Feminist-Bureaucratic Control and Other Adversarial Allies: Extending Organized Dissonance to the Practice of “New” Forms1

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the usual contrast between “old” and “new” organizational forms, exploring what happens when postbureaucratic control meets bureaucratic formalization. It develops earlier work on “organized dissonance,” first, by recasting postbureaucratic practice as a hybrid of contrary forms. The paper then situates feminist bureaucracy as a usual, rather than exceptional, case of postbureaucratic practice. Through qualitative analysis, it demonstrates how members of a feminist community merged opposing forms of control to manage three tensions endemic to postbureaucratic organizing: (1) homogeneity–heterogeneity, (2) moral–instrumental aims, and (3) formalized/universal–unobtrusive/particular control. Simultaneously, the analysis models an approach to theorizing organizational forms that moves beyond stylized typologies of structural features and toward grounded frameworks that honor the dialectical texture of communication practice. Ultimately, the paper repositions feminist contributions to the study of organizational form by minimizing claims to distinctiveness, emphasizing shared interests across forms of organizing, and considering what all scholars of form might learn from feminism's rich legacy of “practicing” postbureaucracy.