Part II: How Can We Represent Processes? Toward A Theory Of Process Representation
7.3 Grammar and Organizational Process
7.3.4 Organizational and Institutional Structures Provide Constraints and Affordances
Grammatical constraints are often expressed as rules for combining the elements of a lexicon. Without constraints, words in any order could be a sentence, any set of line segments could be a polygon, and any sequence of nucleic acids could be DNA. In each field where grammatical models have been applied, there is a clear set of constraints on what is and is not a proper instance of the set. Furthermore the hypothesized origin and nature of these constraints forms the basis of explanations of why certain patterns exist and others do not. Constraints form the basis for disconfirmable theory: if one observes patterns that violate a hypothesized constraint, that hypothesis can be disconfirmed. These
hypotheses are often expressed as phrase structure rules (Black and Wilensky 1979;
Gazdar et al. 1985) that specify the allowable combinations of syntactic constituents and other lexical items.
In organization theory, constraints on action are often thought of as rules (e.g., Drazin and Sandelands 1992). While the arguments against rule-following mentioned above would seem to preclude any rule-based grammar of organizing, that would be a hasty and incorrect conclusion. This is because grammars do not predict particular patterns or actions; the rules in a grammar do not ''determine''anything. Rather, they generate the set of possibilities for the agents in the situation. As a result it is helpful to think in terms of constraints and
affordances (Gibson 1982; Norman 1988; Pentland 1992), rather than thinking of rules. This implies a shift away from deterministic, rule-like statements, toward an articulation of what is feasible in a given situation. This shift is logically equivalent to that suggested by Mohr (1982) in his distinction between variance models and process models. In Mohr's terms, a variance model implies a necessary and suffcient relationship between an antecedent and a
consequent condition. In a process model, the antecedent condition is necessary but is generally not suffcient; in other words, it creates the possibility of the consequent but does not guarantee it. For this reason grammatical models are an example of the kind of process models described by Mohr (1982). As long as one keeps this distinction in mind, one can still express constraints and affordances in terms of rules, as in Salancik and Leblebici (1988).
One of their rules for food service transactions states that a meal must be cooked before it is eaten. Note that this rule does not obligate anyone to eat a meal just because it has been cooked; it merely points out that reversing the sequence is impossible.
Because of the importance of structure in organization theory, we have an extensive
vocabulary about constraints and affordances, as suggested in the following examples. Like any set of idealized analytical categories, they may combine in practice.
Institutional Structures The general idea of identifying constraints and affordances on action is a familiar aspect of institutional theory (Commons 1950; Jepperson 1991). It is also a central part of Giddens's (1984) concept of structure, where rules are conceptualized as resources for action. One can explore the implications of various institutional arrangements for the configuration of various kinds of transactions (Leblebici et al. 1991). Under different institutional regimes, one should observe different sequences. In some sense the whole idea of ''a trip to the supermarket''is a reflection of the institutional structures surrounding
agriculture, food distribution, and the social division of labor in an industrialized economy. On a more concrete level, the range of acceptable means of payment (credit cards, food
stamps, etc.) reflects specific institutional arrangements that may vary from setting to setting.
Technological Structures Norman (1988) offers an analysis of how the physical properties of technical artifacts affect the actions of users. In organization theory, technology is an important source of structure (Orlikowski 1992). Of course, technological constraint does not imply technological determinism. As Barley (1986) showed, the same technical system can result in different patterns of social interaction. Technology accounts for one of the most visible changes in American supermarkets in recent years: the introduction of universal product code scanners. This new technology eliminates the need for cashiers to type in the prices of most items. Note that if we were studying the inventory process, or the marketing process, the implications of this technological innovation would be even more significant.
Coordination Structures There are also a wide variety of constraints that emerge because of different kinds of interdependencies between actions (Malone et al. 1993). In addition to sequential constraints (e.g., step A must be completed before step B), there may be usability or simultaneity constraints on the steps of a process. Interdependencies are often introduced by the particular technology being applied in a situation; as technology changes, the degree of interdependence and the ability to manage it may change, as well. Because they explicitly affect the timing and sequence of steps in a process, coordination constraints may be a particularly interesting source of grammatical hypotheses. In a supermarket one finds a variety of sequential dependencies, such as needing to select items before you bring them to the checkout line.
Cultural Structures Cultural structures operate at many levels in an organization, including the level of appropriate behavior (Schein 1985). Culturally based norms and expectations place a great many constraints on what moves are possible, and on the appropriate sequence of moves in a given situation. While these constraints are pervasive in social interactions, they are also the most subject to strategic flaunting. As Heritage (1984) suggests, one can reconstitute the meaning of a situation by explicitly violating a rule like, ''greet only acquaintances.''In the supermarket, cultural norms govern interactions with the cashier and other customers.
Constraints and their sources should be especially interesting to organization theorists because of our interest in problems of stability and change (Gersick 1991; Leblebici et al.
1991). Depending on how the rules of organization are grounded, one would expect very
different properties in terms of persistence, volatility, and so on. For example, a rule or a lexical item that is grounded primarily in a technological feature of a process subject to very abrupt revision if that technology undergoes a major change. The disruption of organizational forms resulting from technological innovation (Tushman and Anderson 1986) could be potentially be analyzed in these terms. However, a rule that has a cultural basis may persist regardless of technological changes, or it may change only slowly.
Example We are now ready to continue our supermarket example with a set of grammatical rules that embody the constraints and affordances on the process. Table 7.2 shows a generic phrase structure grammar for a trip to a suburban supermarket.
Table 7.2: Generic phrase structure grammar for a trip to a suburban supermarket Trip arrive, select items, check out, leave.
Arrive park car, get cart.
Select items [(pick item, put in cart), . . .].
Check out unload cart, ring up items, pay, bag items.
Leave wheel cart to car, unload cart, (return cart), start car, drive away.
This example has been deliberately simplified so that the general ideas will be as clear as possible. At this level of generality the rules embody combinations of technological, institutional, cultural, and coordination constraints; it is diffcult to isolate pure examples of each category. A more detailed description of the process of payment (e.g., credit card validation or check approval) would start to reveal clear technological structures, for example.
In figure 7.2, the arrow symbol is read as ''consists of.''The arrows are not
''condition–action''or ''if–then''rules; they imply sequence but not causality. Thus the first rule states that a trip to the supermarket consists of 'arrive', 'select items', 'check out', and 'leave'.
Each of these can be considered a syntactic constituent for the shopping trip, and is further decomposed in the subsequent rules. The process of selecting items, for example, consists of an indefinite number of repetitions of 'pick item'and 'put in cart'. One could further
elaborate the process of picking an item to include comparison shopping, and so on.
Similarly the check out process has a set of constituents that could be further elaborated to describe various forms of payment. Finally, one can indicate optional steps, such as ''return cart''in the rule for leaving. By using these simple rules, one can describe a limited variety of different ''trips to the supermarket''that differ mainly in the number of items selected. By adding more rules to describe alternative forms of payment, special requests at the meat counter (an alternative way to 'pick item'), one can describe a more complex set of transactions.
The grammar in figure 7.2 represents a set of hypotheses about the sequential structure of trips to the supermarket. One could test these hypotheses against actual observations of trips to various supermarkets. By coding observations in terms of the relevant lexicon, one could quite easily determine whether these rules capture the observations. In doing so, one might discover that suburban supermarkets systematically violate certain parts of the pattern.
These violations would suggest revisions to the grammar, which could then be tested again.
If one restricted one's attention to supermarkets, the results of this line of inquiry would be a detailed but rather boring ''theory of supermarkets.''
If one looked at other kinds of retail sales transactions, however, the questions one might ask start to get more interesting. For example, how can one describe and explain the differences between a traditional country store, where the clerk picks items for the customer, and the modern supermarket? What about differences between clothing stores (where items are routinely ''tried on''to test their usability), and food stores, where ''trying''items might be
considered petty theft? One might also be interested in exploring the differences between a regular retail store and mail order. In short, there are many ways to organize the process of retail sales that depart systematically from the basic supermarket model. Grammatical models provide a way to state explicit hypotheses about these sequential processes and test them against empirical data.
So far, the concepts we have explored have been generic to any kind of grammar, whether linguistic or otherwise, and they seem to map quite well as process descriptions. In addition, there are a number more specific concepts and hypotheses that derive from Chomskian generative grammar (Newmeyer 1983; Cook 1988). They are not part of the definition of grammar per se, but given the dominance of the Chomskian perspective, concepts like deep structure have become a part of the grammatical metaphor in general and have started to emerge in the organizational literature (Gersick 1991; Drazin and Sandelands 1992). To a large extent, these additional concepts revolve around the hypothesized nature of constraints on human language: the so-called language faculty (Chomsky 1986). It is worth noting that Chomsky himself would be the last person to advocate extending these specifically linguistic ideas beyond their source domain. Despite this, these linguistic hypotheses seem to have drawn the most heated objections in the debates over the applicability of grammar to social action. Thus, for the sake of clarity and completeness, it is important to consider these additional connotations of the grammatical metaphor quite closely.