Organizing in cyberspace: The virtual link

Stand. J. Mgmr. Vol. 12, No. 1. pp. 25--10. 1996 Copyright 8 1996 Ekvier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0956-5221/% $15.00 + 0.00

Pergamon

ORGANIZING IN CYBERSPACE: THE VIRTUAL LINK RICHARD Department

of Business Administration, (First

SOTTO University of Stockholm, Sweden

received May 1994; accepted in revisedform May 1995)

Abstract - This article presents and discusses some aspects of the impact of information technology (IT) upon organizational action. Its point of departure is to challenge the now emergent understanding of this subject according to which IT, while essentially considered from the vantage point of its instrumental value, induces radical changes in this area of human conduct. Consequently, it attempts to sustain the view that IT introduces an incremental process of transferring of current representations of organizing previously detained by human actors, to IT machines. This transposition does not annul human organizational enactment, but does not leave it untouched either. Rather, it opens and closes at one and the same time many different avenues in accordance with the simulative mode of IT operation. This mode will therefore constitute an important preoccupation in the present article. It will also be maintained that this transfer tends to alter the quality of what makes up an organizational relationship, so the article will also examine what constitutes this relation, i.e. the organizational link. In conclusion it will be suggested that IT, with regard to the human enactment of organizational representations, may develop to a point where it will substitute for the human modes of organizing rather than merely simulating them. At this point, organizational relations will acquire the virtual quality inherent to the locus of IT, i.e. to cyberspace. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Key words: Organizing, cyberspace, virtual link.

“Les nombres s’&mmtrent, s’incrivent et se lisent. Eux-m&mes, d’eux-m&mes. Par quoi ils se remarquent aussi&, toute nouvelle marque de lecture devant souscrire A leur programme... Ouvrant ici, limitant et situant toute lecture (la v&e, la mienne), la voici, cette fois enfin: comme telle. Par une certaine composition de surfaces retoumCes. Par une mise en sdne matCrielle exacte...la voici cette fois enfin non pas montr6e mais montte. Dans une machinerie implacable, avec “une prudence consommCe et une logique implacable”. Jacques Derrida, La dissbnination “La technique, entendue au sens le plus large et dans toute la diversit de ses manifestations, est alors consid&e comme un plan que l’homme &ablit et qui finalement met l’homme en demeure de decider s’il veut devenir l’esclave du plan ou en rester le maitre...L’arraisonnement, partout a plus d’&tre, s’il est encore permis de s’exprimer ainsi, que toutes les Cnergies atomiques et que toutes les machines du monde, plus d’&tre que la masse Ccrasante de l’organisation, de l’information et de l’automation.” Martin Heidegger, Identitl et diffbrence

VIRTUAL

ARTEFACTS

AND ORGANIZING

Most recent works which have attempted to chart the impact of IT on organizational activities seem to share a certain view. It is a view which appears to be equipped with the deep-rooted conviction that the main problem is to determine the instrumental value of IT in organizations. This applies to studies considering the broadest informative use of IT. It also applies to works 25

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dealing with more specific instances of IT implementation. In the first instance IT seems to reinforce the conception of management according to which managing, organizing, is essentially a matter of information processing (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Appelgate et al., 1988; Goodman et al., 1990; Kanter, 1992; Ennal and Molyneux, 1993). In the second instance, it seems to substantiate the view that the entire organizational future lies in an ever increasing computerization of all organizational activities. (Davidow and Malone, 1992; Grantham, 1993a). Startling as it may seem, the predominance of the instrumental approach may well have a simple foundation. It appears to mirror the same instrumental perspective which emanates from the rhetoric accompanying the dissemination of IT products. For this instrumental view, one could say, is inscribed in the enraptured signs stemming from the promotional discourse of IT technicians. Consider, for instance, the following sample of abbreviations which today are commonplace in the context of computer usage: CAD (Computer Aided Design), CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing), CAE (Computer Aided Engineering), CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering), CMCS (Computer Mediated Communication System), CSCW (Computer Supported Co-operative Work), CAMS (Computer Aided Management System), CSS (Computer Support System), DDS (Decision Support Systems), etc. Although this is but a very small sample of such shorthand expressions, it is very obvious that all the abbreviations clearly refer to the idea that IT is essentially devoted to the assistance of human actors. Such terms as “mediation”, “support” or “aid” plainly belong to the vocabulary of instrumentalism. In other words, IT products seem to be promoted as facilitating devices which, in the last resort, leave human actors in command. “Mediation”, “support” or “aid” in such denominations, it may also be noted, are terms which, because they are abbreviations, are necessarily metonymic in character. They are shorthand for fuller expressions such as “mediation” “support” or “aid” for human activities and abilities, whereby the primacy of command remains on the side of the humans. Even when IT artefacts are directly aimed at replacing human cognitive abilities, as in IAS (Intelligence Amplification Systems), this order is not challenged. In view of the persuasive strength of instrumental rhetoric in our contemporary world, it is thus no longer surprising that works attempting to comprehend the impact of IT on organizing should be inclined to adopt the standpoint of those who produce it. However, this unidirectional view leaves very little room for addressing the crucial question of the possible reversal of this order. The study of large technological systems has long been showing that no human technical artefact leaves the human mode of apprehending the world untouched or, if one prefers, entirely under human command. The question of a possible reversal in this order of command must, thus, also be addressed in the case of IT. In as much as this technology, more than any other, touches upon our most fundamental means of cognition, its impact on human ways of knowing, thinking, doing and willing have to be considered from the angle of its possible challenge to human primacy. And this, it will be argued here, is particularly important when IT is examined in relation to collective human action and organizing. Stepping beyond the instrumental view yields a further distancing from the frame of reference of this view. We cannot renounce the instrumental perspective without at the same time renouncing one of its major rhetorical strategies. To put it bluntly, we have to resist the evocative power of the “revolutionary” metaphor (Brod, 1984; Rheingold, 1985) which is usually concomitant with the instrumental view of IT. It is obvious that the introduction of IT devices in society and organizations will often appear to the users to be provoking sudden radical changes. The automation of a plant, the replacement of manual operations by computers, etc. are certainly experienced as rapid and drastic transformations. But considered in the broader perspective of the dissemination of IT in human settings, these changes immediately appear as extremely

ORGANIZING IN CYBERSPACE

21

punctual. They are no more than partial implementations contributing to a slow process of computerization. Not only do most well established IT devices fail to live up to their promised instrumental values, but even advanced IT products are often only very partially usable. In this perspective, we can say that the much wanted IT “revolution” has certainly not been accomplished yet. It is in fact precisely because we are dealing with a continuous process of change that the possibility arises of circumscribing its meaning and muddling our way through its development. It is also what makes it all the more necessary to depart from this revolutionary metaphor and to adopt perhaps an incremental one. To move away from the instrumental/revolutionary perspective on IT naturally requires that we approach its meaning for organizing from a different angle. In as much as the instrumental/revolutionary perspective implicitly focuses on the magnitude and functionality of IT, such an alternative approach may be achieved by concentrating our attention on its predicative attributes. In other words, rather than seeking the meaning of IT for organizing in the functional capabilities of the technology, we can consider the question in terms of the “ontological” status of IT’s artefacts. This means first of all considering the ways in which IT artefacts “exist” in the world and what qualities characterize them. This also entails the necessity to examine how IT devices frame our modes of relating to them. There seems today to be an almost undisputed perception of this “ontological” status. Whether they are viewed in terms of their mode of existence or in terms of their mode of operating, all IT artefacts seem to be regarded as contributing to the emergence of a “virtual” world. Whatever IT products we may think of, they all appear as “potentialities” for human achievement rather than as conditionning operators which simultaneously open and close these “potentialities”. The virtual quality attached to IT artefacts is thus highly dependent upon this unidirectional view. As it is, this virtual quality attributed to IT artefacts has given rise to a synthetic expression meaning that these artefacts are creating a “virtual reality”. This notion of virtual reality, although becoming increasingly the subject of intellectual inquiry, still remains essentially connotative. While, in expert circles, the term “Virtual Reality” seems to function as a keyword (experts knowing implicitly what it refers to), it is obviously being used as a buzzword in non-expert circles (non experts using it rather in a performative way). Keywords or buzzwords, however, are not innocent signifiers. In fact both play a similar role. Thus, according to Williams (1976), keywords are words which appear in discussions at the most general level. In that way, they contribute to the formation of meaning and to the orientation of the way of looking at our most central experiences. Being indicative words, they orientate our form of thought, entailing practices which muddle our understandings and activities. Similarly, buzzwords, as Heim (1993) pointed out, cue conversation. They impose a significance on discursive situations, appearing like “magic doors” to an understanding of what we and what things are, and of where we stand and where things stand in history. In fact, says Heim, buzzwords are keywords. They apply across the entire spectrum of cultural life to enlighten the most important aspects of our activities and life. In light of this interpretation, it is certainly very tempting to turn back and start to appreciate the persuasive strength of such buzz/keywords. Suffice it to think of a word like “modem”, and its substantive form, “modernity”, to realize the magnitude of the cultural impact of these words. Although never the subject of a full and detailed social philosophy or theory, the term “modem” has been ubiquitous, ever since the enlightenment period, as just a buzz/keyword for orientatating and determining the pursuit of all kind of change. This persuasive strength of buzz/keywords in ordinary and expert language may perhaps account for the fact that the term “virtual reality” has now become the subject of intellectual scrutiny. However, the relatively late arrival of the term in the circulating stream of keywords has

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not yet led to its deconstruction. On the contrary, we are witnessing the emergence of a plethora of attempts at filling it with a denotative content. And these efforts seem to converge in persuading us that the notion of “virtual reality” is a suitable one for depicting the quality and “ontological” status of IT products. The suitability of the term virtual to depict the ontological status of computer arterfacts is anchored in the apparent etymological, lexical and philosophical compatibility of that term with the mode of existence of IT devices. Etymologically, the term virtual stems from the Latin virtus, meaning capacity or potentiality - a property which all IT products seem to possess in one way or another (informative, simulative, active, etc. capacity). Lexically, the adjective virtual is defined as qualifying artefacts existing in effect or essence though not in actual fact or form which, again. is a quality that can easily be attached to all IT products. Philosophically, virtual artefacts have been viewed in two principal and complementary ways. First, they have been conceived as artefacts en puissnnce or possessing a sufficient degree of perfection to be able to be actualized (St.Thomas d’Aquin, 1984-86; book 1, vol. 2, p. 55). And, later, they have simply been regarded as the very mode of being of plausible human ideas (Leibniz, 1886; vol. 1, ch. 1). Both are meanings, apparently, easy to attach to all IT products. In the last resort, to paraphrase Heim (1993; p. 160), the term virtual can be subsumed as meaning: not actually existing but just as if really existing. Thus, to follow Heim a little further (1993; p. 109), a virtual reality is an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact. Given such a formulation it is also easy to conceive that, even when they stand as pseudo-actors, as in computerized automation, all IT artefacts first appear as virtualities. And given that formulation, the virtual -to make a noun of the term - can plainly be associated with the simulated. And, indeed, simulation is one of the essential dimensions depicting the ontological status of virtual reality. Thus, whether they are emphasizing the potential actualization of virtual artefacts or their simple effect of reality, those who set out to define the term do not challenge its adequacy, in that they explicitly or implicitly relate it to one or another aspect of its etymological, lexical or philosophical roots. Benedikt, for instance, who has directly addressed the question of the ontological status of IT artefacts, considers the virtuality of the artefacts consists in their being like but not identicd with reality (1991; p. 21), an interpretation shared by Rheingold (1991), Sherman and Judkin, (1992), Woolley (1992), Gigante (1993), Davidow and Malone (1992), Danielson (1992), Fellous (1993) and others. A solitary divergence from this common understanding, however, is offered by Queau (1993). Going more deeply into the etymological roots of the term virtual, Queau considers the radicals vis and vir, from which the Latin word virrus has obviously been formed. He thus finds that while vis refers to strength, vir refers to Man, from which he infers that virrus refers neither to fantasm or illusions, nor to eventualities that have to be rejected into the limbs of simple possibilities. For him, virtus means to act fundamentally. Virfus is the initial cause which continues to exist in its effect. In such a view, the virtual is neither unreal (irreel) nor potential. The virtual is in the order of the real. Yet, in spite of this position, Queau does not altogether reject the common understanding. His divergence only serves the purpose of differentiating between IT artefacts making human intelligibility visible (thus real) and IT artefacts offering a fantasmatic world of pseudo possibilities (thus pure potentialities, without form, perpetually becoming but never actualized). To a certain extent, Queau is following here the distinction established by Bergson between the virtual and the potential or rather the possible. For Bergson, rhe virtual is not identical with the result of its actualization. When the virtual actualizes itself it creates new things by extending the differences which it contains. The virtual is thus real. While the possible, on the contrary, is just the replica of the real and therefore unreal (Bergson, 1921).

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Regardless of the various distinctions, rhe virtual, as Heim has pointed out, at least serves the purpose of making it possible to address the question which IT artefacts are forcing us to face, namely the question of our own understanding of reality. The term definitely marks a metaphysical insight according to which the reality of IT artefacts differs from the reality to which we are accustomed. At the heart of this difference lies IT’s mode of being, which is that of realized simulucrum. Here, as Heim writes, rhe virtual maintains an aura of imaginary reality, a multiplicity that is playful rather than maddening (Heim, 1993; p. 132). But an aura is just what it is: simply an aura. What’s, the use of this term highlights above all, is that virtual artefacts can only be virtual in as much as it is possible to contrast them with other artefacts which we perceive as real. In other words, it marks a strong conviction that IT reality challenges what we have hitherto considered to be real. And yet, understood in this way, rhe virtual may seem to lose its relevance. In effect, we could immediately object that if this is the case, then all human representations which have been inscribed upon a material base, as in writing, painting, etc., belong to the virtual. This is most certainly correct. But to consider the virtuality of IT artefacts as a mere continuation of the ontological status of inscribed human representational artefacts would be to run the risk of overlooking IT’s specificity. Indeed, as has been convincingly demonstrated by Kallinikos (1993), representation is technology, particularly when it is inscribed in writing. It that sense, writing is part of the technifying enterprise which belongs to the orientation of our modes of knowing and acting embedded in the will to enact modernity. And in that capacity, writing has not been a slavish instrument in the hands of humans. On the contrary, it conditioned our mode of knowing, perceiving, feeling and acting. For writing is a particular mode of inscription which it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to circumvent. Denida (1967b) in debunking the logocerrfrism of writing, that is its logos (verb), or the idea that it presupposes a subject that structures and validates its meaning, has spelled out and exemplified its self-generative and conditioning capacities. But those generative and conditioning capacities of writing arise from its grammatological character (Derrida, 1967a), i.e. from what belongs to the order of the verbal. In the case of IT, the inscription admittedly also goes via writing, but it is the writing of numbers. All IT artefacts, whatever they are-pictures, symbols, sensations, writings, sounds or colours - are the products of numerical representations. Queau, again, suggests that since arirhmos (number) and logos (verb) had the same meaning for the ancient Greeks, more specifically the Pythagoreans, this notional equivalence allows the equating of these two spheres of human intelligibility (Queau, 1993; p. 19). I think that this equating, although certainly pertinent to an appreciation of different modes of the humanly intelligible, may give rise to the wrong idea that the logos and the arirhmos order our representations in a similar fashion. Suffice it to consider a concept such as space, i.e. one of the most fundamental categories of human intelligibility, in order to be convinced that this is not the case. For many philosophers since Kant, space is a necessary a ptiori representation. In other words, humans cannot conceive “no space”. Space is the subjective condition of possibility of our sensitivity. It is the precondition of human perception and existence, and it is as such that it is embedded in non-electronic writing. In virtual reality, on the other hand, space is not at all an a priori form. It is itself an artificial construction. It has to be mathematically formalized and modelled. And the choice ranges from already existing models of space to space with purely arbitrary properties. Whether electronic or not, however, writing, is a particular process of ordering and representing. Its history, according to Ong (1977; 1982), goes from the oral-to-literate and from the chirographic-to-print shifts, in a process whereby culture is technified by objectivising the logocentrism emphasized by Derrida. Goody (1986) argues that, in the written text, human representation

acquires

a strength of continuity,

of abstraction,

of formalization,

of order and

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“truth” previously unknown. The textualization of speech is then a process of inscribing representations by word differentiation, and ordering them by a predominantly syllogistic form of rationality. Writing is thus organizing. In coming to this conclusion. Cooper (1989) acknowledges that writing as a technology is primarily a form of control which structures, orders, directs and instructs our representations. He recognizes that writing, in this capacity, is the way in which human agents produce order, i.e. organize their environment. But writing does not leave human agents in full command. Perhaps writing technologies affect the modes of human awareness just as much as logocentrism muddles writing. They confront human agents with their own tools. They influence their modes of thinking and knowing by enforcing their own specific ways of symbolizing, storing, conceptualizing and formalizing. And yet, there is no written text that cannot be subjected to deconstruction by showing its inner contradictions, paradoxes, ambiguities and their ever difSered (di$mnce) meaning (Denida, 1967b). This does not apply to electronic inscription. Computerization is bound to the non-contradictory principle of formal logic. Electronic inscription therefore shapes our modes of knowing, representing and modelling in yet another way. More than in the case of the written text, all the dimensions of formalization must be amenable to the universal calculability of numerical rationality. It is because electronic inscription has such a foundation that the impact of IT on thinking, knowing, representing and, thus, on organizing has to be examined.

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND IT If it is accepted that organizing is dependent on human linguistic abilities, it follows that this applies in the same way to human agents and to their activities. Both are reciprocally intertwined in the idea of organizing. To organize human agents is to organize their activities, and vice versa. Behind this fundamental assumption lies a deep-rooted belief that humanity is constituted by social beings, that is to say collective beings. Thus, human activities are “naturally” organized so that organizing simply means the artificial reorganization of this “natural” organization. Thus according to this view humans are first organized as a result of biological necessities, and are not therefore necessarily aware of it. They are then organized by normative or prescriptive principles of which they are well aware. In both cases, though, this sociability is considered to be embedded in human liguistic abilities. Biologically, humans are animals who speak, and socially they are beings who express normativity through language. The social or, if we prefer, the collective character of human action is thus engraved into our very existence. It is engraved in the fact that we speak. In this light, we could say that humanity is constituted equally by organize&organizing beings. This turns the hypothetical self-acting individual of atomistic social theory into something quite chimerical. Equipped with speech, individuals, however isolated they may be, access and act upon themselves and the world in a social way. Rather than attempting to explicate formalized bodies of thought called “organizations”, it is in this vein that attempts have been made to comprehend organizing activities. What then becomes significant is the understanding of the modes of acting in “organizing situations”. In other words, rather than focusing on organizational charts or forms which are meant to reflect theoretical models of organizing assumed to be valid independently of time, location and circumstances (such as a “functional model of organization”), the focus is on actual situations. In the words of one spokesman of this appraoch (Girin, 1990), organizing situations have to be understood as instances of human actors intending to order their activities in the face of accomplishing needs. Such situations are therefore not specific to the formalized relational

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schemata called organizations, be they associations, enterprises, administrations, states, nations or the world community. They are emergent and heterogeneous situations which occur every time we set out to identify the finality of an action and to master it in a specific way. In short, the organizing situation occurs as soon as human agents “suspend’ what may be viewed as their spontaneous activity in order to act according to a determined course of action. Thus, from the lone hunter planning to catch a targeted prey, to parents considering which school to send their children to, or to a government confronting a crisis, there is always an organizing situation. There is also an organizing situation when it is a case of orientated and finalized acts of thought or speech. If we want to comprehend something or to mean something specific by what we say (as in speech acts), we start by organizing our know!edge or language. Here the organizing situation cannot be viewed as being pre-structured by a specific body of signification. In effect, when we are seeking an understanding or wanting to signify something specific, the production of meaning is an open process which has not already been closed by a definite frame of explicative significations. The organizing situation always presents itself as comprising at one and the same time an infinite multitude of possible signifying bodies of thought. These may already be constructed, like the biographical, historical, causal or accidental, and thus already determined at a particular level of perception (micro, mezzo macro). Or they may be entirely new or consisting of the construction or reconstruction of already existing bodies of thought. This view, thus, makes it impossible to know in advance what aspect or category of understanding will unfold the organizational character of the accomplishment. If, for instance, we are trying to understand a market situation in order to organize our activities, we will have to deal with many “given” meanings or categories (market, money, competitors, etc.). But we will also be confronted by the necessity of comprehending what is really significant in that particular situation. Is it time (the right timing for our intervention in the market)? Is it a good mental climate (are people psychologically prepared for our action)? Is it habitus (do people always act this way in this market)? Is it economic rationality (is the price right)? and so forth. Such a confrontation, obviously confirms the fact that there is no a priori “right” understanding. What is found to be determinative in this particular market situation may range from the mathematical to the religious frames of signification. And, depending upon which of these bodies of knowledge is, or is thought to be determinant in this situation, we will try to organize our activities accordingly. In other words, starting from an organizing situation means that the organizing derives from intellective activities that exclude no particular body of knowledge or intellectual horizon out of hand. Since such an attempt at understanding a situation derives from an analytical activity, it is intimately connected with the ordering of language in people’s mind and utterances. It is thus no surprise to find that, building on this view while discussing the theme of performance which crosses organizational thinking, Ehrenberg (199 1) concludes that to perform is certainly related to organizing in particular ways, but that first and foremost it is a question of self-organizing. At this point, organizing in a situation - be it self-organizing or other-organizing -has an open-ended character. The ordering can be put in perspective, as Foucault would say, from any arbitrary point of departure, known or unknown, such as a sociological, political, financial, psychological, anthropological or theological premise, or one that is invented ad hoc. It can then be shaped by any number of propositional stances after which it can be differentiated and reduced to an infinite number of basic prescriptions. Moreover, in the organizing situation, the situation itself is an event in which the preconceived ordering, the representation, is confronted with that which is not representationally apprehensible. The enactment of any representation, then, is always different from the representation per se. It always needs a bricofuge a sensing of the fact that enactment is never identical with the representation from which it derives. The organizing

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situation thus offers, as Kallinikos (1993) puts it, a ground for a dance with signification at the level of representations and, I would add, at the level of their enactment. To build on Kallinikos’ idea on this point, the very idea of representations as something different from what they stand for (thought or “objects”) implies that they can be indefinitely manipulated. These differences between representations and what they stand for, and between representations and their enactment in organizing situations, are equally fundamental to collective action when such action denotes the co-ordination of the activities of a plurality of human agents, since this also derives from human modes of intelligibility. Considered at this basic level, it is at least possible to perceive the important differences in the conditioning of organizing when it is or when it is not mediated via IT devices. Let us then begin with the hypothetical case of organizing in an immediate situation. As Kallinikos (1994) has noted, such a situation presents itself to the actor(s) - and in what follows the singular will also stand for the plural - as a tangible totality. It is a tangible totality which, in the footsteps of existential, phenomenological and gestalt understandings of the human condition, implies the presence of the body. We can then agree with Queau that it is “...the body which kprouve (experiences) the intelligible in a tangible manner” (1989; p. 36). In such a situation neither the sensible and the intelligible nor the knowing actor and the known world are separated from one another. As Kallinikos puts it, all are part of “...the flux and erratic dance of the world...” (1995; p. 16). It is when the human actor “suspends this flux” to analyse the situation in view of a finalized accomplishment that intellection, abstraction and representation take place. Here, one could say, ends the hypothetical assumption of an immediate, meaningful engagement in the world. For it is humanly impossible to conceive of an analytical activity independent of any means of signifying to oneself and to others. The role of language in this process, successively as speech and as writing, has been noted before. But it is necessary to emphasize that the encapsulation of representation in linguistic means of signifying opens up an endless process of rere....-presentation from which it is impossible to escape. Yet, in this process, speech and writing, both conceal knowledge which cannot be made explicit on the one hand and, on the other, that which representation cannot represent. Building on Cooper (1990), we could say that in speaking and writing we bear more knowledge than we can tell or write and, I would add, more representation than we can re-re.... -present. In enacting the ordering of verbal representations, tacit knowledge and an undepictable part of the referent are both implicated. Indeed, in speech and writing, reflection itself is a play of erasure, reversal, displacements, black holes, reports and di&wzce that makes of the enactment of verbal order a continually emerging “organizing action” (Cooper, 1990). For this reason, organizing in immediate situations always give rise to loose coupling (Weick, 1979) since the emergent orders are no replicas of representation but emerge instead from the chaotic interplay of actualized interpretations (re-re...-presentations). However, writing as distinct from speech, introduces distancing and the erasure of the conversational elaboration of representation. But Kallinikos reminds us that, in contrast to IT inscription, paper documents are not physically connected with their purported domain of reference, nor can they exhaustively codify working or, as I would say here, organizing-activities (Kallinikos, 1994; p. 17). Compared with organizing in immediate situations or organizing through the traditional written text, representational inscription in IT is something very different. In the IT mode of inscription, whatever is inscribed (images, sounds, movement, modes of operating, symbols, etc.) does not contain what oral or written modes of representation necessarily elicit of undetermined suggessivity, involvment and experience. This is because, whatever IT is inscribing, it does so by first reducing it to the precise language of digital logic - something which does not occur in

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speech and traditional writing. No computerized image, sound, movement, mode of operating or symbols is inscribed as such. All are first broken down into combinatory elements of a binary numerical notification and reconstituted by synthesis. Digital technology, being the ciphering, encoding, modelling and ordering of abstract knowledge gridded by schematic forms of operation, consequently imposes a fixed calculative mode of inscription. Digital computation operates with the combinatory possibilities offered by a predetermined number of discrete elements, which are generated by a given set of rules. Rigid organizing is then a property of digitalized mental or practical activities. IT inscription thus nullifies experience and engagement as experimental sources of organizing. In interacting with human actors, this rigid mode of organizing - incorporated in software - enforces on the actors the subordination of their constant interpretations to the logic of the pre-programmed modes of operation. Digital technology, thus, offsets the infinite derivation of enactment engendered by the context or the cotext inhabiting human actors. What marks the unpredictability of the strict actualization of representational order in immediate situations or in situations dependent upon the written text is no longer possible with digital technology. The co-ordination of action, our own or that of others, is no longer conditioned by the unavoidable play of interpretation, and the resisting uniqueness of situations always modifying enactment. With IT devices, enactment is conditioned by the range of possible combinations which are or are not authorized by the rules embedded in the program. Whatever is intended, IT-monitored activity will not take place unless the exact conditions which the machine needs in order to operate are met. An IT device will definitely refuse to achieve anything if the generative rule which commands its operative capacities is transgressed in any way. The simulated character of IT artefacts also displaces orally or written mediated representations. IT artefacts operate from what is perceived as another topos, which students of virtual reality now refer to as cyberspace (Benedikt, 1991). IT artefacts are anchored in a space which, as in human mental processes, is constituted by symbolic differentiation and distancing. But the property of that space is not similar to the space from which the human verbal modes of symbolic representation derive. In cyberspnce IT artefacts are not situated as they are in immediate human contexts - or rather, they are differently situated. In human contexts, the place where one is situated has a transcendental character. It is a precondition of human existence and consciousness. In this sense the place that situates us is not an attribute of human intelligibility but a condition of its occurrence. The topos of our being is substantially part of our body. Cyberspace does not provide the same base and position in which human understanding is necessarily anchored. For the body, cyberspace is a foreign place. Hence, any “body” which can be simulated in cyberspace becomes a symbol, a symptom of our position in a way that the human body can never be. For the human body, the body is the position itself. It is the unique configuration that engenders differential consciousness among humans and makes verbal representation an unstable ground for all enactment. We cannot exit from our position or displace it, as we can in the case of cyberspace. Nor can we operate from an arbitrary position, since our representational consciousness is part of it. Yet this displacement always operates in cyberspace. The ordering of IT devices necessitates an arbitrary, formal, non-existential, viewpoint. It is also trigged from “anywhere”, that is from no position. In that way, organizing in cyberspace can generate identical and repetitive configurations that are humanly impossible. Indeed, human thinking may be regarded as a process of distancing from immediate perception and involvement in the world. The apprehension of the relational (that which links, i.e. abstract categories) in human existence, can even be viewed as dependent upon this distancing. If, as has often been claimed, consciousness arises from human resistance to the

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obviousness of our position and activities in the world, then the distance created by thinking (use of abstract categories) appears in itself as the relational. Expressing the relational would then be the sensing, sense-making and signifying of the interval between thinking and consciousness, oneself and oneself, and oneself and otherness. The relational would simply be identical with the formal, i.e. the abstract categories signifying the realm of the interstitial. In that way, by allowing departure from simply being and avoiding commitment, thinking could be assimilated to the synthetic mode of operating and representing of IT artefacts. I believe that this assimilation, effectuated by Queau (1993; p. 23), disregards the import of the necessary anchoring of the thinking human body in a position. This anchorage certainly extends, as was indicated earlier in our discussion of the role of tacit, experienced and sentenced knowledge in human activities (including thinking), beyond formalizable dimensions of being. THE ORGANIZATIONAL LINK AND THE VIRTUAL LINK If we, then, want to consider organizing rather than a body of thought called organizations with a view to capturing the difference between human and IT enactment of organizational representation, it becomes relevant to ask: what constitutes the organizational link? This question is seldom if ever raised within the context of organizational theory, be it of sociological or managerial origin. By focusing on constituted textualities referring to formal organizations, organizational theory is bound to disregard the question: its orientation towards rational constructions upon other rational constructions cannot but lead to the abandoning the search for the “beyonds” of rationalities. As Cooper and Fox (1990) put it, organizational theory is caught up in “... the habit of theory to express texture in terms of the explicate order and thereby lose it” (p. 577). As the authors point out, organizational theory understands the world of forma1 organization in terms of explicate order which it expresses in rational terms. In this light, what constitutes the link is not a relevant question in that it has already been answered by the presention of forma1 orders or their rational explanations as webs constituted by organizational links. There has to be a focus on organizing rather than organization before the question becomes relevant since it immediately appears to entail invoking what Morgan (1986). Cooper and Fox (1990), Hosking and Fineman (1990) and others have termed the texture of organizing. This term highlights the importance of that which, in organizing, always remains “...tacit, invisible and resistant to theorising” (Cooper, 1990; p. 577). Hosking and Fineman, spinning upon this view, have conceived texture as a reminder of the “connectedness, complexity and the importance of tacit qualities” (1990; p. 583) in organizing. To get some idea about what constitutes the organizational link we therefore have to take into consideration these dimensions of organizing. However, the discursive discipline which controls the formation of the body of social scientific textuality tends to place outside its core concern any reflection which may point towards such dimensions. In fact we have to turn to the “forgotten sides” of some social-philosophical works, whose authors have not discarded these dimensions, in order to recapture the importance of the question. In general, such authors have tried to point in the direction of the “beyonds” of rational constructions. Since these are situated at the level of what Vattimo and Rovari (1983) refer to as “weak thought”, in the realm of the “tacit, invisible and resistant to theorising”, the authors have simply taken their categories for granted. They have pushed them back either to the inextricable “nature” of human “nature” or to the inevitable sociability of humans. It is perhaps in place here to examine some of these views in order to be able to enhance the specificity of the virtual link. In view of the pervasiveness of economic rationality in the contemporary world, it may seem

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ironical that such concern for the “beyonds” of rational constructions is to be found in the work of Adam Smith, i.e. one the most prominent forerunners of economic rationality. As has been pointed out by Guillet de Monthoux (1993) and by Boltanski and Thtvenot (1991), it is impossible to understand the vast rationalizing elaboration of Smith without some understanding of his ethics. The Wealth of Nations is not independent of his earlier work The Theory of Moral Sentiment where he suggests the ground for understanding what could make people internalize - and act in accordance with the economic mode of rational representation. In that work, Smith is in fact exploring what could account for the fact that people are bound together and, more specifically, what could account for their obvious wish to acquire wealth. His answer is that since people are fundamentally free individuals, what makes them social or links them together is a universal force comparable to that of gravity, called sympathy. But sympathy is not the subject of an analysis, leading to an identification of its essence with a view to transforming it into a set of rules. Smith only goes on recalling and describing instances of its occurrence which, he claims, illustrate its manifestations. In other words, he does not attempt to represent sympathy by charting its essential characteristics, he simply takes the notion for granted. Sympathy, thus, appears as an intrinsic quality of the human condition, and is consequently regarded as a universal human quality which admits of no exception. Even the greatest villain, says Smith, is not deprived of the “fellow feeling”. Sympathy can therefore be aptly conceived as the ultimate cause of human sociability. It is also this moral sentiment which is behind people’s engagement in rational economic activities. For humans, as Smith sees it, are more attracted by rich people for whom they immediately feel sympathy than to poor people whom they despise. Economic rationality does not therefore constitute the linking quality of human action. The linking quality, sympathy, is a force of attraction or repulsion, much like that commanding the behaviour of the planets, and it is inherent to human nature. Following Vattimo and Rovari again we can say that it belongs to the body of weak, rationally irreducible thought. It may seem strange that a very similar view appears in the work of another great figure of social science, and one to whom much of the vast movement of rationalization of human knowledge coinciding with modernity has been attributed, namely Auguste Comte. As is often the case in economic his(sto)ry, where The Wealth of Nations is given a prominent place while the Theory of Moral Sentiment is hardly mentioned, Comte’s religious preoccupations are generally absent from the his(sto)ries of social scientific ideas. And yet, as in the case of Smith, they are inseparable from his rational constructions concerning the evolution of societies. In Comte’s ethics (185 I), as in Smith’s, the linking “something” that brings people together is not to be found in the rules, laws or representations which can be constructed on a basis of historal records. Comte, it may be recalled, regarded his own theories as tentative representations, as provisorial steps towards a possible social science, the completion of which he could not foresee. In no way could they be regarded as cornpulsing people, since positivism, his religious doctrine for guiding political action, was not yet “positively” established. The linking “something” for Comte had rather a different character. As in the case of Smith’s sympathy, it belonged to the realm of the undicible. In his view, individuals could not entertain any relation among themselves if they were not forced by “something blind and irresistible”. This “something”, in Comte’s words, was a “...sympathy anterior to any philosophical speculation and any individual act of will” (my translation, p. 36). It was a universal sympathy which determined human forms of organization and which was constituted by an altruist tendency inherent in that sympathy. Again, what constituted the social, organizational link was beyond any possible rational expressions of it. Sympathy, in Comte’s work as in that of Smith, could not be broken down into its constituent elements and systematized; it simply had to be taken for granted.

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In a similar line of reasoning, the work of Gabriel Tarde offers yet another instance of a search for what constitutes the social link beyond rational constructions. Tarde’s point of departure was that human interaction or, as he expresses it, “inter-mental activities” are rooted in two psychic “raw materials”: beliefs and desires. Those in turn have three inherent dimensions: invention, imitation and opposition (Tarde, 1890). Again, although Tarde set out to demonstrate on the basis of a vast empirical material the manifestation of those three dimensions, neither beliefs and desires nor invention, imitation and opposition were in fact the subject of his rationalizing efforts. Indeed, if the three processes can account for the modes of relating and organizing to be found among humans, they cannot themselves be accounted for. Tardes’ approach - all of which has been greatly simplified - like those of Smith and Comte, while emphasizing the importance of what constitutes the social link for comprehending human organizing activities, also signifies that rational constructions do not constitute this link. To a large extent the notion of solidarity, which is found in the work of Emile Durkheim, fulfills the same purpose. It is true that Durkheim saw society as constituting itself srti generis. He conceived of it as a phenomenon which could be rationally apprehended. But in his work this mode of apprehension did not in itself constitute the social link. Solidarity, on the other hand, which gave rise to his distinction between organic and mechanic solidarity, was constitutive of the social link. But solidarity in Durkheim’s theory, like sympathy in Smith’s and Comte’s and like imitation in Tarde’s, remained a taken-for-granted dimension of “the social”, which itself could not be rationally articulated. More recently and in much the same vein, Feyereisen and Lannoy (1990) have emphasized the importance of taking into account the role of empathy in organizing. In discussing non-verbal signs of communication, their contribution to a book attempting to re-question the body of thought called organization by approaching it from its “forgotten dimension”, develops the view that much of what links people together in organizational settings is the human capacity for empathy. Empathy, in its most elementary form, is the human capacity for immediate participation in the feelings, emotions, impressions and tacit knowledge of others, In the opinion of these authors, it is impossible to understand how collective action is possible at all without invoking this notion. But even if it is obvious that emparhy is at work in collective action, it is impossible to work out its mechanisms, or what we might call its generative rules. Or again, if we can easily note its manifestations, we still cannot abstract a set of its constituent parts which could be formalized. And yet, to reject its role in collective action, as Feyreisen and Lannoy argue, is to renounce a meaningful understanding of organizing. Thus, if understanding organizing is more fundamental than to explicate the body of thought called organization (Cooper, 1990) and if organizing is dependent upon the weak dimensions of human thinking from which what constitutes the social link stems, then it is against this background that organizing in cyberspace has to be evaluated. So long as organizational representation is still mediated by verbal expressions or by written texts, and in view of the attemps that have been made to indicate what constitutes the social link, such representation will always lead to differentiated enactment. How then, can enactment be conceived when organizational representation is mediated by IT devices? Reflecting upon IT’s mediated activities, and the digital rather than the verbal or written mode of inscription, led Kallinikos (1994) to describe such activities as decontextualized accomplishment. He further notes that such accomplishment tends to de-socialize human activities by almost totally erasing experience as a source of representation (p. 17). In fact, it can also be said that IT accomplishment literally disembodies human representations. This disembodiment expunges any human presence in the sense of a situated, positioned, thinking and acting body which reads, interprets, re-inscribes and re-enacts the world of its representation. In

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the face of this annulment of presence, the notion of telepresence depicting the electronic mode of presentification attached to IT should not be mistaken for an equivalent substitute for human presence. As Queau has commented, telepresence is an oxymoron in that it is intrinsically contradictory. It suggests that there could be something like presence (telepresence) at a distance (relepresence), while presence is precisely the antonym of distance (1993; p. 17). Human presence in the sense proposed above is neither a representation nor a distance, while telepresence is the pure presentation of representation. This essential distinction marks the way IT abolishes the social link emanating from human presence, and instead establishes representation as the social link. Under IT mediation, the formal becomes the relational and thus offsets what is situated beyond formal representation. This transition is a mutation, a change i’n character, a virtualization of the social link. For formalized representation embedded in a material support other than the human body, uproots the social link from its undicible existential anchorage. Representation as link has no actuality other than its materialized symbolic universe, which can only function as a set of linking potentialities deriving from its generative principles. With representation as link, relating to oneself and to others is no longer a matter of sociability transcending human existence/presence. It becomes a matter of belief, faith, trust or confidence in the cogency of the materialized system of symbols, and in what its axioms dictate as possible relations. The linking engendered by IT representation is also virtual in that it hatches combinatorial configurations which are deducible from the generative rule commanding the represented model of relation but which are not necessarily actually represented. In this light IT representation as the social link exhibits - in Latour’s (1992; p.144) words - the variable ontology of virtual artefacts. IT devices actualize the link only when what they encapsulate as relational representation is emulated, that is to say the relational configurations which are possible. In other words, they “are” or they “are not” depending upon whether or not we are interacting with the IT machine. Enactment, then, occurs at the points of interaction with the machine. This interaction, in IT terminology, is conceived as an interface. This particular mode of apprehending the human-IT machine interaction, as Heim reminds us, is not without significance. The term interface is a term corresponding to the archaic Greek word prosopon denoting a situation in which a face is “facing” another face and in which the two faces are reciprocally reacting to each other nd infinitum, thereby maintaining a mutual relationship. The character of this relationship in ancient Greece was conceived as dependent upon a third “thing” regarded as an unintelligible state of being (Heim, 1993; p. 78). The same notion was then used in Christian exegesis to account for the Trinitarian Godhead whereby the link emerging from this relationship gave rise to the understanding of God’s virtual presence in the consecrated wafer at the celebration of the Eucharist. The Scholastics of the Middle Age thus regarded God as virtually present in the hostia, as being really existent and present in this incorporated state, although the divine virtues of God would manifest themselves only in the spiritual changes occurring or not occurring in the recipient. Although this may appear farfetched, the conceptual association of the human-IT machine interaction with the virtual does at least turn attention to the way representation as virtual reality impinges upon human modes of enactment. Perhaps the distinction between representational inscription in written text and in electronic text may be associated with the difference between play and games, as discussed by Bateson (1972) and cogently explicited by Kallinikos (1994). While play is an open-ended manipulation arising from procedures which may be paradoxical or inexpressible, games proceed from a finite set of agreed-upon designations and standardized rules. Human-IT machine interaction, to quote Bateson is then an “...endless interchange of

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stylised messages, a game with rigid rules...“. As a game. enactment in relation to IT is virtual. One can only enact the possibilities that are confined within the rules of the game. These may not have appeared already, but are at all times potentially there. A computerized game of chess may produce a draw which is not programmed as such and which has never been played before, but only in as much as it is a possibility deriving from the generative rules of the game. Such a draw, we could say, is always virtually existent. It should be noted, however, that the rules which generate it cannot be transgressed, nor can the strictly stylized mode of interchange. But the picture of the interface used to depict human-IT machine interaction also highlights the mutual dependence of the two faces upon representation. There is today a large amount of organizational representation incorporated in IT-machines. From digitalized representation dispensing human enactment such as computerized automation and robotics, to representation that determines the rules of games such as expert systems for various types of decision-making, planning, accounting, writing, controlling and simulating, the battery of such formal structures is tentaculously expanding. For the proponents of organizing as information processing the prospects are obvious: total command of representation. We can follow the way this is conceived by listening to one of the unconditional advocates of organizing as information processing, in the following quotation of Grantham (1993b) “Simply stated, virtual reality presents an opportunity to simulate complex business decisions without actually implementing them...” (p. 220). “We now have the capacity to construct dynamic models of an organisation that link hard variables, such as financial data, to softer variable such as levels of trust and commitment” (p. 220). “This [virtual modelling] lets the real mental models people are using surface and does not let any of the participants assume they know what others are thinking” (his emphasis) (p. 222). “If we have a sound theoretical basis for constructing the models and can use a technology to make them visible to more than one person at a time, we have constructed a virtual business model” (p. 224). “Further, the real value of this process is to make implicit assumptions about organizational behavior explicit, model them over time and make this process visible to participants so that they may conduct the natural negotiation process among themselves as purposeful managers” (p. 233). “If these images (of organisation) are made visually available, we will create a new cognition of the enterprise with implications for changing organisational behavior” (p. 226).

CONCLUSION

It is not necessary to reiterate here the way such prospects, which can already be discerned, offset what in human organizing and enactment is “... tacit, invisible and resistant to theorising”. For the social/organizational link elicited by oral or traditional written texts does not lie in the verbal expressions or the written texts themselves. In such situations, the linking derives from what is the social dimension of actual human (body) experience, i.e. from such non-palpable things as sympathy, empathy, solidarity, desire, etc. This is why, when mediated via oral or traditional written modes of expression, this link is always subject to the play of interpretation (translation) embedded in actual contexts and the various historicity of human bodies. This is also why enactments which accompany such translations, are never completely identical from one actor to another and never altogether predictable.

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Such is not the case when it comes to electronically inscribed textuality. When a program represents a set of relationships (an organizational device), actors can only relate to it in the manner required by the program. It is not the case, as it is in traditionally written texts, then in the process of understanding the text before enacting it, we immediately become involved in an operation open to “mistakes”, “deviation”, “distortion ”, “complete misunderstanding”, etc. Rather, in IT inscribed organizational representation, the program which reflects the representation always contains the interfacing protocol. This protocol constitutes a very strict procedure which admits of no “mistake”, “deviation”, “distortion”, “complete misunderstanding”, etc. The electronically inscribed relationship is certainly fixed, as it is in traditional written texts, but its reading, unlike the reading of a traditional written text, is not open. Derrida, whom I quoted at the beginning of this article, has expressed this fixity of reading in a manner that perhaps requires closer attention at this point. In the two first sentences of the quoted passage he notes how texts mediated via numerical and formal logic are autonomous in both their inscription and their reading (I quote in French again since I fear that an English translation might not capture the force of this self operating property): “Les nombres s’enumerent, s’incrivent et se lisent. Eux-memes, d’eux-memes.“. Then, in the following sentence, he insists on the fact that all possible new readings have to “subscribe” to their “program”: “Par quoi ils se remarquent aussitot, toute nouvelle marque de lecture devant souscrire a leur programme”. Something which he explains in the following sentence where he says that numerical inscription does offer openings and limitations, but these are not left to the reader since they always “situate” her or his place: “Ouvrant ici, limitant et situant toute lecture (la votre, la mienne)“. The rest of the quotation then explains how this “positioning” is effectuated. First, it is effectuated by an inversion of “interfacing”: what comes to the surface (the screen) is projected from within in an inverted manner and constitutes a “material” and an extremely precise mise-en-scene: “Par une certain composition de surfaces retoumees. Par une mise en scene materielle exacte...“, and this miseen-scene is not something that shows, but is something that “constructs”: “non pas montree mais montee”. In other words, unlike traditional written texts which merely show the expressed representations and which are therefore open to indefinite interpretations, numerical writings construct in an “implacable” manner: “Dans une machinerie implacable, avec une “prudence consommee et une logique implacable”. The “implacability” of the program then means that there is no room for idiosyncratic interpretations. This implies that the linking between one actor and another which, when going via traditional written texts, remains anchored in the inexpressible, is offset. Besides, the virtual mode of existence of such programs, i.e. that they are always potentially present in the same form, always ready to determine interaction whenever solicited, means that what links one actor to another is the program itself. It is here that, in considering how organizing in cyberspace takes place, we cannot avoid sensing the way the organizational link is shifting its locus. It is moving away from the realm of the inexpressible existential human condition and commitment in the world, mainly preserved in the verbal and written mode of inscription, towards cyberspace and its virtual mode of being. This is a change in locus which clearly indicates a concomitant change in the essence of organizational relationality (if I may be allowed such a barbarism), the consequences of which are now open to our attention and scrutiny.

RICHARDSOlTO

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