Revista Enfoques (Dec 2008)
El espejo trizado. El lento e irreversible proceso de (auto)deconstrucción del enfoque moderno de la gestión y organización pública
Abstract
During the last two decades the principal notions of the modern public administration theory (organization, rationality, rules, structure) has been confronted with a ongoing and irreversible process of (self-)deconstruction. The administration theory has developed from being primarily based on rationalistic assumptionson the functioning of social systems, into a highly polysemic and polyphonic field of studies. The fragmented nature of the discipline means that there is no hope for the possibility to integrate the knowledge in one single “gran narrative”. Under the banner such as linguistic turn, “literary turns”, or the emergence of a poststructuralist organization theory, most corollaries and assumptions derived from a mechanistic view on organizations have been put into question. Postmodern insights focus attention on the multiple, complex and fragmented organizational world. The linguistic turn suggests a conceptual change: the organization can beviewed as social relations produced linguistically. The discourse (language) constitutes organizations and subjects sustaining relations of power. Language produces the objects of which it speaks. The paradigm of the rationalist-functional administrationwhich during many decades refused the possibility of the coincidence,the accident, defending with emphasis the idea of causality and order, today has to face the concepts of the postmodern thinking which are quite fertile; that is: the fundamental role of the language, the complexity and the logic of difference. By rethinkingthe most profound assumptions, the administration theory can developin new directions, problematizing and theorizing new phenomena and problems, without reference to the ready-made puzzles inherited from positivist studies. Let a 1,000 little stories reign.
