Reinventing Nonsense

"In philosophy the winner is the one who finishes last"

Why is the literature of business administration always changing?

How many new books promise original solutions and fresh attitudes organizations can use to finally solve their problems. Ways to engage a new generation of worker. Ways to prevent a toxic corporate culture. Some might say this is authors preying on the insecurities and fears of business owners. I would agree.

Fredrick Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is the most recent of these books. Released in 2014 with great reviews we already see, just two years later, plenty of criticism of its evolutionary approach to organizational structures. With even more criticism to is its “evolutionary teal” organization of today. I disagree with some of the points made in the book. In particular with the reasons why organizations are always reinventing themselves. Laloux claims this is because of the “constantly evolving human consciousness”. I will claim it is because business administration is the product of philosophy and capitalism.

"philosophy is not one of the natural sciences,"

In his book Tractatus Ludwig Wittgenstein famously critiqued philosphy. He asserted any use of language is only meaningful because of its ability to depict possible arrangements of objects in the world. Any statement made with language can be analyzed as such a depiction of objects. For example, take the two statements "I'll keep it in mind" and "I'll keep it in this box” both statements can lead one to think of the mind as something like a box with contents of its own. The nature of this box and its mental contents can then seem mysterious. It is easy for us to be entrapped by our unwitting use of language and how it can equate abstract concepts with objects in the world. Doing this is nonsense, minds are not boxes.

Today Comparing changes in organizations to genetic changes in organisms over thousands of years, is nonsense. Today an intelligent person will recognize biological evolution as one of the most influential forces on the planet. So to will they recognize human consciousness as one of the most abstract concepts. Why not combine the two into a powerful nonsensical statement “the evolution of human consciousness”?

Wittgenstein ended up concluding if a statement does not depict a possible arrangement of objects, it does not mean anything at all. Ethics, religion, the nature of the world beyond objects, and most statements of traditional philosophy, Wittgenstein argued, are therefore nonsense. Today I would argue we can add most of the business administration literature to the list.

But yet there is nothing wrong with the abstract in itself. And nothing wrong about business administration as well. It is just they are incompatible with language. Language is not up to the task of describing these things. All we can do is hope language reminds us of the abstract concept we already know.

"Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of easily accessible wrong turnings. And so we watch one man after another walking down the same paths and we know in advance where he will branch off, walk straight on without noticing the side turning, etc. etc. What I have to do then is erect signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so as to help people past the danger points."

All we can expect are signposts. Each sign is meant for a specific area and makes no sense in another context. Signs can be misinterpreted or ignored. Philosophy and Business Admin only gives us signs. In other words, they do not teach us but only reminders of the things we already know. If we don't already know it in our hearts they cannot help us.

The great flaw of Wittgenstein is that his critique of philosophy, anything that does not depict a possible arrangement of objects is nonsense, also applied to most of his writing and most certainly applies to this journal =^). I guess the only thing making sense is to keep on living.