Organizational Necrosis Autopsy: How Extremist Openness Can Threaten Open Organizing

Margaux Langlois

doi:10.37725/mgmt.2024.7594

Margaux Langlois Department Organization, Management and Human Resources, ESSCABoulogne-Billancourt, France; and PSB Research Lab – Axe IDTSE, Paris School of Business (PSB), Paris, France https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8964-9599

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.2024.7594

Keywords: Open organizing, Closure, Critical management studies, Metaphor, Extremism

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 depersonification, 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.

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Author Biography

Margaux Langlois, Department Organization, Management and Human Resources, ESSCABoulogne-Billancourt, France; and PSB Research Lab – Axe IDTSE, Paris School of Business (PSB), Paris, France

Margaux Langlois holds a PhD in management from Université Paris Dauphine-PSL. Her research focuses on alternative and new forms of organization (open organizations, liberated company, holacracy, sociocracy, etc.) that are in line with a more democratic approach of work, which she studies using a critical perspective. Before her PhD, Margaux Langlois worked as project manager, as consultant and as HR manager. These professional experiences contribute to enrich her research.

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