From Interpretation to Representation in Organizational Analysis: Postmodernism, Ethnography and Organizational Symbolism

Abstract

Essentially, this paper argues that the understanding of organization is insepar able from the organization of understanding. This argument is developed and sustained through detailed consideration of the problematics of interpretation and of representation in organizational analysis, focusing on the understanding of significant problems within a particular arena of activity (organizational symbolism). Accordingly, from an analysis of forms of narrative in organizational symbolism, the paper articulates issues that are fundamental to both the theory and practice of organization. Through such a consideration of paradoxes of tex tuality in the inscription of order, current concerns in organizational analysis become connected to long-standing problems in Organization Studies.