Public Administration and Epistemology

Experience, Power and Agency

Arthur Sementelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000328516
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Knowledge does not happen in a vacuum, yet scholars and other professionals tend to engage in management scholarship focused on their specific niche often without knowing if or how their work might relate to other research streams. Further exacerbating things, people within specific disciplines, including management, tend not to communicate regularly outside of their relatively homogeneous audiences. If we were able to bridge communication among these groups, scholars, and practitioners, we might be able to better understand one another in a way that is contextually informed by each other's experiences.

Sementelli argues that understanding concepts of power, agency, and experience can provide such tools to orient management theories and practices relative to one another. Using critical management thought to frame a discussion of ontology and how knowledge emerges from it enables the development of an orienting "sandbox" that works both practically and intellectually. Such a "sandbox" enables us not just to communicate one's organizational priorities but also reveal some underlying reasons for those priorities and areas of inquiry. This monograph focuses on public administration in particular as a special case of critical management research.

This book also examines the complexity of experiences (of being) using Karl Jaspers as a basis. The sandbox that emerges can be used as a way to organize and orient management thought, especially in the public sector. It contributes both to administrative thought and applied inquiry into philosophy and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of critical management studies, organizational studies, and public administration.

Part I
The Frame

1
A Question of Experience

Jaspers and Key Concepts

Understanding the gradations of experience and key concepts being discussed is essential for the reader. Drawing from The Matrix as an example, Cypher (IMDB, 2016), a character that escaped the Matrix, living an arguably authentic existence with all the illusions of society literally stripped away, chooses to return to the Matrix. The scene itself captures some of the tensions that exist among modes of existence as expressed by Karl Jaspers. Cypher reached a transcendent state that was free of illusion, experienced great anxiety, and ultimately decided to return to the fabricated society of the Matrix to live as a human battery. The cost for his return is quite high as he turns on his allies in his attempt to return to the normal state of consciousness of those people existing in the Matrix. This example will also highlight a common theme regarding the concepts of limit situations, boundary events, and how people ultimately cope with them.

Introduction

Public administration has been “claimed” by political scientists, who commonly miss the managerial aspects of the profession. It has been claimed by business, which often misses the public or political aspects. Public administration currently has a number of tactically focused scholars and practitioners, who are most concerned with micro-level processes. Public administration also has others who wrestle with macro-level theories and practices. So, we have a breadth of coverage across disciplines, levels of analysis, and philosophical perspectives, including different approaches to understanding the world, people, processes, and structures.

This baked-in complexity seems to defy attempts to organize managerial thought. Simultaneously, managerial thought appears increasingly focused on empirical approaches that seek to understand increasingly small elements of either systems dedicated to finance, marketing, and risk with less emphasis on managing people. We are left with a diverse body of scholarship in managerial research that simultaneously appears to downplay the role of management itself. Using one of the most basic definitions, both scholarship and practice have tended to favor research on managing things rather than on managing people. This is not to say there are not reasons to manage things, but one of the most complex, challenging, and ultimately rewarding aspects of management involves the experience of managing people.

With these seemingly divergent approaches being pursued, wouldn’t the situation almost demand some sort of frame to organize managerial thought? Couldn’t such a frame even be grounded in a philosophical system? Considering an ontologically grounded space that captures these divergent approaches to management both dynamically and relative to one another could be beneficial. In this sense, the frame I am proposing functions as a conceptual sandbox of the theories and practices of public administration and management. The sandbox proposed ultimately focuses on the experience of managing people as a mechanism to reintroduce conversations about the human elements of management. It will begin to locate these seemingly divergent schools of thought in relation to each other, sorted by a few concepts. In this sense, the sandbox can serve as a Rosetta stone that could open communication among the variety of divergent perspectives on public administration and management.

Jaspers’ Primer

Jaspers was a German philosopher and psychologist. This is important because Jaspers’ work is heavily influenced by both, making it a natural fit for an organizationally informed approach. Jaspers was uncomfortable being labeled as an existential philosopher and conducted research in multiple areas beyond psychology and philosophy. Despite his protests to such labeling, it makes sense to view Jaspers as an existential philosopher since underlying his work is a focus on experience and communication. It would be wise to take the additional step and not attempt to generalize Jaspers’ research agenda to mainstream discussions of existential thought. Using it in context simply works, and it would be distracting to focus on the nuances of philosophy beyond what is being covered in Chapter 1. The diversity of research agendas is not limited to Jaspers. Philosophers like Husserl (1970) have demonstrated broader research agendas including attempts to bridge phenomenology to existential thought. This monograph by design will focus on specific elements of Jaspers’ research to help provide a basis for the conceptual sandbox being proposed. One of the most important concepts that must be examined first is the refined approach to the experience of life he called “Existenzphilosophie.”

Existenzphilosophie refers to the philosophical system that Jaspers (1971) offered in his 1938 book. Within it, Jaspers discussed a variety of concepts including minimal existence, consciousness, and transcendence. Existenzphilosophie is informed heavily by the work of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kant among others. It differs both practically and substantively from Heidegger’s (1962) work on being. Jaspers refines the notion of Dasein, recasting a single state of being into multiple states of being that cover a range of life experiences. Existenzphilosophie encompasses “being” in a minimal, superficial sense, which someone might also understand as basic survival (dasein). There is also “being” in an empirical sense which might best be described as an existence of normal or professional participation in a society (consciousness in general). Such people are identified as craftsmen, scientists, or other skilled professionals using the term “consciousness” in general. Jaspers also discusses “being” in an expansive or transcendental sense called existenz. Jaspers’ description of existenz shares a number of characteristics with the works of Nietzsche as well as Buddhist thought more generally. In previous research, I have used terms such as base existence, technical existence, and enlightened existence to try and capture the differences among these states of being. Most often the words and implicit categories fall short, as people dynamically move within and among these states of being throughout their lives. It is this dynamism that creates a problem for people most comfortable with logic that claims a linear progression generally. The dynamism is also troubling to those who cleave to a belief that people move from a base life to enlightened life in a linear fashion as often claimed by institutions such as religions. This lack of linearity, this “problem” is the identifying feature that makes elements of Jaspers’ Existenzphilosophie ideal for this exercise since it allows for movement.

In some treatments, people call Jaspers’ “existenz” an “authentic” notion of being or “life.” Please realize authentic in this case refers to the freedom to think, decide, and act. There is no ethical implication that the person who is free to think, decide, or act is in any way “good” or “evil,” nor is one operating Existenzphilosophie generally either good or evil. Existenzphilosophie is focused on a range of experiences graduated by awareness and social influences, which can but does not necessarily always lead to some shift in what someone might see as moral or amoral, good or evil. Consequently, the idea of “the encompassing” (Jaspers, 1955, 1971) serves multiple functions. The encompassing can be “the world, being, and man.” This might appear confusing at first, but if you think of Existenzphilosophie in a manner similar to how Kurt Lewin (1951) looked at change, using field theory as a base for comparison, it might become clearer.

Field theory looked at interactions among individuals and a “total field.” Briefly understood, Lewin was able to express a “snapshot of reality” using mathematics to communicate his perspective. This “snapshot of reality” encapsulated the effects of past, present, and future within a total field using differential calculus. Eventually, Lewin’s understanding of field theory became part of a common in change management through the application of force field analysis. Similar to Lewin (1951), Jaspers (1955, 1971) is looking at a totality of possibilities (i.e., a total field), where each encompassing represents opportunities for interaction among people, life experiences, and the world. These parallel arguments can help us grasp Existenzphilosophie by trying to capture experiences both psychological (Lewin, 1951) and philosophical (Jaspers, 1955, 1971).

Alternatively, consider the following exercise as a sort of thought experiment. There is some entity looking at the totality of life, and this entity wants to look at you a bit more closely. So, the entity takes a sort of cookie cutter or if you prefer, one of the tools used to sample soils or ice. In both cases, you get captured, and in both cases other things get captured as well, including residues from other moments, the environment, and what is being done. That combination, that “total field” reflects the encompassing and presents the possibility for a complex understanding of people.

Experience—Modes of Being

What this means in both theory and practice is that people are not just units, their experiences serve as a base unit of analysis. People are dynamic, social beings, and both their individual and collective experiences can influence the state of being on a moment-to-moment basis. Since dynamism is an a priori assumption, it also means that there are no guarantees that anyone, any individual, or a social group might sustain life in a transcendent mode as presented by Jaspers. Moreover, as there are no explicit ties to “good” or “evil,” or constraints on thought or behavior, a life or a moment in the transcendent mode can provide many opportunities for both choice and action. In practice, this might include great movements toward reason or possibly revolution, depending upon the person, each colored by their experiences, their thought, and their ability to reason.

Next, consider “consciousness in general,” which is part of the two immanent “modes” of the encompassing offered by Jaspers, where consciousness and method are considered to be public and verifiable (Jaspers, 1971). Sometimes it has been identified as an empirical being. In this state of being we find many of the rule-bound tasks in a society, including craftsmen, scientists, and mathematicians. In each example, the profession is bound by rules (i.e., mathematical logic, scientific method, religion, and crafting norms) that limit and identify what is understood as good, right, and proper. The freedom to think and decide is constrained by rules and social processes to bring about some level of conformity of process, alongside some conformity of thought. We get groups of people and individuals who are creative, but not too creative, who know the limits and consequences of actions and fit into societal structures. One might argue consciousness in general is essential to maintain society.

The last part of the immanent modes is what Jaspers called existence, or more specifically ordinary existence (Jaspers, 1971, p. xviii). This notion of “ordinary existence,” called dasein in German, differs substantively from the application used by Heidegger (1962). Jaspers’ (1971) conception focuses on the practical aspects of a survival-based approach to life, including the satisfaction of instincts, needs, and drives. To put it another way, a survival-based, arguably superficial approach to existence affords someone the relative freedom to reason or act with little reflection. The outcome of such a perspective might fit nicely with concepts that include consumer behavior and the consumer society. While the drives themselves might not be public or verifiable, the outcomes of choices made are no less real.

Immanence—Dasein

The first concept associated with immanence that we must examine further is dasein. Dasein basically means “being there,” presence, or existence in English. Dasein is a central concept in Heidegger’s (1962) Being in Time. Jaspers (1955, 1971) also uses the term dasein, albeit in a much narrower, slightly different manner. The differences in interpretation might be from translation, from shifts in thought, or a number of other reasons. The important bit here is that Heidegger’s dasein most often refers to an entity “being there,” while Jaspers’ dasein refers to the experience of being there.

Second, we must tackle the application of dasein more generally. Heidegger (1962), as an example, implies some dynamism and some engagement with the social world. He also uses dasein broadly, as a proxy for all aspects of someone’s social or lived experience. One might infer this was a conscious choice since Heidegger often took greater care with his writing than Husserl (1970) and other Germanic philosophers of the time. Yet it is this choice to use dasein broadly, which ends up being the issue. It raises questions of an objective vs. subjective self, as well as conflating a continuum of experiences one might have under a single umbrella term for being. However, philosophers who use Heidegger have on occasion included attempts to connect to elements of Nietzsche’s work and later to Eastern thought. In practice, the application of Heidegger to Asian thought ends up being limited by word choices, interpretation, and application.

Jaspers, as stated earlier, takes a narrower view of dasein than Heidegger. Recall that Jaspers employed gradations of what existence meant in his work to capture nuances of meaning relative to freedom, thought, and action. As such, Jaspers’ dasein identifies a base or minimal existence, which might be understood to be those that are the “furthest” experiences from one’s “free, authentic (transcendent) self.” As an example of this, consider Marx’s (1867/1984; Marx & Engels, 1998) description of the Lumpenproletariat. If we de-emphasize the normative connotations, we can easily argue that these people are operating within a base experience of life. They have been called everything from miscreants, rags, outcasts, beggars, to peasants and other things. Notice that there is an implicit power disparity and social position associated with these identifiers. We will examine this in detail throughout the book. By narrowing, focusing, and redefining the application of dasein in the experience of life, we get our first gradation of difference. It also forces us to consider other gradations of existence offered by Jaspers as a way to consider the gaps left by narrowing dasein more systematically.

Immanence—Consciousness in General

Jaspers also puts dasein and consciousness in general together under a broader concept translated as immanent existence. Consciousness in general has characteristics that make it remarkably different from his view of dasein. Remember, Jaspers was a psychologist first, so his philosophy is informed by the language and tone of psychology. Consciousness in general often translates to mean “empirical life” or the experiences within science, empiricism, and “trained” professions or trades. Based on Jaspers’ writing, it is both reasonable and possible for people to experience movement from an immanent existence (dasein) into another immanent existence (Consciousness in General) through the incorporation of training and adoption of the logic of science or of a trade while working within the language, experiences, and bounds of a social order. To put it another way, using a common narrative, the miscreants inhabiting the experience dasein can “turn their lives around” and make something of themselves. Whether or not the person stays in that mode of existence is another story entirely.

Transcendence—Existenz

The last major category Jaspers offers us is the mode transcendence....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I The Frame
• Part II Archetypes: The Powerless
• Part III Archetypes: The Powerful
• Part IV Implications and Limits
• Index