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It is a great honour for me to present Professor Mike Aiken to you
as an honorary member of EGOS. He joins an illustrious band of
scholars who are Honorary Members, and he does so deservedly. His
contribution to EGOS and to organization theory have been immense.
His career, spanning more than forty years has taken him from
research fellow in the University of Michigan to be Chancellor of
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to that, he
had been Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of
Wisconsin (where he was later Associate Dean) and was then Dean and
later Provost at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has
seen publications in leading sociological journals such as the
American Sociological Review and the American Journal of
Sociology. He has published in Administrative Science
Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal as well as
the British Journal of Political Science, Accounting
Organisations and Society and Urban Political Economy. He
has also authored and co-authored six books. In a nutshell Mike
Aiken is a great example of a social scientist bringing the mother
disciplines of sociology, politics and anthropology to scrutinize
and interrogate organization theory.
Mike was one of the founding fathers of EGOS. During a conference
in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, Mike remarked that European scholars
were quite well aware of most North American publications in their
field (even minor publications) but were unaware of often major work
literally across the border in another European country. The rest is
history (see Organization Studies, Winter 1998, 'An Inside
Story: The Birth and Infancy of EGOS' by C.J. Lammers).
Mike Aiken was a real promoter of EGOS. He had research interests
in Europe (and a French wife) and he was frustrated by the fact that
there was little connection among organizational scholars in Europe.
David Hickson used to say that it was typical that it took two
Americans to get the Europeans to talk to each other.
Contribution to Organization Theory
- A social scientist through and through, Mike views
organizations, organizing and the organized through the lens of
social organization – viewing them as primarily social and
political fora rather than simply business or service firms. His
lens has consistently been one of organization, organizing and
the organized.
- His early work began with an emphasis on communities and the
sense of community – Presaging much work which was to emerge in
later years in the field of organizational sociology, Mike Aiken
(in the 1960s) was examining the alienation, integration and the
displacement of workers in social organizations. In particular
his work focused on questions of race (black workers) and age (how
older workers are, or are not, integrated into organizations.
- His work in the late 1960s and early 1970s with Jerry Hage
first of all reflected the contingency flavours of the time. As
a PhD student at the time and as one brought up on this
burgeoning literature, it almost became a recital (or mantra)
for younger students like me that Hage and Aiken said:
'An
organization designed to maximize innovation will be more
complex, decentralized and designed for greater levels of
communication than one designed for routine efficiency.'
and
'An organization which employs a
non-routine technology will be decentralized and more complex
than one which is not.'
- Whereas many of the contingency theorists of the time
remained firmly in that paradigm, Mike Aiken broke out of this
dominant view, joining a group of theorists who began
questioning the simplistic elegance of correlation, causation
and association of structural, technological and other
organizational variables. His work in the 1980s established his
reputation firmly as a critical theorist, with a crooked eye
towards what organizational sociologists has been taking as
their dominant theoretical perspectives over the last two
decades.
- To summarise this work would be a gargantuan task, a
testimony to the amount and quality of work he produced, but the
key points he brought to the attention of younger organizational
theorists (such as myself) were well articulated, critical and
hard-hitting. Mike set a timely agenda for organization theory
which was to continue to the present day (and will no doubt rage
for many decades to come).
He argued for example:
- Sociological Perspectives
are Important – and were relatively rare in early studies in
organizational theory.
Most Organization Theory and Empirical Research assumed and
glossed over what was really central to the sociological study of
organizations. For over twenty years, the search had been for
generalizations – key variables which could make organizations and
the management processes more effective and efficient. The concepts
of industrial efficiency and productivity, once discovered, were
assumed to apply to all organizations – public, private and
non-profit alike. Mouzelis, Blau and Scott as well as Gouldner and
others were paving the way for such generalisable characteristics.
Mike Aiken, however, took the line of the sociologist. Were not the
constants assumed by these scholars the very factors that
sociologists of organization ought to be interested in? What was
important to Mike Aiken was to uncover:
The relationships between internal organizational processes,
structures and ideologies and the societal context in which they
exist …
These are the very factors which reinforce, disguise or even
justify inequalities, power and hierarchies in organizations. These
are what organizational theorists should be studying.
- An Understanding of the
Influence and Heavy-hand of History is Important
Mike Aiken argued that the bulk of organization theory could be
characterised as being in a curious state of suspended animation. It
was almost as if history and the development of organizations either
did not matter at all, or was viewed as a group of contextual
variables – which, since they seemed to offer little explanation of
variance, were relegated to being unimportant. Yet, like Renate
Mayntz (elected an EGOS Honorary Member two years ago), Mike Aiken
emphasized that organizational change is both historically specific
and the development of organizations and their current constellation
of inter-relationships can be seen as the product of power plays
carried out over time and often in historically specific episodes or
conditions.
- The Needs of Management are only one aspects of
Organization Theory
Taking his cue from the work of sociologists such as Robert
Merton, Mike Aiken questioned the role of organization theory
insofar as it seemed to preserve the status quo in organizations.
This phenomenon was largely fuelled by researchers looking
predominantly at the needs of management or, even worse, taking
management’s definition of the problem as the only starting point
for research.
In doing so, they ignored other aspects of organization (not
least workers and minorities) and presented a highly partial view of
what went on in organizations and what were the important processes.
It was even more complex. The whole infrastructure of the
research process was designed to restrict the imagination of the
sociologist.
The selection of research questions is carried out by a small and
perhaps unrepresentative group – this includes managers and those
bodies which fund research.
The dissemination of research is heavily influenced by what is
read by academics and what gets into the journals – editors have a
powerful screening role (along with reviewers) and decide what is
published and what is not to a large extent.
- Organizations are not constrained and are dynamic
The prevailing contingency school of thought held an overly
contrained view of organization according to Aiken. He argued that
there was no one way process whereby the environment imposed itself
on organizations. In line with Michel Crozier and others, Aiken
argued that, first, organizations could themselves act upon the
environment and change it; and secondly that any conception of the
environment as a homogenous whole was misplaced. Such an environment
is in reality a multiplicity of characteristics and has a level of
diversity which is unlimited. Such characteristics and inter-actions
between organizations and their environments are also dynamic
relationships and change over time. To consider them as almost
law-like and deterministic is both unrealistic in practice and bad
science.
Another source of dynamism lies in the variety of power relations
found in most complex organizations. Mike Aiken’s work is
characterised by the concerns of the sociologist to uncover the
dynamics of power and various interests in organizations. Such a
perspective brings topics such as
domination, subjugation, coercion,
manipulation corruption and extortion to the fore.
These are the essence of understanding complex organization and
should take pride of place as analytical constructs in the study of
organizations.
Given recent events in the world of organizations (such as the
collapse of Enron; scandals and alleged corruption and deceit by
powerful interests – Parmalat and Shell are well-known examples)
Aiken’s work had something of the prophetic quality about it.
The emphasis on power and politics took Mike Aiken in his later
work to look at public policy, in particular in large urban
conglomerations. His comparative analysis of Urban systems and urban
policies (including German, Italian and Belgian cities) remains a
landmark in urban and political studies.
So to summarise:
Over forty years of contribution to Organization Theory - and not
just any contribution, but continually keeping a critical and
analytical eye open to question and to stimulate fresh analytical
thinking and new perspectives.
A key founding father of EGOS. Without Mike's pressure and energy
to get European scholars into a community, EGOS would arguably not
be the strong scholarly society that it is today.
But he also knew how to put some tricks of persuasion into
practice … Mike was doing work in Belgium while living in Paris. He
had a clapped out old Volvo in which he commuted to Brussels. Every
time he crossed the border the guards would try to turn him back
because the car wasn't roadworthy. He'd talk them out of it by
claiming it was the last trip he was making. He must have pulled
that trick half a dozen times.
Mike also has musical skills which are perhaps less well-known
than his social scince prowess. Colleagues who used to be at
Wisconsin tell me that he used to play the banjo at faculty parties
when he first came to Wisconsin. I don’t know whether he still plays,
but if he does, I am sure it will be to the same exacting standards
that he applied to his extensive work in organization theory.
Mike, we are honoured and delighted to accept you as an Honorary
Member of EGOS.
Please accept our warmest congratulations!
David C. Wilson
EGOS Chairman 2003–2006 |
