ABSTRACT
Whatever happened to human agency in organizational analysis? Although never entirely disavowed or forgotten, there has been a tendency to marginalize the presence and significance of human agency in both ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’ studies of organization. In the mainstream, the neglect of human agency stems from an assumption that environmental and/or organizational contingen cies determine human behaviour in organizations (e.g. Donaldson 1985, Hannan and Freeman 1989). The marginalization of agency is paralleled in radical studies of organization. In labour process analysis, for example, Braverman (1974) and others (e.g. Edwards 1979) have followed the mature Marx’s (1867/1976: 92) methodol ogical injunction to ‘deal with individuals only insofar as they are the personification of economic categories, the bearers of particu lar class relations and interests’. In both mainstream and radical traditions, there is a strong inclination to represent human behaviour as an effect of external forces. Minimal consideration is given to the role of human agency in the enactment of social and organizational reality.
