Studying Practice: Situating Talking About Machines

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DOI: 10.1177/0170840606071895 2006; 27; 1769 Organization Studies

Alessia Contu and Hugh Willmott Studying Practice: Situating Talking About Machines

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Studying Practice: Situating Talking AboutMachinesAlessia Contu and Hugh Willmott

Abstract

Julian Orr’s Talking About Machines (TAM) is celebrated for communicating somethingof the richness and complexity of work practices. Our endeavour is to connect thecurrent wave of interest in practice with Orr’s focal attentiveness to the practices ofphotocopier-repair technicians. More specifically, we revisit how, in TAM, a carefulexamination of work practice is commended by Orr as a way of ‘deepen[ing] our under-standings’ — for example, about ‘the relations of employment and the role of work inthe constitution of workers’ identity’. This central theme of TAM, we contend, providesilluminating insights into, and poses interesting questions for students of, the politics ofwork organization. The novelty of our reading of TAM stems from a mobilization ofsome Marxist and Lacanian ideas, as developed in theorizations of hegemony, thatenable us to problematize both the self-identification of the technicians as heroic, and thedistancing of their practices from the corporation’s bureaucratic prescriptions. Our par-ticular interest lies in unpicking the politico-economic significance of the technicians’practices; and, more specifically, their relevance for understanding the reproduction ofcapitalist work relations.

Keywords: social practice, ideological fantasy, identification, community of practice,Zizek

A resurgence of interest in the study of practice — a revival recently announcedas a ‘practice turn’ (Schatzki 2001, 2005) — is said to have occurred during thepast decade or so. Propelled by a number of influential strands of social theory(see Turner 1994) and anthropology (see Ortner 1984) — Giddens, Bourdieu,Actor-Network Theory, Activity Theory, etc. (see Reckwitz 2002) — contribu-tions to ‘practice theory’ are conceived to be promulgating ‘a distinct socialontology: the social is a field of embodied, materially interwoven practices cen-trally organized around shared practical understandings’ (Schatzki 2001: 3,emphasis added). Studies aligned to this ontology have addressed diverse areasof inquiry, including science (Lynch 1993; Pickering 1995), learning (Gherardi2000), technology (Orlikowski 2000), strategizing (Whittington 2002), con-sumption (Warde 2005) and nursing (Reed 2006).

Julian Orr’s Talking about Machines (TAM) is rightly celebrated for com-municating something of the richness and complexity of the work practices ofXerox photocopier-repair technicians. Here we endeavour to connect the currentwave of interest in practice with the focal attentiveness given to practice in TAM.Such a connection is almost made in Jarzabkowski’s (2005) Strategy as Practicewhere, citing Lucy Suchman’s (1987) early and important contribution to the

OrganizationStudies27(12): 1769–1782ISSN 0170–8406Copyright © 2006SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks,CA & New Delhi)

Alessia ContuLancasterUniversity, UK

Hugh WillmottCardiff BusinessSchool, UK

www.egosnet.org/os DOI: 10.1177/0170840606071895



study of practice that was a primary source of inspiration for Orr, Jarzabkowskistresses the importance of situatedness as a ‘key practice turn’ (2005: 21).1

However, Orr’s work itself is unexamined by Jarzabkowski, despite its influenceon studies of practice — in analyses of technology and occupational communityas well as the field of learning in organizations and, more specifically, in studiesof ‘communities of practice’ (CoPs).

TAM challenges students of organization to consider how the all-embracingyet allusive concept of practice – which is increasingly talked about across thefield of management and organization studies — is to be theorized. Engagingdirectly with some key themes of Orr’s study, this commentary reflects uponthe ‘practices’ of Orr’s copier technicians whose work he characterizes as ‘acontinuous, highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of tech-nician, customer and machine’ (Orr 1996: 1). Our particular interest lies inunpicking the politico-economic significance of the technicians’ practices;and, more specifically, their relevance for understanding the reproduction ofcapitalist work relations.

Our orientation to Orr’s findings offers a critical theoretic alternative to main-stream readings of TAM in which communities of practice — increasingly iden-tified as a previously undiscovered feature of work organization rather than ananalytical concept — are seen to offer an untapped resource for the cost-effec-tive attainment of management goals. In order to develop a critical theoretic dis-cussion of the technicians’ practices, we mobilize a social theory of hegemony(STH; see Butler et al. 2000), which, we argue, provides a challenging way forthinking about the politics of production, including the implication of subjec-tivity and processes of identification at work. Specifically, we focus on the fan-tasy of the hero, which, as Orr shows, operates to organize and sustain the workof the repair technicians. In this respect, our interpretation of Orr’s study ofnarratives in service work parallels Burawoy’s (1979) insights into the instru-mental value of ‘game-playing’ for the reproduction of capitalist relations. Ourfocus is self-consciously upon the question of how to account for ‘the manu-facture of consent’ rather than upon how practices that comprise the relations ofproduction may contain the seeds of social transformation. The copier techni-cians’ practice, and its triangular formation, is, we contend, wrapped up arounda kernel of enjoyment that sustains and perpetuates the conditions of (liberal)freedom.

Technicians’ Work: Narratives of Practiceas Improvisational Activity

Practice is a key theme of TAM, where the doing of repair work is conceived asan embodied, situated accomplishment of technicianship. Orr in the introduc-tory pages describes his study as an examination of ‘the practice of experiencedtechnicians maintaining photocopiers for a major US corporation’ (Orr 1996: 1,emphasis added). Practice signals the importance of what Orr identifies as aneglected terrain in organization studies where, for example, descriptionsor ‘designs’ of jobs are abstracted from, and bear an unknown relationship to,

1770 Organization Studies 27(12)



‘the doing of the job … what is actually done in accomplishing a givenjob’ (1996: 1).

In TAM, a careful examination of work practice is commended as a way of‘deepen[ing] our understandings’ (1996: 1) of the practicalities of workplaceactivity — for example, our knowledge of ‘the relations of employment and therole of work in the constitution of worker’s identity’ (1996: 1). For the copier tech-nicians, the constitution of identity is closely related to the challenges posed bythe diagnosis and rectification of malfunctioning machines. Such work presentschallenges as a consequence of the documentation being unreliable or irrelevantto the problem at hand; because the error codes may themselves be undependable;and because information gleaned from the customer may be sketchy or mislead-ing. The technicians’ practice involves the application and narration of improvisa-tional skill, which is tested as he or she endeavours to find ways of overcomingthe uncertainty and lack of predictability of malfunctioning machines.

As Orr explains, key to the development of repair skills is the collective for-mation of narratives by the technicians about the process of diagnosis andrepair: ‘diagnosis happens through a narrative process’ (1996: 2). It is by nar-rating ‘war stories’ about the (heroic) investigation and rectification of previ-ously unencountered or unsolved problems that the technicians articulate anddisseminate their knowledge. Of critical significance, the telling of ‘war stories’provides an occasion for relating their heroic exploits as tamers of uncertaintyand exorcists of enigma. This characterization of the technicians’ practice is notexcessively colourful, given that Orr himself stresses how, in addition to pro-viding fellow technicians with instrumentally useful knowledge, their narrativesare of ‘mastery’ — that is, mastery of the irrational realm of darkness where ‘theblack arts’ of technicianship are practised:

‘A coherent diagnostic narrative constitutes a technician’s mastery of the problematic situ-ation . . . The telling of narratives demonstrates and shares the technicians’ mastery and soboth celebrates and creates the technicians’ identities as masters of the black arts of deal-ing with machines and of the only somewhat less difficult arts of dealing with customers.’(Orr 1996: 2, emphasis added)

The technicians derive competitive kudos from narrating their masterfulexploits. But the importance of their improvisational, machine-repairing practices,Orr notes, is largely unrecognized and undervalued, if not unequivocally discour-aged, by management who set much greater store upon strict compliance with top-down instructions codified in the repair manuals. The technicians’ talk about usingthe service documentation is, in contrast, ‘full of cautions about the perils of fol-lowing the diagnostic procedures’ (1996: 110). Heroic narratives of diagnosis andrectification are shown by Orr to form an integral part of the technicians’ repairpractice, and were not something external to it.

Interrogating Practice: Power Relationsbetween Resistance and Compliance

At this point, it is appropriate to return to strands of social theory, identified inthe opening paragraph of this commentary, that have been drawn together

Forum – Contu & Willmott: Studying Practice 1771



around an ostensibly common ontology in which the social is conceived as ‘afield of embodied, materially interwoven practices centrally organized aroundshared practical understandings’ (Schatzki 2001: 3). A key contribution to prac-tice theory is to be found, for us, in the work elaborated in what we have termed‘the social theory of hegemony’ (STH). STH is a shorthand for a set of ideasand suggestions that do not form a complete and coherent theoretical edificeand are, indeed, hotly debated (see Butler et al. 2000). A major landmark isErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Social Strategy, whichprompted subsequent engagements, critiques and elaborations, notably bySlavoj Zizek (see Laclau and Mouffe 1985/2001; Laclau 1990,1996; Zizek1989;1997). Positioned at the boundaries of political philosophy and social andpolitical theory, STH problematizes traditional categories of social determina-tion/transformation, interest and consciousness. So, for example, ‘society’ or‘organization’ is, for STH, not a datum (governed by specific functional andstructural laws). Rather, ‘society’, ‘organization’, etc. is accomplished througharticulatory practices that constitute the social as positivities — that is, specificmeaningful identities and objectivities which develop in an irremediably incom-plete, antagonistic relation to what they aspire to name (Laclau 2005). The pre-carious, power-invested hegemonic fixing of specific positivities — such as thetechnicians’ self-identification as ‘heroes’ — is an outcome of a contingentsuturing of undecidables into identities and objectivities (a specific society,organization(s), occupation group(s), etc.).2 In its problematizing of traditionalcategories, STH exemplifies a form of analysis that is distinctive in its thema-tizing of antagonism and negativity as constitutive of the social; and in placingpolitics at the centre of its ontology of the social in a way that problematizes thestatus of any ‘shared’ and ‘consensual’ understandings through which ‘materi-ally interwoven practices’ are organized (Schatzki 2001: 3).

As may be apparent from the STH language exemplified above; STH is situatedwithin the Marxist tradition and its associated concerns, but develops these creativelyby engaging and re-articulating its mainly Althusserian and Gramscian notes with theDerridean thematic of difference and undecidability, and the work of Jacques Lacan.As the latter trajectory is what we engage principally in our analysis of TAM, we nowpreview its main categories: symbolic order, Real, fantasy and enjoyment.

In succinct outline,3 what we call social reality is discursively constituted inlanguage: ‘the notion of discourse should be taken as a social link, founded onlanguage’ (Lacan 1998: 17). This should be noted, always already involves affect— what, in Lacan, can be loosely called enjoyment or, precisely, jouissance.4 Itis within language, specifically in the symbolic order, that subjects acquire asense of identity — which Lacan introduced initially as an imaginary sense ofunity developed in the mirror phase — where we say ‘I am that’ (e.g. a ‘copiertechnician’) or ‘I am not that’ (e.g. a ‘bureaucratic dupe’). But, crucially, in lan-guage we are not only speaking subjects but also desiring subjects caught in themetonymical sliding of the signifier. Discourses, in fact, are never complete andtotal — they are always failed/impossible so that the stability of the signifier andits ability to capture the object of desire is recurrently subverted.5 This impossi-bility (and failure) is called the Real. Positively, this impossibility can be seen asan excess, a left-over in the symbolic (discourse).




This excess, however, is not only surplus meaning, but also surplus enjoyment.6 Lacan calls this surplus the objet (petit) a. The objet (petit) a is theobject cause of desire — this is what puts desire in motion, and what maintainsthe existence of the subject as a desiring subject. Fantasy is what masks the trau-matic failure ‘to extinguish the lack created by the loss of jouissance’ (Glynosand Stavrakakis 2004: 210). It is the negativity/impossibility in the symbolic,signalled with an excess, that indicates that a certain level of enjoyment is caughtin it. And, at once, fantasy is that which gentrifies this excess, which gives tosocial reality, and to the subject sustaining it, consistency and continuity — ‘ourway of life’. A specific social reality, such as the work of the technicians, is thenalways ideological, in the sense that it is constituted in and through fantasy thatat once gives consistency to a certain symbolic order and its subjects. Glynos andStavrakakis cogently illustrate this by reference to the dynamics of consumerismand its subjects:

‘Advertising fantasies reduce the constitutive lack in the subject to the lack of the prod-uct that it simultaneously offers as an objet petit a, as the promise for the final elimina-tion of this lack … [But] as soon as we buy the product we find that the enjoyment weget is partial … “That’s not it” is the very cry by which the jouissance obtained is dis-tinguished from the jouissance expected (Lacan 1998: 111) … this resurfacing of theinability of the fantasy to lead us to a full satisfaction of our desire does not put in dan-ger the cultural hegemony of advertising in late capitalist societies. As Slavoj Zizek oftenreminds us, the aim of fantasy is not to satisfy our desire, something that is ultimatelyimpossible. It is enough to construct it and support it as such: through fantasy we “learn”how to desire … It is this particular economy of desire articulated around the advertisedproduct qua petit objet a that guarantees, through its accumulative metonymic effect, thereproduction of late capitalism within a distinct “promotional culture”. In other words,the hegemony of the market depends, to a large extent, on the hegemony of this particu-lar economy of desire, on the hegemony of this particular administration of enjoyment.’(Glynos and Stavrakakis 2004: 210)

In our analysis of TAM, we move from the sphere of consumption to that ofproduction as we explore how a parallel ‘economy of desire’ and ‘administrationof enjoyment’ operates in the technicians’ improvisational practices in ways that,we argue, provided routine ideological support for the reproduction of capitalistwork organization.

The Practice of Talking about Machines or the IdeologicalSupport of Everyday Production

We noted earlier how management at Xerox favoured procedure over improvisa-tion. Managers at Xerox did not conceive of the technicians’ work as a practicenecessitating creativity as a condition of fulfilling its professed preoccupationwith cost-effectiveness. Rather, management sought the (re) design of technicians’work, which demanded a substitution of the standardized authority of the companymanual for their idiosyncratic expertise. This stance was arguably emblematic ofan instrumental form of rationality that took it for granted that copier repair can berendered fully predictable and controllable: rationally determined, systematic pro-cedures can and should be developed for the process of diagnosis and rectification.




So, to be clear, Orr’s account of the working lives of the copier technicians offersno support to the idea of Xerox having a ‘strong’ corporate culture with which thetechnicians identified. When the technicians engaged in bureaucratically prohib-ited, improvisational practices, it was not because corporate values overrodebureaucratic procedure.7 There is nothing in TAM that lends succour to the idea ofa ‘functional alignment’ where the technicians embrace their role as part of the‘bigger organism’, or see themselves doing their bit for the ‘common organiza-tional good’. On the contrary, Orr repeatedly reminds us that the allegiance of thetechnicians is to their occupational community — ‘they would rather remain atechnician hero than become an organizational manager’ (1996: 77).

Through the bureaucratic Law of the formal specification and application ofstandardized procedures,8 it was calculated by management that training timecould be reduced; time-wasting processes of trial and error could be eliminated;and costly problems caused by human error could be minimized. Conversely, itcould be argued that when work was unregulated by the manuals, and techni-cians were left to their own devices, it was assumed by managers that the tech-nicians would act in an undisciplined, non-optimal manner, thereby incurringavoidable costs (of time and materials). When framed within this form of ratio-nality, the technicians were valued only for their capacity to follow (bureau-cratic) instructions devised by others. Moreover, and crucially, this narrowdemarcation of technicians’ capabilities was conceived to be advantageous tothem. Compliance with the directive documentation was assumed by managersto be of benefit to the (rational) technician because he or she is thereby relievedof any personal (as contrasted with impersonal or bureaucratic) responsibilityfor the successful repair of the machines. As Orr observes:

‘in providing directive documentation the corporation is assuming responsibility for solv-ing the machine problem and in the eyes of the corporation technicians are only respon-sible for failing to fix a machine if they have not used the documentation’. (Orr 1996: 111)

Within this logic, rational behaviour is equivalent to following instructions dili-gently, this being the way to ensure that the technicians are blameless for whatthey do — including any failure of diagnosis or repair that can result in an expen-sive exchange of a machine. For the (rational) technician, then, conscientiouslyapplying the ‘directive documentation’ is in his or her best interests — at leastwhen assessed in utilitarian terms, where happiness, for example, is conceived tobe maximized by minimizing the burden of responsibility and performance anxi-ety. Indeed, a coincidence of interests of employer and employee, of the corpora-tion and its members, and/or of capital and labour, is assumed. Officially, for thecorporation, compliance with its bureaucratic Law is the most authoritative andfoolproof method of copier repair (as it is anticipated to yield the most cost-effec-tive solution). And, for the technician, adherence to Lawful procedure means thatthere can be no comeback from the corporation if the machine is not repaired orsoon develops the same fault.

The basis for, and realization of, this happy coincidence of interest is, how-ever, by no means consistent with Orr’s account of the technicians’ work —notably, the technicians enthusiastically engaged in improvisational practicesthat lacked the sanction of bureaucratic procedure. What, it may be asked,




restrained or inhibited the technicians from simply ‘working to rule’? Why didthey act in such an ‘irrational’ way when they knew that complying with theLaw made them ‘bullet proof’? The answer, we suggest, resides in the allure ofan identification with the collective self-image of the hero-technician commu-nity that ‘requires that they solve the problems if at all possible’ (Orr 1996: 111,emphasis added).

Such a response is consistent with Schatzki’s (2001: 3) conception of prac-tice theory. For what seems to be in evidence in TAM is a collective imperativeto develop ‘shared practical understandings’ capable of ‘solv(ing) the problemsif at all possible’, and this ‘imperative’ enables us to account for the technicians’actions. The claim of the ontology underpinning this thinking — in contrast tocognitive theories of learning and organized life, which are comparatively inat-tentive to the situatedness of mundane practice — is that it provides a superiorappreciation of the lived complexities of human organization. The informal andnon-canonical is understood to be emergent in social interaction: it is integral tothe rich and varied unfolding of human life and its autonomous and creativepossibilities.

This kind of interpretation is undoubtedly appealing, and is valuable in chal-lenging dominant theories of learning and organization (Contu and Willmott2003). Here, though, we are concerned to reflect upon how the improvisationalpractice of the technicians sustains the process of valorization such that theirform of ‘irrational exuberance’ ends up serving the ‘bottom-line.9 Or, to recallthe formulation developed by Glynos and Stavrakakis (2004: 210), we are inter-ested in how ‘a particular economy of desire articulated around the copiermachine qua petit objet a guarantees, through its accumulative metonymiceffect, the reproduction of late capitalism’.

By defying, or at least deviating from, the requirements of the directive docu-mentation (the bureaucratic Law of the impersonal corporation — Xerox), thetechnicians cut costs by developing understandings of the idiosyncrasies of dif-ferent models of machine and sharing with their fellow technicians fixes and shortcuts that were absent from the manuals. Orr characterizes as ‘slightly subversive’such practices (1996: 111) that, in their refusal to accept their place in the bureau-cratic office, do exhibit a kind of resistance or ‘misbehaviour’ (Ackroyd andThompson 1999). Yet, as we have already intimated and now elaborate, such prac-tices are simultaneously conservative. By improvising and applying fixes andshort cuts, the technicians minimize the expense of machine repairs and replace-ments and reduce customer frustration associated with delays in restoringmachine use. Our interest lies in exploring and questioning what, in practice the-ory, is identified as a spontaneous process of emergence; and where what is iden-tified as resistance or ‘mis-behaviour’ is given to us in its inverted sense — as apractice that is functional for Xerox’s bottom-line.

The problematic then is this: something (given as) integral and precious tothe technicians — ‘their own image of themselves’ — is a condition of practicesthat diverge from, and are ultimately in opposition to, the conduct prescribed bythe directive documentation; and, indeed, deviate from the conception ofemployees, as compliant, utilitarian subjects, that is assumed by management’sbelief in, and imposition of, its procedures. Yet this deviance is shown by Orr to




be consistent with, and is indeed functional for, the goal of cost-effectiveness,customer satisfaction and, ultimately, corporate profitability. In effect, theinjunction of ‘getting the job done, keeping the customers happy, and keepingthe machines running’ (Orr 1996: 161) is inscribed in the very being of the tech-nicians by the technicians, as their practice is, first and foremost, about discov-ering, sharing and applying systematic ways of repairing the machines.Machine replacement is the ultimate defeat for the technician, as the technicianconcedes to the victorious, intractable machine.

Interrogating Reproduction: Heroics and Enjoyment

The technicians’ improvisational practice that circles around the image of thehero-technician is, we contend, the ideological fantasy that supports the mean-ing of the technicians’ way of working life, and thereby sustains their labourprocess. To elaborate and support this claim, we reflect further upon the colour-ful imagery that harbours images of heroes, black art, duels and war stories, atthe centre of which is their relationship with the ‘machine’.10

The belief of the technicians, materialized in their improvisational practice,is sutured by their identification as heroes and by (the positing of) the commu-nity in which their mastery and competence are recognized. This, in Lacanianterms, is a fantasy-scenario. For Lacan, ‘fantasy’ is not a dream-like concept.Rather, it is what gives consistency to social reality, what makes it possible forsocial reality to be specifically what it is in its particular and contingent mani-festation. It is what ‘organizes and supports the apparent multiplicity of identityand determines “the rules of engagement” between its different levels’(Stavrakakis 2005: 84). Orr shows how the technicians depend for their identi-ties on Xerox and on the company’s clients — ‘one to provide the machines andpay their wages, the other to provide an arena wherein they may practice’ (Orr1996: 77). The fantasy of the community of heroes is, we suggest, what givesconsistency to the experiences of the technicians and organizes their (collective)sense of self, constituting and sustaining their desire and the enjoyment caughtin this social link:

‘A fantasy provides the coordinates of our desire — which constructs the frame enablingus to desire something. The usual definition of fantasy is therefore somewhat mislead-ing, or at least ambiguous: in the fantasy-scene [the battles of the technician-heroes]desire is not fulfilled, ‘satisfied’ but constituted (given its objects and so on) — throughfantasy we learn how to desire.’ (Zizek 1989: 118)

The copier machine becomes a fantasmatic object of fascination that pro-vides the space of ambiguity and uncertainty through which the technicians liveout the fantasy of heroism by battling to control its performance. Machines areusually talked about as a complex set of mechanisms devised for a specific task,each with a specific function comprising different components made of plastic,aluminium, steel and other materials. But, in Orr’s account, it is clear that, forthe technicians, there is much more to a copier machine than that. When theytalk about their work, the machine assumes the status of a mysterious — atonce, grotesque and mesmerizing — object. The machine in their stories is




recalcitrant, annoying, fascinating and whimsical — it acquires, for them,almost otherworldly features that makes it more than ‘a machine’. This excessin the machine tells us of a certain enjoyment that is caught in their relationshipto the machine; tangentially, it also tells us of a desire that, unlike a demand,cannot ever be expressed completely in speech alone. The machine has the char-acteristics proper of the femme fatale of film noir — a man cannot trust such awoman who tantalizes him and catches him in her enigmatic, impossible pres-ence. When it comes to the actual physical relation to the machine, the techni-cians tell of how they interact with the machine through reference to partialobjects (the codes, the sounds, the movements, etc.). Through their talk, they setin motion the sliding sequence of improvisational, reparatory practices that arecharacterized by them as tantamount to a desire to conquer the recalcitrantmachine. In this fantasy, the desire of the technicians is framed by the fantasy ofthe community of technician-heroes, where respect and solidarity are at stake. Itis upon this fulcrum that the production of a harmonious productive community,and the involvement of its members, pivots, securing its perpetuation.

Orr’s descriptions of the working lives of the technicians indicate how theirpractices are structured by an imaginary identification with the figure of thehero. This is a potent trope that we can re-trace in the fabric of western patriar-chal mythology: ‘hero — in Greek history, a man of superhuman strength,courage or ability favoured by the gods’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In theworld of the technicians, the image of the technician-hero exemplifies individ-ualism and machismo — where machismo takes the form of ardent enslavementto the fascinating power of the machine that invites conquest, and thereby oper-ates to reproduce a traditional notion of masculinity. It is a kind of conquest thatdeploys logic and attention rather than brute force and aggression. Orr’s talkabout duelling and competition is the masquerade of the heroes who celebrate,and compete over, their mastery as demonstrated by their heroic acts; it is notabout the conquest of the machine per se (which is always too much for thisworld, so to speak, as it cannot ever be altogether subjugated, because it is whatsustains their image of themselves as heroes), but about display or revelationand jockeying for position in community. The technicians’ improvisationalpractice, which structures their relationship with the machine, talks of a con-quest that involves a systematic and rigorous process of analysis that is carefullyrecounted:11 — the creative exercise of a disciplined mind is the technician-heroat work that ‘saves’ him or her from the erratic and recalcitrant ambiguousworld of the potentially humiliating, yet endlessly fascinating and challenging,machine. But, one should ask, what is the symbolic function of the hero? Theimage, such as that of the hero, is, for Lacan, always working in the signifyingstructure. The aim of the question is to consider the gaze that is contemplatedwhen the subject identifies with a certain image — in this case, that of the hero.To put it in other words, an answer is begged to the question: For whom is thesubject enacting this role? (Zizek 1989: 106)

The technicians’ imaginary identification — the hero — has the symbolic func-tion of establishing a space of freedom — specifically, we suggest, the freedomof bourgeois humanism — that ‘governs the soul’ (Rose 1999) of the techniciansand reproduces their way of life. From the standpoint of the corporation and




its bureaucratic gaze, the technicians are autonomous subjects, who exercisesomething in themselves that is greater and/or beyond that which is expected, orrequired, by traditional instrumental and utilitarian rationality, in order to get thejob done. Likewise, the technicians’ mythology of the hero (which could be con-sidered pre-modern) is symbolically constitutive of the free agents of spontaneousinformal practice who, in their eyes, are capable of the autonomous and creativeactions deemed critical for efficient and effective repair work. This space of free-dom would seem to be ‘extra-ideological,12 at least to the extent that the techni-cians are not participants in corporate culturalist ideology where they are expectedto behave as members of a ‘big family’ that ‘pulls together’, by ensuring thatmachines are repaired using whatever it takes. What one hears in their talk is dis-cussion of what they are about, with reference to a realm that is beyond thebureaucratic Law. Orr’s findings show how the technicians refuse the ideologicalcall of the bureaucratic procedures. Without undue licence, we may say that theprocedures are understood by the technicians to exemplify the irrationality ofwhat management proposes as rationally effective and efficient organization oflabour. That said, we have argued that the apparent subversion produced by thefantasy of the hero and its misbehaviour perpetuates the fiction of liberal freedomthat sutures the meaning of their relations of production.13

The meaning of the technician’s ‘misbehaviour’, then, is given to us in itsinverted, paradoxical sense: it underwrites and provides momentum for thedirection and efficacy of the bureaucratic gaze (and, reflexively, the knowledgeof management perpetuated in management and organizational studies). Thearchaic, pre-modern image of the hero infuses the symbolic (modern, liberal)subject whose enjoyment is wrapped up in the repetition of the continuousimprovisational practice of conquest, control and enslavement of an object (themachine), which is, as we have seen, somewhat ‘more than’ components ormaterials. The fantasy of the free and autonomous subjects of improvisationalpractice operates to gentrify what can be conceived as the demise, if not theextinguishing, of freedom. Specifically, this is the radical freedom, a freedomwithout exceptions, lost in the fiction of ‘just exchange’14 proper of the sym-bolic network of liberal relations that enables the technicians to enjoy their wayof life in Xerox, and is illustrative of what routinely occurs in the wider sphereof production in modern capitalist economies.

Conclusions

Orr’s much celebrated TAM provides a rich and thought-provoking account of mod-ern work. His account of the technicians’ improvisational practice projects somevery rich imagery that includes the hero in the gaze of the community of hero-tech-nicians; and illuminates practice as conquest of the recalcitrance of theirworthy opponent, the machine. We have thematized Orr’s observations of how thetechnicians distanced their work from what, following Zizek, we have characterizedas the call of bureaucratic Law. And we have problematized the notion of practiceas spontaneous emerging process that is beyond, or escapes, the mainstream formal,canonical framework (and its knowledge).




By addressing processes of identification at work — as illustrated by thetechnicians’ fantasies of heroism, and as discussed by deploying categories ofthe social theory of hegemony — we have sought to move beyond an under-standing of their practice as a play of identities and multiple discursive con-structions, in an attempt to shed some light on how capitalist relations arereproduced. We have conceived of the technicians’ practice as structured in itseveryday accomplishment by a fantasy scenario in which a certain enjoyment— which is beyond the utilitarian logic of the pleasure principle — is lived out.The image of the hero plays a symbolic function of signifying the liberal sub-ject of bourgeois humanism, which is enacted/sustained in the improvisationalpractice of the technicians’ work, and thereby serves to perpetuate the relation-ship of subordination that is constitutive of the technicians’ ‘way of life’.

1 See, especially, Orr (1996: 10). Orr and Suchman were colleagues in the Work Practice andTechnology Group at Xerox PARC and, with Jeanette Blomberg and Randy Trigg, co-authored‘Reconstructing technologies as social practice’ (Suchman et al.1999). Jarzabkowski (2005) alsorefers to the highly influential work of Lave and Wenger (1991) and Brown and Duguid (1991),the significance of their citation being that each pair of authors draws heavily on Orr’s TAM asthey develop and illustrate their respective analyses of practice (see Contu and Willmott 2003).

2 This does not imply, as some have argued (Chourliaraki and Fairclough 1999), the disappear-ance of necessity. Any identity/objectivity constituted as meaningful in a structured and mean-ingful formation is necessarily what it is in the formation (Laclau 1990). More importantly, thevery contingent act is based on the necessary impossibility of ever subsuming a traumatic ker-nel into a symbolic or imaginary order.

3 Our account is partial. It is primarily devoted to offering the readers the general theoreticalcoordinates to make sense of our analysis and discussion of the technicians’ practice of talkingabout machines.

4 Enjoyment/jouissance should not be confused with pleasure and the pleasure principle.Jouissance is beyond pleasure. Miller (1988) considers that the Lacanian jouissance — thissomething that is beyond the pleasure principle — is linked with what, for Freud, was the dis-covery that, in spite of the interpretation of the symptom, the symptom remains. There is moreto symptoms than an articulation of signifiers. Freud elaborates this as the death instinct, thisimpossible ‘something’ beyond the pleasure principle — for Lacan, enjoyment/jouissance —where, as Miller puts it, what is the most precious good ‘may be bad’ (Miller 1988).

5 This impossibility is the condition of possibility of symbolizations.6 This is based on Marx’s concept of surplus value, something that does not have any use; it is

pursued for enjoyment itself.7 Above, we made reference to customer service. Orr shows that this was a value at Xerox, but

one that the technicians invoked instrumentally, to justify their practices.8 The term Law is being used as something that must be adhered to ‘not because it is just, good

or even beneficial, but simply because it is the law’ (Zizek 1989: 37). It may be rationally jus-tified but it is not rationally constituted or, better, it is the very act of constitution of Rationality.This reminds us of how violence is intertwined with Law.

9 The productive nature of technicians’ resistance to preferred managerial procedure, in the formof their everyday practices, is also remarked upon by Orr (1996: 2) when he comments: ‘Talkabout machines is perhaps to be expected in such a job, but recognition of the instrumentalnature of such talk provides a new perspective on the work.’

10 The analysis and the argument can be extended to incorporate the relationship with the ‘client’,but for reasons of space we have decided to focus primarily on the central role the machineplays in the technicians’ talk and on their conduct as rectifiers of malfunctioning machines.

11 Sloppiness and lack of method are signs of a deficit of mastery and are unacceptable for thetechnicians/heroes.

12 It is the reference to something which is extra-ideological that underwrites the efficiency of theideological system keeping the technicians in their place (see Zizek 1989). It is not being sug-gested that the space of freedom, in this example, transcends ideology but rather that it exertsan appeal and associated effects that are not reducible to the official ideologies attributable tothe Xerox corporation.


Notes



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Alessia Contu



Hugh Willmott is Research Professor, Cardiff Business School. He has previously heldappointments at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Aston and visitingappointments at the Universities of Copenhagen, Lund and Cranfield. His books includeMaking Quality Critical (Routledge, 1995), Management Lives (Sage, 1999), The Re-engineering Revolution (Sage, 2000), Managing Knowledge (Macmillan, 2000), StudyingManagement Critically (Sage, 2003) and Fragmenting Work (OUP, 2004). He haspublished widely in social science and management journals and currently is a memberof the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies andJournal of Management Studies. Further details can be found on his homepage:http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhomeAddress: Cardiff Business School, University of Cardiff, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF103EU,Wales.Email: [email protected]


Hugh Willmott



Documents

Studying Practice: Situating Talking About Machines