Organizational Necrosis Autopsy: How Extremist Openness Can Threaten Open Organizing

Abstract

Existing research highlights the imperative nature of addressing inherent tensions when implementing organizational openness, necessitating actors to navigate explicit or implicit emergent closure mechanisms. However, certain literature warns against the absolute conception of openness prevalent in academic and practical spheres. This article thus explores what occurs in organizations that eschew closure mechanisms in favor of openness. I draw on the ethnographic inquiry of Managers du 21e siècle, a non-profit organization championing openness as a pivotal organization tenet, whose existence has come under threat amidst escalating crises. The metaphor of organizational necrosis serves to highlight that an extremist pursuit of open principles can hamper action by fostering depersonalization, to align with extremist open values, and triggering disempowerment, through strategies that deflect conflicts of value. My first contribution emphasizes the detrimental repercussions of an extremist openness paradigm on organization sustainability. The second explores how medical metaphors can assist in grasping organizational decline.