2 - The Trembling Organisation: Order, Change and the Philosophy of the Virtual

Summary

Deleuze has argued that with a few exceptions such as Bergson, philosophers, despite their concern with concepts, have neglected the concept of philosophy itself. If so, then this is even more true for organisation theorists, who have been obsessed with what organisations do, but have taken the concept of organisation largely for granted. Again with few exceptions (e.g. Cooper 1986; Cooper and Burrell 1988) they have rarely asked what organisation is, or questioned the ontological status of organisation. Yet although much of Deleuze's work, especially that with Guattari, is about organisation, especially the economic organisation of capital and the conditions of production and signification, much of this is implied or inferred, or at a remote level of abstraction. A search of the indices of critical commentaries on Deleuze yields only minimal reference to the concept ‘organisation’, if it appears at all. So the aim of this chapter is to progress the project of interrogating the ontological status of organisation, by rendering explicit the idea of organisation that can be read implicitly within – or read into – the work of Deleuze (cf. Knights 2004).

Certain commentators undertaking the task of ontological interrogation (e.g. Burrell 1997, 1998; Chia 1999) have argued that organisation is the opposite of change, with change as pure flow and process. They have argued against linearity as deathly, a stoppage of the innate vitality of process, and for non-linear conceptualisations of change, such as Deleuze and Guattari's (1983, 1984, 1987) rhizome and Bergson's durée.