Something happened: Spectres of organization/disorganization at the airport

Abstract

The article explores the practical accomplishment of organization at an international airport during the course of a number of ‘security alerts’ that disrupted routine ‘modes of ordering’ (Law, 1994). Airports, we suggest, invite us to re-think ‘organization’ as the partial, contingent and always-incomplete outcome of complex order(ing)s and disorder(ing)s played out across various spaces, agencies and materials. When ‘something happens’ we begin to see how spaces, agents and materials are subject to unexpected becomings: objects appear treacherous, spaces mutable, agencies ineffectual and informants unreliable. Following the work of Weick we might say that in such moments of uncertainty we are forced to reconsider our customary ways of thinking about objects, subjects and systems. We argue this thinking requires a relational understanding of organization so that we can better grasp how organizations are continuously being made and un-made through an on-going co-creation and dispersal of parts.

The Materiality of Absence: Organizing and the case of the incomplete cathedral

“…This paper has sought to explore the dynamic and persistent nature of organizing, how it is made possible through absences and incompleteness, rather than presence and plenitude of things. In so doing, we add to the extant literature on materiality and space (see, e.g., Taylor & Spicer, 2007;Dale & Burrell, 2008;Decker, 2014;O'Doherty et al, 2013;Knox et al, 2015;Petani & Mengis, 2016). We add to these studies by suggesting that a sociological attention to the material should be prompted by an inversion in the theorizing effort that moves away from a search for the physical presence of the material to explore the emptiness of absences, triggering movements and dynamism that are always open-ended and providing a condition of possibility for (and the persistence of) organizing (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002).…”

“…For example, the absent presence of terror in the airport's organization is objectified (i.e. anchored to particular objects) and expanded through various "materials, agents and spaces" (Knox et al, 2015(Knox et al, , p. 1012).…”

“…But as multiple intentions were questioned and interrogated by their planners, they revealed the gaps in between them and the impossibility for these gaps to be filled. the individuals' attempt to compensate, fill or objectify the void as they experience it (as in the 'lost spaces' by Petani and Mengis, 2016, or in the 'absent presences' of terror in Knox et al, 2015). Rather absence produces effects because of the impossibility to fill the void, and the lack that material forms persistently entails, which is left empty from presence (remaining therefore a 'present absence' - Figure 8).…”

“…We therefore use the term 'present absences' to highlight that absence produces organizing effects not simply because, at some point, it comes to be filled with presence, and therefore is somehow objectified (as for the 'absent presence' of the object 'terror' in Knox et al, 2015), but also because of the lack that material forms persistently entails. This 'present absence' unfolds in between the contested representations of the cathedral, as their planners interrogate their rationalities and attempt to make them present.…”

Dark organizational theory

“…Critical work takes this same format. Extensive thick description prepares the ground for the penultimate 'reveal' where the organization changes, all at once, in its entirety (see Knox et al, 2015). To use the classical language of illusion popularized by Christopher Nolan's film…”