Deconstruction References
July 28, 1997
David M. Boje, Professor of Management, Department of Management, College of Business Administration & Economics, New Mexico State University, Box 30001  Dept. 3DJ, Las Cruces, NM  88003; (505) 646-2391 office; (505) 646-1201 secretary; (505) 532-9484 home; (505) 646-1372 fax; dboje@nmsu.edu  email

DECONSTRUCTION

 Deconstruction is not a method.  There are deconstructive steps that can be taken to critically appraise the dualities, plotlines, metaphors, tropes and other constructions.  Many find deconstruction to be a an endless process.  But, for me, after the dualities and other moves have been traced in the text, the deconstructionist can realign or resituate the political, economic, or social aspects of the text by creating new texts.  Deconstruction emphasizes how words, and in my own research, stories, are "polysemous" -- have multiple meanings. Deconstructionists note that the interpretations derived by any particular community, for example by organization scholars, is an arbitrary limit imposed  upon the writing of management.  Stories have hegemonic constructions within particular times and places.  Below are some references to explore deconstruction.

Boje, David M.

  1. 1995a "Teaching storytelling deconstruction skills. " Paper presentation to Eastern Academy of Management Meetings, Cornell University, May, 5.
  2. 1995b "Deconstructing organizational theory."  Paper to be presented to International Association of Pacific Rim meetings in Sydney Australia, 21 August.
  3. 1995c  Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-land.?  Academy of Management Journal. 38 (4), 997-1035.
  4.  1996 The told and the untold story: Double Invagination in Organizational Storytelling.? Paper presented to conference on Metaphors and Narrative, Auckland, New Zealand, July.
Boje, David and Robert Dennehy, 1992. Postmodern Management: America's revolution against exploitation. Dubuque, IO: Kendall-Hunt Press. 2nd Edition, 1994 (Appendix A contains a way to train undergraduate students to use deconstruction on stories collected in a basic management class).

Boje, D.M., Rosile, G.A, Dennehy, R, and Summers, D., 1995.  "The reengineering story and postmodern challenges." (with G.A. Rosile, R. Dennehy, & D. Summers). In Business Research Yearbook: Global Business Perspectives, Vol. II.. pp. 715-718.

Boje, D. M., D. Fitzgibbons, & D. Steingard. "Storytelling at Administrative Science Quarterly: Warding off the Postmodern Barbarians." In Postmodern Management and Organization Theory. (pp. 60-94). D. Boje, R. Gephart, & T. Thatchenkery (Eds). Sage Publications. 1996.

Boje, D.M., Summers, D., Dennehy, R. & Rosile, G. 1997. "Deconstructing the Organizational Behavior Text," to appear in Special Issue on Post-modern & Critical Theory,  Journal of Management Education, 21(3): 343-360.

Boje, D.M., Rosile, G, Dennehy, B, & Summers, D. 1997. "Restorying reengineering: Some deconstructions and postmodern alternatives." Accepted for publication in Special Issue on Throwaway Employees, Journal of Communication Research. Forthcoming.

Boje, D. M. Luhman, J., Baack, D. "Hegemonic tales of the field: A telling research encounter between storytelling organizations." Paper presented at the Southwest Academy of Management, 24th Annual Meeting, New Orleans. March 14. Under review.

Culler, Jonathen, 1982. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism.  Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press. (This is one of the better interpreters of Derrida's deconstruction moves).

Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

  1. 1978. Writing and difference. (A. Bass, Trans.).  London:  Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  2. 1985. The ear of the other.  (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press.
Ellis, John. 1989. Against Deconstruction.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kilduff, M.. 1993. "Deconstructing organizations." Academy of Management Review. 18: 13-31.

Martin, Joanne. 1990. "Deconstructing organizational taboos: The suppression of gender conflict in organizations." Organization Science 1(4): 339-359 (Contains excellent examples of how to creatively resituate dualities and compose new texts)..

Martin, Joanne & Kathy Knopoff. 1995."The gendered implications of apparently gender-neutral theory: Re-reading Weber." To appear in the Ruffin Lecture Series (Vol. 3): Business Ethics and Women's Studies E. Freeman and A. Larson (Eds). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Norris, Christopher, 1988. De Man, Paul: Deconstruction and the Critique of Aesthetic Ideology.  New York: Routledge.

White, Michael, 1992. "Deconstruction and therapy." In Epston, D. & White, M. Experience, Contradiction, Narrative and Imagination. Adelaide Dulwich Center Publications.