The Collective Repression of `Pathos' in Organization Studies

Abstract

This paper analyses, from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the specific way in which rationalist utilitarianism has influenced both organizational practices and the experts' way of thinking about organizations from the birth of the discipline until the rise of organizational symbolism in the 1970s. The hegemony of the rationalist paradigm—it is argued—led the scientific community to a sort of collective repression of the expressive dimensions of organizational life. The forms of this repression and the expedients adopted to reduce the cognitive dissonance created by this kind of blindness are explored.