Expressions and Emotions

Abstract

Until recently, as has been argued in this book, the existence of organizations has been taken for granted, and the behavior that occurs within them has been thought to be dominated by rational, goal-directed, and instrumental behavior (it is work, after all, not play). Almost all of the models that researchers have constructed to explain organizational behavior accept this objectivist view. But the stories that researchers, as well as organizational actors, tell about their experiences in organizations consistently contradict these models. This chapter challenges these models and starts with the stories, everyday stories, that in most contexts would have been easy to ignore, but at Midwest, it was necessary to account for their presence and prevalence. I specifically use the phenomenon of stories and their relationship to meetings at Midwest to challenge the instrumental/expressive dichotomy that has been so influential in directing or thinking about organizations and communities.¹

Organizations keep people busy, occasionally entertain them, give them a variety of experiences, keep them off the street, provide pretexts for storytelling, and allow socializing. They haven’t anything else to give.

Karl Weick

The Social Psychology of Organizing (1979:264)

... if I am at all fundamentally right in what 1 am saying, then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds, whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones.

Gregory Bateson

Mind and Nature (1979:13)