Lists and Stories as OrganizationaI Communication

zyx zyxwvut zyxw Communication Theory Two: Four Larry Davis Browning zyxwv November 1992 Pages: 281-302 Lists and Stories as 0rganizat ionaI Communication zyxwvuts zyxwv zyxwvut This article examines how two communication types, lists and stories, structure organizations and claims that all organizationalcommunication is composed of these two types. The list is rooted in science and presented as a formula for action leading to controllable outcomes. I t represents standards, accountability,and certainty. Conversely, the story is romantic, humorous, tragic, and dramatic. I t unfolds sequentially, with overlays, pockets of mystery, and the addition or deletion of performers. This article posits lists and stories as the central ingredients of organizationalcommunication and suggests that their ratio, rate, and order of occurrence are problemsfor research and theory. I t reaffirms the list as organizational communication and elevates the story to a position equal to the list. Lists are technical communication, progressive, public; and once shared they extend a power base. Stories are communications about personal experience told in evetyday discourse. They reject local knowledge, give coherence to group subcultures, change over time. and contain multiple voices. The lists and stories thesis contributes to organizationalcommunication by providing another avenuefor considering structuration. The contrasting qualities of lists and stories direct focus to the question of how individuals organize. How much structure and variety are there and how much are culturally optimal? To use “lists and stories” in a title of an article is to begin with a list. Levi-Strauss (1966) claims that once a list has started, it goes on forever as long as the dimensions bifurcate. But stories explode lists and create the sudden changes of postmodern life. The purpose of this article is to develop an understanding of how these two communication types structure organizations. In this article I will call upon the lists and stories themselves as evidence supporting the theoretical claim that all organizational communication is composed of lists and stories. My purpose is first to create a series of distinctions between lists and stories and introduce their interaction. The article then moves to a section that classifies lists and another that classifies stories with descriptions that taper into summaries of recent literature. A fourth section provides two field research examples of the relationship between lists and stories, extracted from interviews in two computer manufacturing organizations. The article ends with a precis that connects lists and stories to organizational communication theory. The Dance ot Lists and Stories Lists and stories are dialectically related. The list is rooted in science and presented as a formula for action leading to controllable outcomes. The list represents standards, accountability, certainty, and reportability. Conversely, the 28 1 zyxwvutsr zyx Communication Theory story is romantic, humorous, conflicted, tragic, and most of all, dramatic (Howard, 1991). It unfolds sequentially, with overlays and pockets of mystery (including, at the oddest moments, the addition or deletion of performers, [Cohen & March, 1986; Cohen, March & Olsen, 19721). The list, as a modern discourse, has the force of what Ashley (1989)labels a monologue: zyxwvut zyxwvutsr It comprehends history, or any aspect of history, as a rich, complex, and already given text to be interpreted. In the terminology of Roland Barthes, history is understood to occupy the order of the lisible text: the order of the already written text that need only be read for its implications and toward which the reader properly adopts a passive attitude, as a “consumer”of the meaning a text reveals . . . (p. 263). So the list is a monologue in that it is instructive-“it tells us how to act in regard to a particular goal” (Cooper & Burrell, 1988, p. 93). The list is a criterion that already exists. It is an “already made up mind” of extrahistorical and universal content, which implies an “already existing answer to questions” (Cooper & Burrell, 1988, p. 94). The power of a list is often foregrounded; however, the story’s power is in retrospect (Polster, 1987). Stories can be used to remember-or forget. Remembering a particular past has the effect of blotting out another (Lyotard, 1984). Past events are continually assimilated into a present that edges forward, like railroad ties laid across the prairie (Gubrium, 1988). We understand the power of the story across time. The story is composed of memory, folklore, history, and biography. The list’s power lies in its immediacy. The tax guide that struck fear when it was current is impotent the moment it is out of date. Bakhtin says the list “has great power over us, but only while in power; if ever dethroned it immediately becomes a dead thing, a relic” (1981, p. 424). This article posits lists and stories as the central ingredients of organizational communication that are “mixed in different proportions as organizational settings vary by industry or across time” (Weick & Browning, 1986, p. 246). Their ratio, rate, and order of occurrence are problems for research and theory. In some organizations the list dominates. Such is the case in a computer services department. It embodies a list culture; the formula matters most. In other organizations stories dominate, as they often do in religious congregations. However, even religious congregations have their lists. The decision to become a minister of the gospel, which can be as mysterious as Paul’s blinding light experience on the road to Damascus, is rationally protected by a list to test the suitability of seminary applicants for the “heady wine” of responsibility that religious leadership requires (Greth, 1989, p. C9).’ The church is a setting where narrative is prominent (Douglas, 1982) but not unaccompanied by lists. Part of the interplay of lists and stories is that they occur in a stream of choices, problems, opportunities, and decisions (Cohen et al., 1972). This article reaffirms the list as organizational communication and simultaneously elevates the story to a position equal to the list. Here, the story has no dominant position as the origin of communication as it does in Fisher’s (1985) formulation. He leaves only four pages in his book for technical rationality, 282 Lists and Stories zyx zyxwv which I classify here as lists. Neither do lists as scientific knowledge “represent the totality of knowledge” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 7). Rhetorical theory invites the analysis of both lists and stories, as in Hart’s Modern Rhetorical Criticism (1990), which includes among its studies of speeches a rhetorical analysis of a university’s parking regulations. The force of both lists and stories is irrefutable. Lists count as communication because they influence the person over time by invoking legal authority, even if the authority is as anonymous as the name that flashes by when software is booted. Lists are created with symbolic and substantative effects in mind. Stories are communications in which author and author-ity coincide in the organization. The story suggests power is diffused, available to anyone who can speak the ideology of the organization (Mintzberg, 1983). While machine theory has been central to organizational communication, the study of lists has been an ancillary part of past research (Smith, 1962) even though it was at the center of Taylor’s (1947) scientific management: zyxwvut zyx The work of every workman [sic] is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the tasks which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. (p. 39) zyx Communication is inherently a source of influence, and messages are constantly interpreted. This suggests that looking at the influence of both lists and stories can provide new insights for organizational communication theory. Llsts as Communlcatlon Lists are technical communication, because their legitimacy is based on the belief that technique-a set of specific steps-will lead to identifiable, predictable outcomes. The list is represented in conventional computer programming by the algorithm “which details a precise series of steps that will yield a precise results” (Linden, 1988, p. 61). Lists may also provide rules of thumb “that actors use to simplify their choosing, drawing on ready made guides” (Etzioni, 1988, p. 167). Lists can be logical designs to detect faulty reasoning; they are propositionalwhat should be done? They are evaluative and require the person (1)to lay out facts, and (2) to present ideas that answer the questions: Have you done your homework? Have you reasoned well? Have you used propositional thinking? (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, 1992). Lists are produced by experts who designate steps and strategies that apply to parochial topics, such as software, return on investment (ROI) formulae, costbenefit analyses (Willard, 1982), or engineering practices. Experts summarize their knowledge with formulae or procedures that can be specified as a series of operational, accomplishable, transferable steps. Lists have in common clear objectives and prescribed strategies contributing to rationality in organizations through goal clarity, means-ends consistency, and hierarchical integration (March & Olsen, 1976). Lists, like arguments, are often public, and once shared they extend a power zyxwvut 283 zyx zyx Communication Theory base. The success of a list depends on the scrutiny of a community; they have to accept that the list is the right one. Even the familiar grocery list meets the criteria for a list. It may be scribbled on a note pad and scarcely legible but it is a needs analysis; it is a standard to be met and it can be accomplished by someone other than the person who wrote it. Lists are privileged and take the arbitrariness and mystery out of performance and make universal efficiency theoretically possible.’ The extent of the power in a list can be difficult for other forms of discourse to match. Lists are often attached to budgets, the ultimate form of power/ knowledge, because they list information (knowledge), and they have institutional approval (power). The budget, according to Covaleski and Dirsmith (1988), allows the state to zyxwvu transform political discourse to discourse on technique, thus disguising political value judgments as rational responses to technical problems in which order, justice, equality and rationality appear to dominate. . . . (p. 7) The final seduction of lists is their progressiveness. The paradox of lists is that despite their claim for stability, they change as experts innovate procedurally and as power players change (Cohen et al., 1972). The latest edition of software may drive the same function key to erase what it used to highlight. Lists continue to correct and append when errors occur, and an exception to the list can lead to yet another list of how to respond to the exception or error. Lists may require discretionary judgment (Thompson, 1967); even ideal lists that identify, determine, and evaluate consequences of strategies are affected by human behavior that departs from the model of objective rationality (Simon, 1976).3Weber, like Simon after him, developed an ideal list about organizations, but his list was developed as a straw man to compare with worldly exceptions (McNeil, 1978). Weber was more concerned about the extent of rationality’s control (the iron cage) than he was about promoting the use of lists (Alexander, 1983; Wellmer, 1985). Organization theory provides a pivotal role for lists in organizations. Lists are used for symbolic, justifying purposes that may relate minimally to formal functioning (Ansari & Euske, 1987; Feldman & March, 1981). Lists can be used to invoke unquestionable discipline and in-group identity. The abomination of Leviticus is a story of one group with cultural standards for the primary purpose of separating themselves from the heathens who lived across the valley (Douglas, 1984). Lists allow for control from a distance (Hoskin & Macve, 1988; Miller & O’Leary, 1987) and show ordering preferences (Safire, 1989). Lists assure fairness (Lind & Tyler, 1988), or they can signal organized rancor as they did with Richard Nixon’s “hit list.” Lists count as commodifiable, proprietary knowledge (Cooper & Burrell, 1988; Lyotard, 1984). Lists are hierarchical (Crable, 1982; Fisher, 1984) and create a system of examination and approval (Foucault, 1979; Hoskin & Macve, 1986). Following are two samples of lists as text with a brief interpretation of each in relation to the concepts presented. zyxwvut 284 Lists and Stories zyx zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvut zyx Figure 1 is extracted from a report of a negotiations training program developed from observations and interviews of enforcement officer negotiators from a state tax collection agency (Bowers, Gilchrist, & Browning, 1980, p. 12). The observations and interviews of enforcement officer practices were made into a list, compared with the literature on negotiation and bargaining to broaden their application, and translated into a 2-day training program on effective tax collection negotiations. In keeping with rational form, enforcement officer negotiation performance was measured 1 and 6 weeks after the training to reaffirm the program’s value. The second list is the teacher appraisal form for a state public school system (Figure 2). The 83-item observation/evaluation record is completed twice a year for new and probationary teachers and once a year for experienced teachers whose most recent appraisal was evaluated as exceeding expectations or clearly outstanding. This requires all but outstanding teachers to be evaluated twice a year. The appraisal system requires two appraisers (the teacher’s supervisor and a certified teacher from a different campus), each of whom spends at least 45 minutes observing the teacher. Sample comments from the handbook introducing the appraisal system provide commentary such as: 1.2. Evaluates and provides feedback on student progress during instruction: “Most of the students’ (22 out of 28) responses were from 8 students sitting in the front.” Or, 11.3. Organizes materials and students: “Teacher took 12 minutes to get instruction started. Took 6 minutes to take roll and another 6 minutes for teacher to organize materials, find transparencies, and focus overhead. Students sat and waited” (Texas Teacher Appraisal System Instrument, n.d.). These two examples reinforce the claims for lists made in this section. They are summaries of larger systems of expert knowledge. (The enforcement officer negotiation program took a year to develop prior to its first offering. The teacher appraisal system is a 116-page manual.) Part of the value of these lists comes from the elaborate scheme of their development. Finally, they allow for performance measurement in these two professions where performing autonomously had been a tradition. Lists increase the value of the technocrat who is good at making them and simultaneously devalue the sage who glorifies single important instances of how things were done in the past. These training programs meet the requirements for a list in that they are expert, public, efficient, and universally available. Stories as Communication Stories are communications about personal experience told in everyday discourse. “Competence in such narration is an essential skill for members of a speech community” (Robinson, 1981, p. 58). Stories are the reporting of experience in everyday conversation. When people narrate their experience, “this means they project a story form onto that experience” (Weick, 1988, p. 7).“This may occur as the experience is taking place, in reflecting on the experience, or in recounting the experience at a later time” (Robinson & Hawpe, 1986, p. 115). Stories are a form of knowledge (Fisher, 1984) and a communication medium 285 zyxw Communication Theory zyxwvutsrqpon FWm 1 T.xEnf~rwment Nlpotlmtiona Tralnlng Program’ I. EO communication with TPs has four goals. A. To collect, as soon as possible, all tax, penalty, and interest legitimatelyowed to the state. B. To maintain the credibility of the EO and the agency. C. To enhance the TP’s information about the consequences of hislher compliance or noncompliance in a nonthreateningway. D. To make the TP aware that the EO is approachable-that the EO is employed to provide a service, not just to enforce tax laws. II. The probability of reaching these goals can be increased by the use of certain principles by EOs: A. The EO should keep the goals in mind. More specifically, this involves three key words. 1. Focus. Work to focus attention on the central issue: when and how will the TP comply? 2. Inform. Let TPs know the nature of the problem and the potential consequences of compliance and noncompliance so that they can make rational decisions. In most cases, work to inform TPs rather than to pressure or threaten them. 3. Motivate. An informed TP probably will be motivated to comply. Make the TP aware that the responsibility for compliance or noncompliance and the responsibility for the consequencesof complianceor noncompliance rest with the TP. B. Arguments discourage taxpayer responsibility. Arguments direct attention away from the central issue. Most arguments can be prevented or defused, since it takes two to make an argument. C. Every collection call and visit provides an opportunity to buttress the approachability of the EO and the agency. 111. In commmunicationwith TPs, EOs should think strategically, evaluatingcommunication techniques on the basis of the objectives of the conversation and the likely response of the TP. A. Certain strategies have been found to be effective in dealing with excuses, complaints, refusal to make commitments, evasions, and arguments. 1. Using “broken record,” assertively return the conversation to the central issue immediately following each TP digression.‘ 2. “Fogging” may be even more effective than “broken record.” Using this technique, the EO acknowledges that hdshe understands the TP’s excuse or point of view, but does not dwell on it, and returns the conversation to the central issue in the Same utterance. B. Emphasizing common goals reduces TP defensiveness and enhances EO a p proachability. 1. Use language that links the concerns of the TP and the EO (“the sooner we get this cleared up” instead of “the sooner you get this cleared up”). 2. Cooperatively encourage the TP to comply (“I guess we’d both like to get this cleared up as soon as possible so you could quit paying penalities and I could get the paper off my desk”). 3. Avoid jargon, for jargon intimidates, confuses or alienates the TP. C. The EO should add information strategically. 1. Always add information so that the TP can make rational decisions. Choices of the TP are made on the basis of what he/she knows about the consequences of alternatives. 2. Add information about penalties incrementally, beginning with less severe penalties and mentioning more severe penalties only if necessary. Penalties and sanctions are to be used as rhetorical devices for persuading the taxpayer that it is in hislher interest to comply immediately. These devices are effective because of their potential for influence. To actually implement severe sanctions is expensive. In fact, if the EO threatens a very severe sanction, a TP might take hidher assets and leave the state. D. The EO should be a tough bargainer. 1. First, request full compliance immediately, making concessions slowly after adding information to induce the TP to comply. The most extreme violation of this principle occurs when an EO mentions the possiblity of an extended zyxw zyxwv 286 zyxw zyxw Lists and Stones zyx zyxwvutsr zyxwvu zyxw partial payment agreement early in the conversation. Once offered, a lenient (and expensive) proposal cannot be withdrawn without a significant loss of credibility. 2. Induce a TP to propose a choice among limited alternatives. Having made the proposal or choice, the TP will feel more committed to it. “Do you want to bring the check this afternoon or would tomorrow be better?” 3. Avoid unnecessary and/or premature commitment to a single proposal. If, for example, the EO says “We must have full payment by tomorrow afternoon,” the TP may be unable or unwilling to comply. When that happens, the EO must either stand by the proposal, unnecessarily imposing expensive Sanctions, or must back off from it, damaging the EOs and the agency’s credibility. E. Offer service to the TP. This increases the probability of compliance at little cost to the EO or the agency compared to the potential gain financially and in credibility and approachability. ‘Manuel J. Smith, When I Say No, I FeelGuirty (Des Plaines, 111.: Bantam Books, 1975). ‘From Bowers, Gilchirst, and Browning, 1980, p. 12. Copyright by The Speech Comrnunication Association. Reprinted by permissionof the publisher. (Logan, 1986). Stories cause biography and history to reinforce each other (Branch, 1988), but the extent to which they do so varies. Stories are not the same as culture because standard stories are focused more on the present than are cultures (Lyotard, 1984). Lyotard would call the specific set of rules of a strong culture a list (Deal & Kennedy, 1982) and refer to both the list and the culture as a grand narrative, classifying them both as following Habermas’s (1975) principle of consensus. While the grand narrative stabilizes and provides a unitary experience, the story destabilizes, is locally determined and temporal, and disturbs the order of “reason” (Lyotard, 1984, p. 61). Stories are local knowledge (Fisher, 1984). They do not require a technical specialist to understand what they mean. Stories fit Bakhtin’s definition of a chronotope, which is an understanding located in time and space (see Clifford, 1988). Stories are more personal than lists and do not require public presentation. Because stories are usually told in private, intimacy is part of their stylistic form. Stories are context sensitive. Story communication increases the importance of knowing history. Their placement on a time line in “events in public history and . . [in] private life may affect the outlook of a person with whom one deals” (Neustadt & May, 1986, p. xix). Telling stories gives coherence to a group subculture. Story communication is exemplified by what a few friends say to each other. Stories create boundaries as people listen intently and stop talking in the presence of strangers. Storytelling in groups does not have the criteria of exactness and caution that technical communication does in public declarations. Rather than performing as messages that are designed strategically, stories are messages that unfold naturally. Because the requirement for carefulness is relaxed, meaning itself is relaxed (Weick, 1980).Just as people are not held as closely responsible for what they say as for what they write, people listen attentively and accept what is said, while knowing that the story is flexible, evolving, and changing. People learn to give context to . 287 Figuml c0nunll.d zyxw zyxwvutsrqpon zyxwvutsrqpo Communication Theory Flwm 2 T e x u Educrtlon Agency. T e x u Teacher Appralul Syotem, 0b.enatlOnl Eveluatlon ROWrd' I. Instructional Strategies 1. Provides opportunities for students to participate actively and successfully. a. varies activities appropriately b. interacts with group(s) appropriately c. solicits student participation d. extends responseslcontributions e. provides time for responselconsideration f. implements at appropriate level 2. Evaluates and provides feedback on student progress during instruction. a. communicates learning expectations b. monitors student performance c. solicits responsesldemonstrations for assessment d. reinforces correct responselperformances e. provides corrective feedbacklclarifieslnone needed f. reteacheslnone needed 11. Classroom Management and Organization 3. Organizes materials and students. a. secures student attention b. uses proceduredroutines c. gives clear administrative directionslnone needed d. maintains appropriate seatinglgrouping e. has materialslaidslfacilitiesready 4. Maximizes amount of time available for instruction. a. begins promptlylavoids waste at end b. implements appropriate sequence of activities c. maintains appropriate pace d. maintains focus e. keeps students engaged 5. Manages student behavior. a. specifies expectations for behaviorlnone needed b. prevents off-task behaviorlnone needed c. redirectslstops inappropriateldisruptivebehavior d. applies rules consistently and fairlyhone needed e. reinforces behavior appropriately 111. Presentation of Subject Matter 6. Teaches for cognitive, affective, andlor psychomotor learning and transfer. a. begins with appropriate introduction b. presents information in appropriate sequence c. relates content to priorlfuturelearning d. definesldescribes concepts: skills, attitudes, interests e. elaborates critical attributes f. stresses generalizationlprinciplelrule g. provides for application h. closes instruction appropriately 7. Uses effective communication skills. a. makes no significant errors b. explains contentltask(s) clearly c. stresses important points/dimensions d. uses correct grammar e. uses accurate language f. demonstrates written skills IV. Learning Environment 8. Uses strategies to motivate students for learning. a. relates content to interestslexperiences b. emphasizes valuelimportance of activitylcontent c. reinforceslpraises eforts d. challenges students 9. Maintains supportive environment. a. avoids sarcasmlnegative criticism b. establishes climate of courtesy c. encourages slowlreluctant students zyxwv 288 Lists and Stories RguN 2 Continued d. establishes and maintains positive rapport V. Professional Growth and Responsibilities 10. Plans for and engages in professionaldevelopment. a. progresses in growth requirementsor none needed b. stays current in content taught c. stays current in instructional methodology 11. Interacts and communicates with parents. a. initiatescommunications with parents as appropriate b. conducts conferences with parents in accordance with local policy c. reports student progress to parents d. maintains confidentiality 12. Complies with policies, operating procedures, and requirements. a. follows TEA requirements b. follows districtlcampus policiedprocedures c. performs assigned duties d. follows promotion procedures 13. Promotes and evaluates student growth. a. participates in goal setting b. plans instruction c. documents progress d. maintains records e. reports progress ‘Source: Texas Teacher Appraisal Instrument (n.d.) zyx zy . zyxwv what is said in a story. We consider the point of view of the speaker without calling it bias. “She is nervous about her promotion” or “he had to say that” are contextual clues, The criteria for stories are: Stories must have narrative probability -is the story coherent?-and narrative fidelity-does the story ring true with the stories known to be true in one’s life (Fisher, 1984)? The conceptual material extending stories beyond fiction has grown significantly in the last ten years. The literature shows that stories play pivotal roles in persuasion during crises (Neustadt & May, 1986); they remind us of paths to take and to avoid (Stone, 1988). Stories are used persuasively to direct public opinion on controversial issues (Bennett & Edelman, 1985). Stories account for a private honor and dignity not represented in the formal structure of the organization (Browning & Henderson, 1989). Stories allow for accepting the single experience of individuals by accepting their points of view (Bruner, 1986). Polster (1987) gives clinical guidance for how stories change over time, depending on when speakers punctuate them to signal beginning and ending. Stories can enter a discourse at any place (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and are powerful memory devices once they have been told (Siehl & Martin, 1982). Causality in stories is created by surprise (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1986), which makes them a stimulus for adventure (Sarbin, 1986). Stories account for issues of meaning in life (Howard, 1991), and for the experience of being morally average and morally heroic (Fishkin, 1982). Stories are important because grand plans account for only a partial explanation of organizational functioning (Hannan & Freeman, 1984), even though stories themselves are partial and incomplete accounts (Sternberg, 1985). The stories that conclude this section are from interview narratives where the zyx 289 zy zyxw Communication Theory researcher has been told stories and draws contextually bound interpretations from what is said (Mishler, 1986). The first example is from field notes reported from interviews with guards at a county jail: zyxw He told me a story about someone who wanted extra milk, in one of the large tanks. “When you are handing out the milk, you’re suppose to give it to them in their hands. That’s the only way of knowing if they all got their milk. And where there’s just two to a cell, well that’s easy enough, but when you’re in a large open tank, it’s hard to know, hard to make sure that everybody’s got theirs, unless you put it in their hands.” One guy started loud-mouthing and saying, “I didn’t get my milk” and so on. But the guard knew that he had. So he went and got enough milk to give everyone else in the tank except that guy. He said, “I think he got the message from that, you know, that it doesn’t pay to loud-mouth and cause a lot of trouble.” (Henderson, 1982, p. 50) zyxwv The second set of interviews were with public school teachers and principals reporting their responses to an upcoming state-wide evaluation: And when the accreditation team comes and you didn’t have time to tell the teacher down the hall, and somebody else says: “no we don’t do that any more.” And you know it’s very obvious that it was changed thirty minutes before they got here. So you know, you can’t do that kind of stuff. (Tomberlin, 1986, p. 47) zyx Okay. Um, they asked regular teachers and special area teachers what kind of communication went on between the two of them and asked for documentation of the meetings . . . but listen to what the monitoring team said, “Oral discussion without documentation isn’t worth anything, so they say!” (Tomberlin, 1986, p. 40) I’ve heard a lot of stories about when they’d come in and they’d well, one person says they’re not only going to look under the carpet uh, this is a direct quote: “They’re not only going to look under the carpet to see what’s there, they’re going to pick up the carpet and shake it.” (Tomberlin, 1986, p. 30) These stories contain multiple voices. The interviewee is telling a story of his experience but the researcher is also a narrator following Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) definition of a narrative: “We believe that narrative consists not in communicating what one has seen but in transmitting what one has heard, what someone else said to you. Hearsay” (p. 76). In the instance of the jail, the person who had the experience relates how he maintains control under conditions where his power is continually contested by inmates. For the inmates he controlled, this event was as powerful as any handbook rule on how to be a prisoner. The jail had no formal procedure for gleaning rules from these incidents, and newcomers were left to sink or swim until norms were learned (Louis, 1980). The second set of interviews from the public school contains a third voice: the researcher, the interviewee, and the person to whom the interviewee is telling the story. Telling a story is a deed, but it is impossible to understand the deed 290 zy zyx zyxw Lists and Stories except as recreated by the listener (Bakhtin, 1986). Following are two extensive cases that will further develop the reflexivity of lists and stories. Two Cases on Lists and Stories The two cases presented below are the product of interviews with two longstanding computer manufacturers. (My agreement for making the stories public is that the firms remain anonymous and formal names become pseudonyms. The cases are stories about responses to proprietary manufacturing specifications the firms chose to not make public for this study.) The interviews were completed with top managers of a manufacturing plant in one firm and with a corporate headquarters staff responsible for manufacturing in another. The interviews were completed under the auspices of organizational diagnosis and are offered here in narrative form (Anderson, 1987). The two cases show how lists and stories are the language game in organizations (Lyotard, 1984). The cases are introduced with a conceptual overview that applies to both manufacturing settings and are analyzed jointly after being presented. The major goals of organizations-profit margins, customer satisfaction, quality products, and stable human resources-may be pursued with many different strategies. Personal strategies are reflected in the informal and unofficial collections of proponents, each of whom speak in their coalitions about strategy and action to accomplish some delicate balance of major goals. Consider the goal of just-in-time inventory as an example. One organization simplifies the accounting for maintaining minimal materials on hand by talking about the number of “turns” on materials in a year. In 1979, they had 2.2 turns, in 1987 they had 3.4, and in 1990 they had 4.4. The more times material is replenished, the less material there is on the shelf, the better the inventory record. Coalition members’ speech is artful and fragile. People respond to issues that are complex enough that no one can ever be completely confident in their point of view, yet all of the player are nearly enough correct to be taken seriously. Being nearly correct, but not absolutely certain, means actors are constantly communicating to achieve a balance between understanding and persuasion. None are ever caught being completely wrong, because they change positions subtly and incrementally. The more changeable and uncertain the goals and procedures are, the greater the necessity of narrative communication to account for day-to-day life and understanding. Universal claims, called “order words” by Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 81), are infrequent. Because of their predominance and visibility, technical communication and rational goals are so familiar that they receive little direct attention unless a novice is present to justify their review. Conversations occur for days in the organization without direct references to official goals and procedures, which makes technical rationality analogous to highway markers in one’s home town. They are always there, but they fade to the background at the side of the road after drivers learn their way around. Newcomers need them until they learn the short cuts provided by experience or stories. zyxwvu 291 zyxw zyxwvu zyx Communication Theory Stories fill the breaks in technical rationality. Narrative rationality fills the loose coupling between intentions and outcomes (Weick, 1980). Organizations are hypotheses (March & Olsen, 1976; Weick, 1986). They are “frameworks of assumptions” (Willard, 1982) and are unavoidably existential. The effects of rational and justifiable plans are only known when they are enacted. Case 1. “We Can Make Anything They Throw Over the Wall” This case describes the relationship between design engineers and manufacturing engineers whose units are personified in their language- “manufacturing agrees with our comment” or “manufacturing says they will make the deadline.” The relationship begins when design engineers write specifications for the components of a product and communicate them to the manufacturing unit. Design engineers focus on elegance as a criterion, and their reference group is other design engineers within the firm. Design-as-elegance is a grand narrative (Lyotard, 1984) that refers to the professional requirement to develop designs that are seen by peers as sophisticated, whether commercially successful or not. The success of the firm is attributed to the mystery of the founders’ ability to jockey and orchestrate the interactions and workings among senior engineers. The firm’s core attribute is the sophistication of its engineering design. It does not look at the market or at competitors for guidance. The vision is internally derived. Manufacturing production in this company, while stellar, has none of the prestige of the engineering design group, and the manufacturing group conspires with the rest of the organization in defining its activities as grunt work. Manufacturing reputation for quality -while unassailable-is taken as a given. The exception to this hum drum is manufacturing’s fame for meeting deadlines. When quarterly production goals seem impossible to meet, they somehow find a way to roll the boxes off the end of the dock. The larger organizational culture marvels at manufacturing’s ability to deliver on goals that were thought impossible at a weekly managers’ meeting 3 weeks earlier. Deadline commitments are never, never broken. Organizational development (OD) specialists were sent in to diagnose how production goals are met only to take on the roles of war correspondents in a battle zone interviewing a hero. zyxw OD: How do you do it? zyxwvuts MFG: See these letters on the (office) wall? (MFG points to 4-fOOt letters on his office wall) OD: “F”“M”? MFG: You know what that stands for? OD: What? MFG: Fucking Magic. That’s how we do it. Fucking Magic.4 The better the manufacturing plant, the more it is able to keep a distance from manufacturing executives at corporate headquarters. Field manufacturing organizations talk to each other without the intervention of headquarters staff, and new and better solutions bubble up at a plant and get transferred to other plants mysteriously. To share practices and disclose to headquarters is going 292 zyxw zyxw Lists and Stones open kimono and only a fool takes the risk to trust someone who does not understand what he or she is doing. Manufacturing gets the machines out even if the product is designed by someone who has no concern for the practical issues of production: zyxwvut MFG: We can make anything they throw over the wall. Case Analysis Lists and stories are embedded in this case in the following ways: First, experience in production provides a learning curve and shows how to revise and adapt to the difficulty of early standards. “[Tlhe procedures developed to measure performance in compliance with directives involve measures that can be manipulated. Any system of controls involves accounts, and any system of accounts is a road map to cheating on them” (March, 1982, p. 22). Cheating on specifications is a form of rule testing that operates across professions, even risky ones (Perrow, 1984). Design specifications are quantitative measures to assure product quality, but there is often room for interpretation of procedures after accumulating some experience with making the part or component. People in subordinate positions amass a hidden fudge factor that allows them creativity in finessing heavy demands. (This is a form of what organization theorists [Levinthal & March, 19821 call slack.) Everyone needs to know what their back-up options are when they are pressed and overloaded. Second, managers in positions above manufacturing operators accept the loose requirement of monitoring the fidelity between measurement and performance. A good manager knows how much his or her people are really being pressed and how much more they could do if needed without severely damaging their morale and loyalty. The game over performance requires a delicate balance. Subordinate goals are set to challenge workers to find short cuts, hidden pockets of knowledge, that allow them to meet performance goals without undermining the product or service. Since management’s goals initially are estimations or best bets on what is needed for successful product performance, goals are open to exceptions based on short cuts discovered by people who are actually making the product. These indirect and subtle exchanges create tension and opportunity betweerrphyers across levels of the organization. Third, subordinates have more autonomy than the organization chart shows (Weick, 1969), and part of this autonomy is enacted through telling-or not telling -stories. Their informal knowledge about how production really works can easily be withheld without immediate penalty from the firm, and everyone knows it. It is almost impossible to demand a person’s narrative (Lyotard, 1984). Fourth, in this organization the managers who are successful at spanning the boundary to the level below them are selected for their informal knowledge, developed through good connections, collected through stories, about what is going on. The exchange between levels on the issues of production, specifications, and short cuts is often a narrative including all the qualities of mystery, privacy, forgiveness, and drama reviewed in the conceptual section of this article. The loops of exchange on whether the specifications are unnecessarily demanding or whether manufacturing operators are taking costly short cuts around the requirements require continual resolution. When these exchanges are docu- zyx 293 zyxw zyxw Communication Theory mented, the organization has once again moved from specifications to narrative to technical communication, repeating a list-story-list cycle. Case 2. “If You Challenge Them, You Are in Trouble” This is the case of a start-up plant set on a 2-year schedule, which eventually took 3 years to complete. The plant was transferring a production process from an established plant, which should have made the start-up easier, but as the case shows, knowledgeable help-in the form of a parent plant-was both an aid and an enemy. The case reveals why the additional time was necessary and what took place among organizational members during the start-up. The start-up team was creating an organization, “from cow pasture to manufacturing plant,” and the members were conscious of the specialness of their opportunity and of the permanence of their effects: zyxwvu zyx zyxwvuts MGR One: Well, you don’t start that many plants in your career and that was my first one, so I can only talk from that experience; however, the backdrop behind that plant that was helpful to me, was that in 1965-1967 1 worked in headquarters in New England as an assistant to interface with all the laboratory operations in the company . . . in the United States, so I worked with the Milwaukees and the Tulsas and the Denvers and the Portlands. What I realized in that job is that each site had a personality [that was] entrenched in that site, regardless to a degree, of its management. . . . It is part of the site. Whether the top man is there or he’s changed, he may have a whole different approach to things, but his effect is very slow to change anything that is a part of the personality of an entire site . . . You get a feeling of which plant does a real top job of turning anything in, which plant will turn anything in, to a degree. So you do have a feeling that they do have personalities. Some are much more focused in one particular area. Some are much more focused in another area. So, it’s not that you can’t do things more than one way. You can do them many different ways. But the personality that develops establishes kind of a wuy things are done. Are they done by writing a lot of things down on paper? Or are they done by communication? Temporary beginnings can lead to permanent structures, and the goal was to start up a plant that transferred the wisdom of the parent plant to the new site and enhanced the product-make it better and safer than it had ever been made before -by bringing in microelectronic engineers and putting more process controls into production. MGR Two: We’ll get a marriage of the cultures. We’ll get the best of both. The start-up was organized according to a plan that identified the responsibilities between the sponsoring parent plant and the new site: MGR Two: In early ’85 we negotiated detailed documents of understanding-functionto-function-which said how they were to perform their service and how 294 zyxw zyxw Lists and Stories zyxwvu we were to perform ours. [Dluring this time frame we had a plan that said: If we started in early ’85 that we w[ill] have the plant on line and fully qualified by late 1987. Therefore, all the documents of understanding, function-to-function, between the two locations were negotiated on that basis with key checkpoints, and milestones, and transfers of responsibdities. The plant did not develop as planned. Milestones became millstones, calamity became catastrophe, and relationships among start-up staff members galvanized into subgroups rather than adhering to the documents of understanding. Potential employees brought to the site for job visits witnessed difficulties in building construction, found the local culture foreign, left unimpressed, and told others of the problems of the plant, which added to the burden of recruitment. Hidden flaws were discovered in old manufacturing processes, and state environmental laws squeezed against the firm’s commitment to be a good corporate citizen. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, validating Mintzberg’s (1983) claim that start-up operations are among the most difficult organizational accomplishments. The engineering group that had moved from the parent plant to become members of the start-up team had a long history of working together successfully and turned to each other naturally for information, support, and advice when the unavoidable problems arose. They also had common values from the parent manufacturing culture that were primarily values of commitment. MGR Three: They came from things you held and felt and touched. I put it in and take it out, and if it’s not right, look at it again. zyxwv philosophy had pace and speed to overcome the The work-it-til-you-get-it-right flaws of imprecision and used duty rather than details to meet deadlines: MGR Three: If you’ve got a problem . . . let’s commit to it and overpower i t . don’t ask for details. .. This meant if something was not going well, the answer was to spend more time at it, do what it takes, throw more bodies at it, but under any and all circumstances get it done. They considered themselves the “foot soldiers” of the high technology industry and took pride in their reputation for delivering. The microelectronic engineers brought in to enhance product quality were process technologists who came from the semiconductor side of the business, which is a very technically constructed, engineering experiment type of background that involves a very disciplined engineering orientation. Rather than being concrete and hands-on, the semiconductor technology was abstract: zyxwvu MGR Four: The actual processes-you never see what’s happening. It’s all these little chips and this big vacuum. It’s all a mystique. Something is going on in there and the only way you control what’s going on in there is by controlling the process. 295 zyxw Communication Theory The microelectronic engineers had been brought in to improve on a product they had not made before, which made it easier for them to test, measure, critique, and improve it objectively. The two groups coalesced into camps as they struggled to get the plant going, and the manufacturing engineering group from the parent plant-the old soldiers-were seen as a “clique” who stood together, developed an internal identity, and excluded others from the plant in important decision making. zyxwvu zyx zyxwvut MGR Four: If you challenge the way [parent plant engineers] did something, you are in trouble. Since a dominant cultural value of the firm was teamwork and team spirit, the engineers from the disciplines other than manufacturing were especially annoyed that the manufacturing group pulled away from sharing problems across the board as the tradition of the larger national firm demanded them to do. Case Analysis First, this case occurred at a time boundary that March and Simon (1958) identify as a nesting ground for organizational conflict. Boundary experiences throw a person into confrontation and require a transition (Manning, 1987; Yalom, 1989). The surprise in this case is that people from the same larger culture struggled with merging a culture. They were shocked by the conflict that occurred when grand values for cooperation and consensus did not prevail. Second, this case was a battle over lists. Each group’s list was a standard, which became something to fight for or stand behind. “A key element of a culture is its integrity” (Sales & Mirvis, 1984, p. 112). The tradition of manufacturing was questioned by the precision of microelectronics. What counts as knowledge or evidence for the practice of one group terrorizes those of an opponent (Lyotard, 1984). Rather than finessing differences as was done in the first case presented here, the list-formula orientation of the semiconductor engineers clashed with the community tradition of the manufacturing engineers of the parent plant. Third, the conflicts in this organization are conceptually bound to Habermas’s notion of consensus based on a “vision of a ‘noisefree,’ transparent, fully communicational society” (Lyotard, 1984, p. vii). Rather than treating consensus and conflict as conceptual antagonists, this case study suggests attending to consensus (Habermas’s theme) and difference (Lyotard’s theme) combined as a variable. Other interviews with lower level employees in this plant (not related to the problems of the start-up) show it to be a place where agreement between levels of the organization is unusually high. Consensus is a grand narrative dependent on universals inculcated through socialization. Stories feed on differences- different points of view, different needs, different experiences, different friendship networks, and different attributes of responsibility (Lyotard, 1988). “The novel, Bakhtin argues, is a de-normalizing and therefore centrifugal force” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 425). The stories-list dialectic can be reread as follows: When cultures agree, they can be captured in a list; when cultures have differences, only today’s stories inform the observer. Lyotard (1984) calls such a little narrative petit recit (p. 60);Manning (1987) uses the term mininarrative to refer to ongoing incidents zyxw 296 zyxw zyxw Lists and Stories zyxwv zyx and unfolding lines of action (p. 60). Narratives give a communicativedimension to Weick‘s (1969) axiom that organizations require continual re-accomplishment. Observing grand narratives and narratives that highlight differences raises again the question of whether, in our search for generalizable theories, we have imposed an “oversocialized notion” of organizations (Bacharach & Lawler, 1980, p. 6), or alternatively, whether Lyotard’s position overemphasizes differences. Fourth, the case ties sequence to formal decision making. Unlike the first case, which is a series of comments about organizational process, this case is a saga with time points of beginnings, time lines, arrivals, delays, and completions. The timing of events is as influential as formal decision-making processes, and leaders act in response to plot as much as to procedure. Bad news seems particularly related to plot and it travels fast-usually long before the formal, written evaluation or reassignment has taken place. Professionals move to protect, increase, and improve on an opportunity as a result of an informal change in structure (March & Sevon, 1984). Leaders must attend to day-to-day activities (Cohen & March, 1986). Polster (1987) shows how narratives give power and momentum by their persistence in unfolding. Leitch (1986) calls this dimension intimating-the narrative suggests but tells you so little that you must be committed to know the ending. Summary and Conclusion In the conclusion I will return to how lists and stories interact and how the idea of lists and stories expands organizational communication theory. The lists and stories thesis contributes to organizational communication by providing another avenue for considering structuration (Poole, Seibold, & McPhee, 1985; Ranson, Hinnings & Greenwood, 1980; Riley, 1983). Structuration combines causal and interpretative frameworks to explain “how organizational structures change over time” (Ranson, Hinings & Greenwood, 1980, p. 1) by identifying the reflexivity between formal structures and interaction (Poole et al., 1985). In Giddens’s (1979)theory, structure is a combination of rules and resources. Rules are interpreted conventionally as “how to go on” (p. 67) or how to play according to the rules; and power is given the traditional meaning (Browning, Hopper & Whitehead, 1976; Russell, 1938) of capacity rather than action. Interaction has timelspace relations consistent with the story (see Giddens, 1979, pp. 202203). Lists are formal structures, and stories are interaction, which means their interplay and change over time informs structuration theory. Aligning the list and stories thesis with structuration redirects organizational communication to an emphasis on the acts of writing lists and speaking stories. These communication behaviors allow for a different reading on the historical periods of organizational theory- mechanical (lists with no stories), human relations (nonlist with some stories), and systems contingency (which is more functional-lists or stories?) theories. My purpose in this amde has been to show how the interaction of lists and stories verifies the presence of both forms of discourse. Neither is privileged 297 zy zyxw Communication Theory over the other. Rules and accounting systems are everywhere; the desire to be comprehensive coupled with the requirement to use expert knowledge means that accountability and responsibility are fused into a single necessity. The requirement for the justifiability of action means that rule consciousness and rule following will almost certainly surface when organizational communication is analyzed in a natural setting. Yet, the story is equally visible and potent. People both learn from stories and define themselves through them; the self-concept is a product of collected stories (McAdams, 1985; Stone, 1988). When we say the exception proves the rule, we mean the exception makes us attend to the rule more than we would have if it had not happened. In an example from the Cold War, in the 1960s the Distance Early Warning (DEW) line of radar screens and computers in Northern Canada announced a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack on North America. The computer system misread the radar signals bouncing off the moon as an attack because the programmers had not prepared the machine to anticipate such an occurrence (Linden, 1988). This break in the list produced an organizational story, and there have been many similar, almost annual, stories about the DEW line radar since then. If the list fails when we are watching it, our dependence on it is even more striking when the list is unplugged. In the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, the role of electronic technology as the sole source of knowledge was made visible when, without electricity, gas pumps would not pump, cash registers would not open, and credit card purchases could not be verified. zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvutsrq “Fifty years ago, everyone knew their customers,” says Joe Weizenbaum, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist. “A banker knew a guy was good for $500 dollars. . . . Now the rules are in the machines, not in people’s heads. When the machine goes down, everything has to stop.” (Hillkirk, 1989, B1-2) Gossip is fast, but stories are too slow to meet the wholesale speed requirements of competition (Browning & Johnson, 1988), and programmed lists cannot recognize something as big as the moon if they are not coded to do so. The list is an indicator of legitimization; the story is an avenue for incremental criticism, praise, and change. The contrasting qualities of lists and stories allow for an axiological focus on the central descriptive question of how individuals organize. How much structure and how much variety are there and how much are culturally optimal? “Organizations continue to exist only to the degree that they are able to maintain a balance between flexibility and stability” (Weick, 1969, p. 39). Douglas (1982) calls this balance freedom and regulation. This review of lists and stories in relation to structure and variety has been orthodox and alternative: Lists lead to structure, and stories create variety. However, these data show a more complicated, embedded relationship between these two communicative types. Stories can operate to provide order, as they often do in strong cultures where religious parables are given single, literal, inflexible interpretations, but in doing so they are transformed into Lyotard’s (1984) grand narrative, which is a list. Con298 zy zyx zyxw Lists and Stories versely, lists can enhance freedom, and discipline can increase play as it does for the child in the snow who is reminded to put her gloves on. The themes of this article suggest observing the ultimate consequences of order and variety. zyxwvutsr zy zyx zyxw zyxw zyxwvut Larry Davis Browning is an associate professor in the Deparhnent of Speech Communication, Universityof Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. This essay was first presented at the Speech CommunicationAssociation annual convention, Sun Francisco, California, November, 1989. The author would like to thank Debra France, Eric Eisenberg, Leonard Hawes, John Rodden, Mike Vickery, and Karl Weick for their suggestions. The author is additionally grateful to the students in the Fall 1989 and 1991 seminars on Lists and Stories in Organizationsfor their contributions to this article. ’ Project TEROS, Testing, and Evaluation of Readiness for Ordination Study, is considered to be the most thorough of such programs. A $500, 3-day testing and interview program is summarized into a 100-page document for consideration by church leaders (Greth, 1989). Weisbord (1987) takes a revisionist stance toward Frederick Taylor and makes the claim his mechanical practices were developed to reduce arbitrary control by labor contractors serving large firms. 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