What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear
what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being
determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this,
many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and
clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark
argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change,
if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily
discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth
are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the
benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. Stark
makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies
attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and
postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after
the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank
whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of
competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that
made it easier for the company to change and deal with market
uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations"
provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the
dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.
