commitment to self-development through these objects but the objects themselves also become important agents of belief. When the enchanted worker is too tired to attend yet Figure 2. Transference of belief to objects.

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Believing Object

Figure 2.

Subject

Transference of belief to objects.

another pre-breakfast yoga class, they know that the prominent display of their herbal teapot is there to believe in their place. Ironically enough this objectivity of belief is probably most clearly represented by the cynical ‘corporate mystic’ who secretly thinks that mandatory group-hugs are ‘California bathtub crap’ (see Kunda, 1992). Despite their inner lampooning and incredulity, they will still display the paraphernalia and objectively participate in the rituals in the hope of being left alone. However, just as the Tibetan prayer wheel performs the act of believing for the lazy monk, the display of New Age objects also helps the cynic achieve the status of a believer without the emotional strain typically involved in displays of devotion. Barring the Believing Subject As Zˇ izˇek argued, the fundamental problem with the word ‘transference’ is that it is still directing us to find the centred individual behind the belief process. Even though belief may be performed by objects such as the chi chart or the company sticker, we instinctively assume that identification must be anchored to or originate in the subject. Perhaps it is the deep tradition of humanism in Western thought that drives us to continually ferret out human agency behind even the most banal social practices. The third moment of organizational belief therefore involves recognition that there might not be any original subject behind the transferred beliefs. The object may believe for them even though they have never privately held these beliefs (which makes them no less responsible for those beliefs, as Zˇ izˇek has demonstrated). What this tends to suggest, perhaps more controversially, is that the internal space of the subject as it has been mapped in organization studies, may be an inappropriate metaphor for understanding some of the more complex aspects of belief. This does not mean that we cannot talk about the subject – it only means that it has to be barred or seen as a necessarily empty space that is always to come, but never does (this can be expressed as the subject crossed out as in Fig. 3). The barred subject is the imaginary position taken up by the agent who acts ‘as if’ they believe. Objective belief (behavior, rituals, objects, etc.) is paradoxically present by virtue of the absence of the believing subject as a fully present subscriber (see Fig. 3). Let’s take the example of the popular discourse of the entrepreneur that continues to pervade large sectors of organizational life. If we look closely, what ‘makes’ the entrepreneur is not only a set of innovative and risk-taking psychological traits that lead to ‘new wealth creation’, but also a clichéd pastiche of objects that signify to ‘him’ and others that he has arrived. These Figure 3. Barring the believing subject

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Believing Object

Figure 3.

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Subject

Barring the believing subject

include trendy-casual business attire, the weekend snowboard, the garish sports car with a Richard Branson biography unread in the glove box, an extraordinarily high-priced solarium membership card and of course the obligatory 18-year-old object of desire at their side. What more is there to the bearer of entrepreneurial ideology than this collection of objects and the sober forces of free-market capitalism? As was noted earlier in relation to Althusser (1971), we must situate ideological belief not in the interior of the believing or disbelieving entrepreneur, but in the practices and objects that perform the ritual of identifying with the entrepreneurial fantasy (also see Jones and Spicer, 2005). In this sense, what the subject of entrepreneurial ideology say they believe or disbelieve diminishes in importance. As du Gay and Salaman (1992) have similarly pointed out in relation to the discourse of enterprise: Even if people do not take it seriously, even if they keep a certain cynical distance from its claims, they are still reproducing it through their involvement in everyday practice within which enterprise is inscribed. (du Gay and Salaman, 1992: 630)

Following Zˇ izˇek, we must not simply take this mode of analysis as the summary dismissal of the subject as some forms of materialism are wont to do. This would fall into the behaviouralist trap of conceptualizing the social world without agency or existential import. The ideology of enterprise, for example, would be impossible if it was not for the necessary illusion of an inner realm of freedom and choice that provides respite from the burden of identification. If this were not the case, we would simply live in a world as pre-programmed automatons. Even though objects believe for us and instead of us (beliefs that we may never have actually experienced in our private psyche), we must still presume that there is a subject behind the process in order for these objects to continue to believe. The barred subject, therefore, is an originary agent that does not exist, but must nevertheless be supposed if ideology is to continue its happy function. Even though the jaded Third Way policy analyst sometimes suspects the idea of the enterprising individual is an untenable myth, they must act as if this myth is a reality in order for the ideology of the market to function. The centred and rational subject of belief must always be presumed, but is almost never present.

CONCLUSIONS In charting these moments of belief in an organizational context, we have hopefully offered an additional framework for understanding the ways in which power, objects and belief

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intersect. The paper especially intends to check the current obsession with ‘the subject’ as the central site of control and resistance in critical organization studies. A kind of narcissism pervades the field in its relentless pursuit of subjectivity and identity. In pointing to the external dimensions of the belief process in organizations, we do not want to summarily dismiss the subject, but conceptually capture aspects of self that lie beyond itself. In drawing on a tradition of thought most recently developed by Zˇ izˇek, the paper illustrates how something usually experienced so phenomenologically close can in fact be radically external. Given that the paper has explored the external ‘political economy’ of objects in organizations, the question of resistance and ethical action is surely pertinent. If objects can do the work of belief in the place of organizational members, is there any space left to resist managerial domination? We suggest that resistance in this context would consist of reclaiming the objectivity of belief in which one is embedded (Fleming and Spicer, 2003). While the subject is formally barred in Zˇ izˇek’s perspective, its presupposition (or possibility) is still necessary in order for control to function. Objects cannot believe just anything in our place. Social actors are connected to certain rituals and artifacts via the insidious ‘as if’—even though we do not believe in the cultural logic of capitalism, we still act as if we do. But what would happen if workers acted as if they did not believe? Or conversely, as Fleming and Sewell (2002) put it, believed too much? Nothing short-circuits a team building exercise like taking it too seriously through ironic over-identification (e.g., singing the company song not only at sanctioned times, but also at inappropriate moments). Alerted to the fluidity between political belief and objects, an array of tactics becomes available to the astute organizational deviant. Finally, we hope that future empirical studies of belief will take into account the topics developed in this paper. An empirical analysis of the objectivity of belief in work settings will involve examining a range of objects that are integrated in the power networks of organizational life. These will include cultural artifacts, documents, architecture, technologies and commodities. To be sure, the performitivity of objects in the sphere of belief has been largely absent in much of the research dealing with power and subjectivity in organization studies. Too often the old bugbear of the subjective/objective dichotomy appears to guide our thinking of how belief becomes embroiled within relations of workplace domination. According to this narrative, on one side we have all that is subjective and on the other, the cold inert realities of the capitalist wage-relation. The preceding analysis has not necessarily attempted to undermine this dichotomy, but use it to explore other possibilities for theorizing these issues, an area that we feel deserves further research. References Althusser, L. (1971) Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation), in: L. Althusser (Ed.) Lenin and philosophy and other essays, London: New Left Books. Appadurai, A. (1986) Introduction: commodities and the politics of value, in: A. Appadurai (Ed.) The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, pp. 3–63, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashmos, D.P. and Duschon D. (2000) Spirituality at work: a conceptualization and measure, Journal of Management Inquiry, 9(2), 134–45. Barker, J.R. (1993) Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams, Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(3), 408–37. Bell, E. and Taylor, S. (2003) The elevation of work: pastoral power and the new age work ethic, Organization, 10(2), 329–49. Bewes, T. (1997) Cynicism and postmodernity, London: Verso. Burack, E. (1999) Spirituality in the workplace, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(4), 280–91. Casey, C. (1995) Work, self and society: after industrialism, London: Sage. Casey, C. (2002) Critical analysis of organizations: theory, practice, revitalization, London: Sage. Clegg, S. and Dunkerley, D. (1980) Organization, class and control, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Collinson, D. (1992) Managing the shopfloor: subjectivity, masculinity and workplace culture, Berlin: De Gruyter. de Certeau, M. (1984) The practice of everyday life, Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

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