Change is the only constant—so says that old axiom. As our conditions perpetually evolve so too must our understandings of the world in which we live and the laws that govern human action. This work embraces the postmodernist paradigm as the best explanation of our current situation. It recognizes that contemporary society is marked by a crisis of legitimization. Further, it agrees with Irving and Velody that this crisis “has raised profound and disturbing questions about the character of this brave new world and the new ways in which its governance and the goal of the good society can be measured.”[i] We shall attempt to answer some of these questions by making an account of the rational organization, examining and deconstructing the sources of organizational legitimacy. Ultimately, we will offer a theoretical structure that is compatible with postmodern views on the nature of legitimacy.

Some preface is necessary to allay the indignant criticism frequently engendered by postmodernist discourse. Critics of postmodernism are often guilty of the very sort of singular thinking that postmodernism warns against. The commonest error is the notion that all postmodernist discourse must be in agreement. While this may be expected of modernist discourses—which see themselves as small steps towards objective knowledge, building directly off of one another and therefore needing coherence—the fundamental claims of postmodernism—which shall be explored shortly—discard this necessity. Where modernists demand objectivity, postmodernists revel in the subjective. Contradictions in claims put forth by multiple postmodern authors are—counterintuitively—evidence of coherence in postmodern theory. In the absence of consistency, critical analysis must rule. Postmodernism accepts only one objective claim: that there are no other objective claims.

As one such discourse, this work must recognize its own subjectivity, and make no attempt to obscure its roots or the aims of its author. It must see itself not as one great step towards a final understanding of organizations in society, since it eschews final understandings. Rather, it recognizes that it emerges out of a particular school of thought, and seeks as its end product only a continued discussion about the role of organizations in the postmodern setting. It hopes to encourage a new format for collective organization, one that reflects our latest understanding, one that will be ready to transform as that understanding transforms.

We turn now to a discussion of the basic elements of the postmodern condition. Jean-François Lyotard, harbinger of the postmodern realization, defines postmodernism, simply, as “incredulity toward metanarratives.”[ii] This incredulity comes from a “crisis of legitimation”[iii] consisting of the “internal erosion”[iv] of legitimizing knowledge. Legitimizing knowledge is that which gives authority to claims—for example, what is true in the scientific realm, and what is just in the social realm. Science and ethics are strictly linked[v], and both are legitimized in modern society through the use of metanarratives[vi]. Thus the erosion and subsequent crisis of legitimization indicate the failure of metanarratives to legitimize scientific or moral authority, and the resultant incredulity toward metanarratives is the chief characteristic of postmodern culture[vii].

A clear definition of the metanarrative will reveal its incompatibility with the postmodern condition. According to Lyotard, metanarratives “define what has the right to be said and done in the culture in question, and since they are themselves a part of that culture, they are legitimated by the simple fact that they do what they do.”[viii] That is, metanarratives are self legitimating. Klein, drawing on Lyotard, says of the metanarrative that, “it claims omniscience, it claims to refer to an external object, and it claims to be a veridical representation of that object.”[ix] In other words, the metanarrative is a grand story of stories, one that appeals to objectivity in order to legitimize claims of authority by acting as though it were not such a claim, thus escaping scrutiny. As Kein says, “it pretends to represent an external object and then pretends not to be a narrative.”[x]

The postmodern condition does not allow for totalizing truths like the metanarrative. Klein writes, “The modern had produced diversity of experience, knowledge, and languages, but it no longer commanded the power of belief to join them into a meaningful whole.”[xi] Thus, in Lyotard’s words, Postmodernism results in the metanarrative “losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal.”[xii] The result is what Harvey refers to as “the most startling fact about postmodernism,” that is, “total acceptance of the ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic.”[xiii]

A concrete explanation for the erosion of metanarrative can be found in poststructuralist thought. The chief technique of poststructuralism, deconstruction, consists of what Ferraris and Segre call, “a criticism of practical reason that weakens the claims of reason and questions the totalitarian eventualities of humanism.”[xiv] Indeed, the postmodern condition can be considered a deconstruction of modernism[xv]. Harvey lays the groundwork for understanding deconstruction by explaining that, “writers who create texts or use words do so on the basis of all the other texts and words they have encountered, while readers deal with them in the same way.”[xvi] Everything is understood in relation to everything else that is and has been understood, and, since all people possess a unique set of circumstances governing their understanding, all discourse is subjective. All units of meaning refer to other units of meaning, so none can be isolated. Deconstruction, then, is what Allison calls, “a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and ‘take apart’ those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics.”[xvii] As Williams writes, “Deconstruction draws out a metaphysical background and its unquestioned role within the power of statements that depend upon it.”[xviii] Essentially, it is a process of re-subjectifying that which has been paraded as objective, or of examining the connections between that which is admittedly subjective.

Modernist metanarratives are easily deconstructed by following the “deconstructionist impulse” to “look inside one text for another, dissolve one text into another, or build on text into another.”[xix] ‘Text’ in this sense is interchangeable with ‘meaning,’ ‘discourse,’ or ‘narrative.’ Deconstructionists look for overlapping, shared, and referential meaning inside of texts. Modernist metanarratives, however, posit themselves as centers of meaning, as containing fixed, isolated truths. Deconstructing them, we find that this is not the case, that they do in fact rely on external meaning, and are therefore not the objectively legitimating forces that they claim to be.

An example from Lyotard will further illustrate the point. One of two grand legitimizing models identified by Lyotard is the narrative of emancipation. The hero of this narrative is the sovereign individual, incarnated in the state, and the quest is to make knowledge available to the free subject for the legitimization of prescriptive statements[xx]. The role of science is to “inform the practical subject about the reality within which the execution of the prescription is to be inscribed.”[xxi] Justice is informed by science, and society becomes absolutely free and absolutely just[xxii]. But Lyotard contends that this narrative is no longer trustworthy[xxiii].

The narrative of emancipation fails because it is not self contained. Brügger and Lyotard offer for explanation that, “The problem for the narrative of emancipation is its principle of autonomy, which underlies the idea that if the description of reality is true, this should be sufficient argument for legitimating a given demand about changing this reality.”[xxiv] That is, the problem is the presupposition that there is a valid way to translate descriptive statements directly into prescriptive statements. The “autonomy” to which Brugger and Lyotard refer is the notion that this metanarrative operates on its own independent of external meaning, a notion that is incompatible with the poststructuralist sentiment that, “the totality has its center elsewhere.”[xxv]

There are two elements of the narrative of emancipation: science and justice. According to the narrative, these elements are autonomous. Deconstructing them, we see that they depend on external meaning, that they are centered elsewhere. Science is not pure knowledge; rather, it is part of an ongoing discourse within the context of a community that comes to an agreement concerning what knowledge is, what can be known, and what should be known. Further, it is dependent on that discourse for its very existence, for in the production of that discourse we see its center. Justice can be deconstructed in the same way: it is a part of an ongoing discourse within the context of a community that comes to an agreement concerning what is just and how justice should be enacted. Thus the narrative of emancipation cannot operate as an autonomous and fixed center of meaning, because its meaning is centered outside of itself.

Having considered some key intellectual factors that contributed to the postmodern awakening, we can now attempt to more concretely describe the postmodern condition. A trend in postmodernist writing is to construct a list of polar binaries that contrast modernist and postmodernist ways of thinking. Such lists are usually accompanied by a warning that this type of oversimplification risks appealing to the sort of naïve structuralism that postmodernism eschews, but is helpful in outlining the basic parameters of each. Rather than describing fixed attributes, we will discuss the postmodern condition in terms of conceptual significance. Attributes can be derived from broader concepts, but in gravitating toward the latter we allow for more play; and, as we shall see, the play of meaning is fundamental to the postmodern condition.

We have rigorously delegitimized the metanarrative and considered this process central to the postmodern condition. The metanarrative, however, has played a socially vital role by legitimizing knowledge and authority. Legitimacy must be found somewhere, and in the absence of the metanarrative, Lyotard offers us the local narrative[xxvi]. Local narratives are not institutional and they are not omniscient; rather, they are aware of themselves as narratives, they are imaginative, and they are dynamic[xxvii]. They are contextualized means of understanding and legitimization that are rooted in local discourse. The postmodern condition is contextualized—therefore fragmented—and rooted in discourse.

Fragmented discourse means heterogeneity of discourse, a situation which Lyotard informs us will “only give rise to institutions in patches—local determinism.”[xxviii] Stanley Fish elaborates the concept of local determinism and describes it as occurring within “interpretive communities.”[xxix] Harvey, drawing on Fish, explains that interpretive communities are “made up of both producers and consumers of particular kinds of knowledge, of texts, often operating within a particular institutional context, within particular divisions of cultural labor, or within particular places.” Further, “Individuals and groups are held to control mutually within these domains what they consider to be valid knowledge.”[xxx] Thus discourse is localized, which is fundamentally important in that it allows for play of meaning.

We have discussed poststructuralism in terms of its central concept of deconstruction, the effectiveness of which is derived from the aforementioned play of meaning. When meaning is centered outside of itself, everything becomes discursive[xxxi]. Since discourse is subjective and dynamic, meaning is fluid. Derrida writes that, “The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain of the interplay of signification ad infinitum.”[xxxii] Nothing is fixed, because all structures of meaning are centered outside of themselves. Each individual has had different experiences and interactions with meaning, thus all structures are encountered subjectively. Because interpretive communities both produce and consume meaning, and meaning is shaped by its environment, the production of meaning actually influences not only itself but also other meaning that will be produced later. Play, then, represents the infinite range of interpretation of a single structure of meaning. Play is important because it allows for the evolution of meaning within a community.

In the postmodern condition, meaning is localized—because of the failure of metanarratives—and dynamic—because meaning is generated through discourse. Klein states, “We no longer need transcendental or final grounds for our beliefs. Social consensus, persuasion, and pragmatic criticism are not only all that we have and all that we are ever going to get, they are all we need.”[xxxiii] This reflects Derrida’s statement that, in the absence of the transcendental, everything is discursive. We now have two important concepts to utilize in our analysis of organizational legitimacy: localism and discourse.

To understand the flaws in current means of organizational legitimation, we must broadly examine the concept of organizational legitimacy. Dowling and Pfeffer describe organizational legitimacy as “congruence between the social values associated with or implied by [organizational] activities and the norms of acceptable behavior in the larger social system of which [organizations] are a part.”[xxxiv] Essentially, legitimacy is something conferred upon an organizations by its constituency[xxxv]. Organizations are expected to meet certain performance standards set by a community upon which they are reliant for resources. Nord tells us that constituents offer their support in return when these standards are met[xxxvi]. Legitimacy is of metaphysical importance in that the legitimate organization has the sanction of a society to act in ways that affect the lives of those living in that society. Without that sanction, organizations risk becoming coercive. Legitimacy is of functional importance in that it allows organizations to interact with society and other organizations in order to achieve their goals. Without it, they risk their survival. Organizational legitimacy is necessary if an organization is to function, and if it is to serve the interests of its community of origin.

Because legitimacy is essential to organizational survival, organizations generally take steps to maintain and increase their legitimacy[xxxvii]. This is a continual process because, “even as organizations adapt, social definitions of legitimacy change.”[xxxviii] Ashforth and Gibbs elaborate, “social values and expectations are often contradictory, evolving, and difficult to operationalize.”[xxxix] This is increasingly true when an organization’s constituency is larger[xl]. In other words, organizations exist inside of environments, are dependent upon those environments for resources, and seek legitimacy in order to interact with their environment.

Up to this point we have discussed organization legitimacy generally. We must now attempt to isolate organizational behaviors which are specifically modernist in their beliefs and motivations. As Giroux writes, “Postmodernism … provides referents … for problematizing some of the most basic elements of modernism.”[xli] A postmodern critique of the most modernist tendencies of organizations will allow us to theorize about the nature of the postmodern organization by clarifying what it is not.

The modernist impulse leads organizations to strive towards an objective perfection. We can anticipate the nature of the metanarrative to which modernist organizations appeal for legitimacy by looking again at Lyotard’s description of the metanarrative’s function: a grand narrative which defines what is valid inside of an environment, itself validated by the fact that its exists inside that environment. Combining this function with the concept of organizational legitimacy, we predict the metanarrative for modernist organizations would be itself a part of the organizational environment, and by virtue of that fact would legitimize acceptable behavior inside of this environment.

To find this metanarrative, we turn to Meyer and Rowan who tell us that, “organizations are driven to incorporate the practices and procedures defined by prevailing rationalized concepts of organizational work and institutionalized in society.”[xlii] Modernist organizations believe that those organizations which have already found ways to thrive in their same environment can be emulated to produce the same outcome. DiMaggio and Powell add that, “organizations … respond to an environment that consists of other organizations responding to their environment, which consists of organizations responding to an environment of organizations’ responses.”[xliii] In this environment, those organizations which are able to attain legitimacy are actually setting the practices and procedures referred to by Meyer and Rowan. Thus we have found our metanarrative: institution. The institution is itself a part of the organizational environment, and its very survival in that environment legitimizes its behaviors, which become standards.

When institutions legitimize authority by the fact of their existence, organizations are driven to conform to the standards presented by those institutions in a process called isomorphism. The result of this, DiMaggio and Powell reveal, is that “once a field becomes well established … there is an inexorable push towards homogenization.”[xliv]

In other words, “organizational characteristics are modified in the direction of increasing compatibility with environmental characteristics,” and that environment is characterized by the structure of the other organizations within it, so this process “forces one unit in a population to resemble other units,” given that they “face the same set of environmental conditions.”[xlv]

Isomorphic processes increase legitimacy by appealing to the metanarrative of institution. Further, DiMaggio and Powell explain, “It is important to note that each of the institutional isomorphic processes can be expected to proceed in the absence of evidence that they increase internal organizational efficiency.” This is because legitimacy is more vital than efficiency. When efficiency is increased, it is generally because “organizations are rewarded for being similar to other organizations in their field.”[xlvi]

We have thus far disregarded specific strategies for legitimation as unimportant, since the broad strategy for all organizations is institutionalization, or legitimization through appeals to previously accepted standards. The emphasis on legitimacy over efficiency raises questions, however. There seems to be a contradiction latent in the notion of an organization with low efficiency and high legitimacy, since legitimacy is conferred upon an organization as a result of its adherence to the goals and values of its constituents. One would think that those constituents would place high value on organizational efficiency. This contradiction warrants further investigation.

The root of the contradiction can be revealed by taking a closer look at the conditions which are conducive to isomorphism. DiMaggio and Powell have presented several convincing hypotheses which elaborate on these conditions. They posit that organizations are more likely to become isomorphic with one another when any of the following organizational conditions are present: greater interorganizational dependence, greater centralization of resources, greater uncertainty in the organizational process, greater ambiguity in the goals of the organization, greater reliance on academic credentials in staff hiring, and greater participation in trade and professional organizations. Environmental factors outside of the organization include: greater dependency on a single or small number of sources for important resources, greater levels of interaction with the state, fewer visible alternatives in the field, greater uncertainty regarding technologies and goals in the field, greater field reliance on professionalization, and greater structuration of a field[xlvii].

Close scrutiny can reveal a social process which increases the presence of these factors. Hawthorn and Lund allude to it with their observation that, “The achievement of modernity … is to erase particularity and create a universality.”[xlviii] The metanarrative of emancipation would have us believe that there are better and worse ways of accomplishing our goals; the goal of modernity, then, is to discover and ritualize the better, while discarding the worse, grasping continually at a conception of the best way. In the wake of the Enlightenment, society has attempted to organized itself in the pursuit of this best way. In Koch’s words, “It was believed that reason, defined as the ‘objective’ power of the mind, would uncover the universal principles that govern the world.”[xlix] The mark of the modern is not that it strives towards improvement, but that it strives towards a singular conception of improvement. That which seems to work has been preserved and multiplied. Institution, then, is embodied by those facets of modern society that have been found tried and true.

Institutions lend themselves to centralization. If an institution becomes so by being—or, at least, appearing—to be the most effective way to achieve a particular goal, then it will become widespread. Greater numbers of people will adopt fewer practices. Centralization, then, is that broad social process which increases the presence of the factors outlined by DiMaggio and Powell. We have outlined a three step process: first, rational societies identify and implement social practices which are perceived as effective; second, these practices become institutions and lead to centralization of resources and practices; and finally, this centralization pressures organizations to become isomorphic with one another to be seen as legitimate.

We return now to the question of efficiency. The answer is pointed out by Meyer and Rowan who clarify that, “A sharp distinction should be made between the formal structure of an organization and its actual day-to-day work activities.”[l] It is the formal structure which is institutionalized to legitimize the organization, but efficiency is an attribute of day-to-day activities, since, as Meyer and Rowan point out, formal structure is more for of a blueprint[li]. This disconnect reveals that formal structure is actually symbolic. In other words, “modern societies are filled with institutional rules that function as myths depicting various formal structures as rational means to the attainment of desirable ends.”[lii] This is precisely what we have termed the metanarrative of institution. Formal structures modeled after institutions will be viewed as legitimate, and assumed to be effective tools in the attainment of socially desirable goals. Institutional legitimacy is more likely to be rooted in symbols when an organizations constituency has complex or contradictory expectations[liii].

Having thoroughly examined the concept of organizational legitimacy and the metanarrative of institution, we can now apply a postmodern critique to delegitimize the institution. The flaw of the modernist strategy for establishing organizational legitimacy is its reliance on metanarrative. Let us restate the metanarrative of institution in order to more thoroughly examine it: a grand narrative which defines what is valid inside of an environment, itself validated by the fact that its exists inside that environment. Institutions are good precisely because they are institutions; that is, they are self-legitimating. Practices and beliefs do have legitimacy at the time of their institutionalization, but constituencies are dynamic and so too must institutions be dynamic to truly be legitimate. We stated earlier that legitimization is an ongoing process wherein organizations must adapt to the evolving demands of their constituency, but this process is largely symbolic[liv]. DiMaggio and Powell clarify that, “in the long run, organizational actors making rational decisions construct around themselves an environment that constrains their ability to change further in later years.”[lv] The metanarrative of institution ignores the need for ongoing reassessment because it is rooted in a modernist notion of linear progress.

Postmodern revelations invalidate the metanarrative of institution on the previously established grounds: it is neither localized nor dynamic. Metanarratives function inside of broad contexts, and when legitimacy requires basic agreements over goals and values, those agreements will be simplistic or symbolic. The non-localized organization is answerable to a much larger constituency, and therefore cannot afford complex goals without appealing to symbols. Standards for legitimacy also emerge out of an ongoing discourse, and are therefore dynamic. Organizations must heed this discourse if they are to be truly representative of the will of their constituency.

We turn now to our ultimate goal: offering a theoretical structure of organization that is compatible with the postmodern condition. There is an element of uncertainty associated with all things postmodern. Postmodernity and late modernity are overlapping phenomena, and we use the term postmodern to describe something defined by what it is not, that is, the postmodern is not modern. If we had a fuller understanding of the postmodern, we would not have to define it in relation to something external, though doing so may be ill-advised since we have seen that all structures of meaning are centered outside of themselves. Indeed, uncertainty may be one of the prime virtues of postmodernism; in the absence of objective direction we are forced to rely upon subjective discourse.

Realizations of the discursive nature of meaning and the illegitimacy of grand narratives which appeal to transcendental reason shatter the intellectual foundations which legitimize grand scale modernist pursuits. The result is the most poignant implication of the postmodern condition: a shift of context. Grand narratives and grand contexts are invalidated, leaving no place for large institutions. The postmodern organization is itself defined by this shift in context, for it exists within a local community and appeals to legitimacy based on local narratives. Because local narratives are rooted in fluid discourse, rather than stable ideology, the postmodern organization must constantly adapt to the dynamic needs of the community it serves.

The problem with institutionalization is not that institutions are illegitimate at the outset. They become institutions precisely because they work well in a given context. But the modernist context is large and abstract, so appeals to legitimacy become disconnected and symbolic. Localized organizations will make similar appeals to what could be called localized institutions. At a smaller scale, however, localized practices are better understood as habits and customs rather than institutions. The activities of the local organization are easier to monitor, and the legitimacy of their actions can be based on observable results.

The local organization emerges out of a more coherent constituency. Because the organization’s environment is an interpretive community, the goals and values of that community are easier to decipher. They are also dynamic. The postmodern organization must be relevant to local discourse. This means that it must be tied to an interpretive community. Organizations must address the specific needs of the community, informed by the community’s discourse. Since organizations themselves are discursive, they must also be cognizant of their participation in the process of community interpretation. And since discourse evolves over time, organizations—which are necessarily tied to discourse by virtue of their need for legitimacy—must be adaptive. The postmodern organization is legitimized by a shared discourse to which each community member is responsible.

Postmodernism has provided us with an understanding of the condition of our age. Within it, metanarratives have become obsolete; institutions have simultaneously lost their source of legitimacy and become too abstract and disconnected to benefit their constituency. The poststructuralist critique reveals that all meaning is discursive. The death of the metanarrative and the discursiveness of meaning result in the delegitimization of institutions outside of interpretive communities. Legitimate organizations cannot exist on the scale of large modernist institutions. These are basic guiding principles to facilitate further discussion of the postmodern organization. Like the organizations themselves, this discussion will likely occur within localized contexts.