Andrea Canfield

Managing Editor

And

Professor Claudia Bird Schoonhoven

Editor-In-Chief of Organization Science

Graduate School of Management

University of California, Irvine

Irving, CA 92697-3125

April 10, 2000

Dear Andrea Canfield and Claudia Schoonhoven,

Thank you Andrea for sending me the reviews of my manuscript: "Postmodern Organization Science: Narrative Ethics, Tamara, and the Binary Machine." I have completed my revision and more appropriately, I think, retitled the manuscript, "Toward a Narrative Ethics for Modern and Postmodern Organization Science."

Some history for the Editor- I hope you will not think ill of me for telling you a somewhat long story. As Editor, I think you may want to know that this has been a long process. I was originally invited to write a reply to the Weiss article "What is Postmodernism…." In October/November 1998 - a long time ago. I was initially invited to publish a 5 page reply to allegations made against me and every postmodern organization researcher I know in the Weiss article. I was also, I admit a reviewer of this same piece for [XXXX journal] and not a word was changed based upon several thorough reviews. I therefore accepted the task of a reply for Organization Science, a difficult task, since my own work as well as that of Joanne Martin and Martin Kilduff (not to mention brief shots at Clegg and others) was I thought gross and ridiculous. I chose not to do the short reply of a few pages since I would have resorted to a polemic against a polemic (in my view) and instead came back with a manuscript length essay on December 7, 1998. Ultimately Stan Deetz did the reply and did a good job of it.

But, in doing the longer essay and in doing this great new essay on narrative ethics, I have learned some self-reflective lessons about my own style. Lessons I hope are apparent in the revision and I not I admit I have more to learn. I also checked my work as I went along by having Philosophers Steven Best and Douglas Kellner read the first essay to make sure I got the parts about Nietzshe, Foucault, and Derrida correct. They write extensively about the "science wars." I also got comments from Joanne Martin and Martin Kilduff comparing my responses with the original essay. In short, I worked hard on the first essay and as hard on this second one.

I also learned patience. I submitted the original manuscript OS99-1034 December 7, 1998 and received a letter from an acting managing editor acknowledging receipt that was dated February 24, 1999 (and did not get the actual review after March 3^rd, 2000). I need not remind you the February 24^th, 1999 letter stated "It is the Organization Science policy to complete the first round of reviews within three months of forwarding the paper to the Senior editor." As far as I can tell this did not happen, since I did not get reviews until some 16 months after I submitted the first manuscript. As the article was reassigned to several consulting editors, this took more time. But, since I am an editor of a journal, I know that these things happen. But, maybe the wait was worth it and the tons of books I read to trace the various mis-quotes and context stripped quotes about various postmodernists was a learning experience. As was this new exploration much deeper into narrative ethics than I had been before.

I did not receive any reviews of the manuscript until the week of March 1^st, 2000. And it was hard to wait. The letter from Bart Victor is dated December 3^rd, 1999. I suspect the Christmas mail lost my reviews and I will get the originals sometime after I retire from a postal courier. Please explain to the reviewers that it was not I but the post office that caused such delay.

I also want to note that the Richard Weiss article to which my first essay was a reply, was not (based on reviewer comments) sent to the reviewers. My essay was therefore a bit hard for them to follow. I had assumed that since I was sent the essay, the reviewers would have it in front of them. Never assume. They had to stick to my side of the telling of the Weiss piece. Also reviewers could not read highlighted sections in the appendices that I provided.

The bad news is that much much time went by between my initial submission and the receipt of the reviews and now this reply. The good news is the reviews provided me excellent feedback and a challenge to forget Weiss and write the essay on the topic of narrative ethics in modern and postmodern science.

I am enclosing this new and I think improved article. Ironically, I am glad that the first piece did not see the light of day, because I agree with editors and reviewers, that the new slat will make a bigger splash to a wider audience.

Thank you for reading my too long story and reviewing my manuscript. But some stories merit a telling and you are my audience for this one. Best of luck as new editor of Organization Science.

Sincerely,

David M. Boje

Professor of Management

Thank you for your review dated December 3, 1999. Unfortunately, due to the Christmas mail postal disaster, I never received them, until Andrea Canfield at OS, was kind enough to fax me a second copy on March 2^nd, 2000. I would apologize for the delay, but I do not run the post office.

In my revision, I responded to the critique you and three reviewers made, by (1) staking out an ethical critique in a more general context of narrative ethics implications for OS, and (2) making narrative ethics the foundation of the paper rather than a specific critique of the Weiss work. As you say the Weiss focus is off-putting and I did not want to create yet another polemic response to polemics. And as you indicate there is a time lag between the publication dates of the Weiss paper and this one.

I agree with your gamble that the Weiss paper "will not have the historical impact necessary to carry so directly into the readers' awareness." The review I made to the paper is therefore substantial and hardly mentions Weiss at all. I did not however, ignore the challenges to postmodern organization science (POS) that Weiss raised. I merely located them in wider critiques. I did the fundamental revision you requested.

As you state the new paper can pick up the "point of view on ethics in critique to be played out in our literature." I am glad that "the challenge of applying narrative ehtics to our works was compelling for both reviewers" and as you say "daunting as a charge."

I appreciate that "reviewers like(d) the technique of (my) work." I kept the JoHari window and the ground rules for reliability and validity (with revisions) from the original essay.

The manuscript is 20% shorter than the original. I made the paper more accessible in style by dropping the ten Tamara storytelling formula.

In sum, the revised manuscript keeps to a focus on narrative ethics that would bridge MOS and POS to yield interdisciplinary results. I did an extensive review of postmodern ethics as well and narrative ethics in the revision.

Thanks for your feedback, I think the paper works better and will affect, I hope, a wider audience.

David

I apologize for the U.S. mail system that somehow did not deliver me your reviews, first sent December 3, 1999. This year the post office lost a good deal of mail in the Christmas rush. I received your reviews on March 3^rd by re-mail.

Thanks for reading the manuscript several times and I am elated that you like it. I have changed the theme in this version to improving the dialogue about postmodernism and modernism in organization science (OS). I focused the revision on applying narrative ethics to one's own work and the work of others. While the "correlate mapping" was a way to walk through the logic of the Weiss text, I agreed with the reviewers and editors that I should make narrative ethics the focus and not the Weiss critique. I am sorry that you did not have access to the Weiss article. Since it is a long time since it and this essay, it is another reason to make the focus narrative ethics. I am also apologetic about the color highlighter of the Xerox version of the appendix. No appendix this round and no highlighter. Here are responses to your specific suggestions.

1. I reorganizing the paper into a n introduction that describes its purpose.

• "The purpose and contribution of this article is to initiate a theory of narrative ethics that can be applied to one's own work and to the work of others. I see narrative ethics as a method of inquiry suitable for both MOS and POS and as a way to get beyond to polemics so that interdisciplinary work can continue. Finally, promoting the interdisciplinary theory of narrative ethics in OS method, theorizing and pedagogy is a contribution to OS." Rather than warm up to correlate mapping I dropped it. Instead I focused on elucidating postmodern and narrative ethics and developing a theory of narrative collective memory.

1. I agree the paper needs a clearer architecture and logic. In the beginning is a section that reads, "This essay is structured in five sections. First, brief review of ethics in modern and postmodern writing. Second, a modified JoHari window is presented to point out the advantages of looking to the blind spots of MOS and POS. Third, I expand the call to move beyond the polemics of MOS versus POS (and vice versa) theorizing. Fourth, the implications of a NE for theorizing OS are explored. Fifth, implications for writing and reading applied OS texts with accountability for narrative ethics are explored." The logic is to build from postmodern ethics to narrative ethics (a hybrid of mod and post) to the advantages in JoHari and the applications to theory and practice in the final sections.
2. I agree the first essay did not take the space to develop the core ideas of narrative ethics. This I do in the first section of the paper. I then extend the implications of an interdisciplinary view (MOS and POS) to narrative ethics in the other four sections of the essay.
3. You asked for a stronger link between the JoHari window and narrative ethics. I developed some narrative ethics examples using work done in the medical narrative ethics field and made a number of extensions to organization studies. Of course, the hospital is already a subject of organization studies, but you do not find medical ethics trickling into org. studies. I moved the p. 6 explanation of JoHari to the front and clarified JoHari more as quested. You are right it is the blind spots that motivate the paper and my writing.
4. I dropped appendix A. I included it originally so one could trace my steps in the first analysis of the Weiss article.
5. I decided to drop the Tamara and Dualism Machin. It was more of a fit to the earlier essay and gets us into anotehr section, for which there is not the space.
6. Item 2 on your list of points. I made the paper less generic and less centered on a dialogue with Weiss. As you and the other reviewers and editor suggested.
7. Item 3 in your list. Glad you liked the internal reliability section and external validity points. I have adapted a special reading of Guba and Lincoln. I also decentered the development from the Weiss essay.

Thanks for your feedback. I found it most helpful in developing this revision. I hope you like the new architecture and the focus on narrative ethics.

Thanks for your feedback on my paper. I too am hostile (skeptical) of much of what is called post-modernism, even in my earlier work on the topic. And I agree that Weiss is unproductively polemic and noting my restraint and attempts at civility. Here are responses to your specific points and suggestions.

1. I agree that my attempts at rigorous display are a distraction. I took them out and restarted the paper at p. 3 which I think works a lot better as a good attention getter and opener. I took the advice of reviewers and editor and dropped the Weiss critique to make the paper appeal to a wider audience.
2. I agree that there is not a resemblance between chaos, complexity and relativity theory on the one hand and Derrida, Foucault on the other, with one exception. Paul Cillier (1998) has done an excellent job as a information theorist of reading both Derrida and Lyotoard to point out connections between modern and postmodern, between complexity and particular strands of postmodern. What is unique aobut the work is it is not taking all of postmodern (poststurualism) ubt just a fiew precise arguments. Anyway, I clarified in this section and revised it to show that the postmodern perspective as it applies to the physical science was one in which ethics was brought into play. I also agree with your assessment that not many "real scientists" accept the postmodern call for ethics, but there are some that do. I hope more will. And I do think in the areas of Bioethics and ecological sciences, there is more dialogue than perhaps in other fields.
3. I sharpened my call to restore nuance and context. I agree that Weiss avoids reading nuance and in doing so gets the meaning wrong. Well said. The issue is more complex than Weiss allows (I agree). Since I dropped Weiss as a focal point, I responded by including other examples of prototypical pomophobic polemics. I then try to work past these, including showing some nuances in modern their where for example representation and the "mirror" are also challenge by certain critical modern approaches.
4. Your point about the epistemology of postmodern authorizing any claim to truth-value for their political position is a difficult one for me to respond to. I swim in those waters. Yet, this new essay has taken me into lots of deep self-reflection about my own polemics. I would like to take back some claims I have published, that were too polemic and too political, and probably did not create dialogue. Foucault is to the left politically, though in his later work Technology of Self) he returns to Enlightenment and to some universal claims it would seem. And as you say both Foucault and Derrida fluctuate between right and left. Since the new central theme is more on narrative ethics than tracing the specifics of Foucault and Derrida positions, I did not develop the differences in the pomo politics. I did try to show that various postmodern rendering end up quite polemic. Best and Kellner (1997) from whom I get most of my training, make the point that Baudrillard and Lyotard are quite radical. I also use Newton (1995) to create a middle ground for narrative ethics, who is quite against de Man, but not so dismissive of Derrida. Finally, I did attempt a brief (as space would allow) response to your points. "On the other side of the debate is the charge that Derrida as well as Foucault have claimed widely different political positions in their various writngs. Foucault was more politically to the left in his critiques of the prison and the clinic, but more universalistic in his latter writing. Many modernist are skeptical of postmodernism, for it so-called arbitrary value positions and for not taking more consistent and even more definite political stands. A well know issue among radical feminists, for example, is the challenge that deconstruction deconstructs everything, including universalist claims, that are necessary for feminist critique. Entrenched positions will not be moved on this point." I will follow up this idea in another paper at another time. It is not something that can be dealt with succinctly in the space allowed.

Thank you for your comments and ideas. I found them quite helpful in my revision.

Thank your for your comments. I obviously did not convince you of my intent to be balanced in the first version of the essay. I hope this version will be closer to the mark. It is not only that there is balance between POS and MoS, but within each as well. That may be a topic for another paper. But there are significant cleavages, for example, between skeptical and affirmative postmodernist, each accusing the other of all kinds of things, some right and some off the mark. I do think that there are particular strands of perspectives that do allow some balance without surrendering what is best in each.

I heeded your advice and decided not to carry on the "battle" and "debate" with the Weiss article. And there are (a few) things brought out in Weiss that need to be responded to and merit some self-reflection on the part of postmodernists.

In terms of your comments about the training of reviewers and the duty of reviewers to call attention to misappropriations and misinterpretations about others' fields, I must admit I was a reviewer of this same Weiss essay for another journal. I did offer many of the same critiques and was ignored.

In terms of your comments on rigor, I think the eight internal and external validity guidelines add some rigor to the work and to the review process.

I agree that the early part of the paper is overly detailed and does not help. I dropped it as well as the various story correlative propositions. The framework was too dense. I appreciate the work it took to plow through that framework. My apologies for the irksome notation system.

I have recomposed the essay, and developed an organization to the essay which I think is more accessible.

In terms of new conceptual insight, what I propose is a narrative ethics, which combines aspects of modern and postmodern narrative. Perhaps the most basic contribution is to argue that the middle is where the action is. At least for me a reach across the middle is a stretch.

Thank you for your comments. I hope that my new structure for the paper and the more pronounced focus on narrative ethics will be a much easier read and show a certain contribution to organization science.

Thanks.

David M. Boje