Yes / John Austin introduced the formulation “performative utterance” in his 1962 book How to do things with words. This term and the related concept of performativity have subsequently been interpreted in numerous ways by social scientists and philosophers such as Lyotard, Butler, Callon, or Barad, leading to the co-existence of several foundational perspectives on performativity. In this paper we review and evaluate critically how organization and management theory (OMT) scholars have used these perspectives, and how the power of performativity has, or has not, stimulated new theory-building. In performing a historical and critical review of performativity in OMT, our analysis reveals the uses, abuses and under-uses of the concept by OMT scholars. It also reveals the lack of both organizational conceptualizations of performativity and analysis of how performativity is organized. Ultimately our aim is to provoke a ‘performative turn’ in OMT by unleashing the power of the performativity concept to generate new and stronger organizational theories.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/10307 |
| Date | 07 July 2015 |
| Creators | Gond, J-P., Cabantous, L., Harding, Nancy H., Learmonth, M. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Accepted manuscript |
| Rights | © 2015 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gond J-P, Cabantous L, Harding N and Learmonth M (2016) What do we mean by performativity in organization and management studies? The uses and abuses of performativity. International Journal of Management Reviews. 18(4): 440-463, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12074. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. |
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