Organizing as a mode of existence

This article explores Bruno Latour's innovative perspectives on the study of organisations. It goes back to his speech at EGOS in 1993. In it he asked what the sociology of science could contribute to the study of organisation. For Latour, organisation is achieved through interactions that also consider the artefacts that enable interactions to last and to act at a distance. He introduces the idea that organisation is an act of dispatchment: a human or non-human device that follow a script and the connections it establishes. Later, he defended the idea that we can only speak of ‘organisation’ when we have temporarily ceased to organise. Organisations are ‘ghosts’ that appear when the fact of organising, as a mode of existence, disappears. Organisation is inseparable from disorganisation and reorganisation. Organisational scripts circulate between actors who allocate humans and non-humans to accomplish tasks. He suggests adopting an ethnologist's perspective to trace the phenomenon, while ignoring the metalanguage of economists. Organisation begins with the preparation of a script, using the performative powers of fiction, plans and programmes, and continues with the disorganisation and reorganisation associated with their implementation. For Latour, organisations are the effects of the fact of organising, and not the other way round. This highlights the materiality of the arrangements through which scripts are stacked and articulated.