Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Drawing Lines in Organization Studies

Abstract

We argue that when considering questions of ontology in organization studies, much can be gained by issuing reminders of the normative conditions by which meanings are fixed. In attempting to fix meaning and the conditions of meaning epistemologically, however, critical realist and social constructionist positions tend to eschew such normative considerations and assert instead how the fixity of meaning is related to causal powers on the one hand, or to discursive habit on the other. In both cases there is an urge to extend from, and somehow complete, organizational experience by drawing what we call general lines. The critical realists do this by distinguishing the necessary from the contingent, the social constructionists by arguing language goes all the way through making such a distinction impossible. Enlisting arguments and concepts from Heidegger and Wittgenstein, as well as discussing the illustrative case of the rights and wrongs of cigarette production, we suggest an alternative normative framing for questions of meaning in which necessity and contingency cohabit, something we liken to the drawing of local lines.