Kafka's mythology

Kafka's mythology: Organization, bureaucracy and the limits of sensemaking

By
Iain Munro, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Christian Huber, Helmut-Schmidt-University, University of the Federal Armed Forces, Germany

Published in Human Relations, 2012

Abstract
Franz Kafka merits special consideration among the writers of the 20th century for his portrayal of organizational life and the ambivalent character of the social institutions that ostensibly exist to help us. In this article we will draw on his works to enrich our understanding of organizations in three key respects: i) in terms of his creation of a mythology of organization; ii) by developing the concept of ‘counter-mythology’ to extend existing theory on narrative approaches to organization studies; and iii) drawing on these counter-mythologies to expose the limits of sensemaking in organizations. Using Kafka’s counter-mythologies as a framework, this analysis reveals a bias towards plausibility in the existing sensemaking literature, in contrast to which we suggest the development of more counterinductive approaches to the study of organization.

Keywords: communication, identity, myth, organizational culture, organizational theory, sensemaking

Introduction

‘Kafkaesque: . . . (of a situation, atmosphere, etc.) impenetrably oppressive, nightmarish, in a manner characteristic of the fictional work of Franz Kafka.’ (Oxford English Dictionary)

 ‘Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one’s ability to do so.’ (Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice)

This article explores Franz Kafka’s work and its significance for contemporary scholars of organization. In the realm of literary fiction, Kafka is perhaps the 20th Century’s most profound commentator on organizational life, but his works have so far received only sporadic attention in our field (Keenoy and Seijo, 2009; Kornberger et al., 2006; Pelzer, 2002; Warner, 2007). There are already numerous experiments with literature as a resource to enrich our understanding of organizations and to develop novel concepts for the study of organization (Czarniawska, 1999; De Cock, 2000; De Cock and Land, 2005; Gabriel and Griffiths, 2004; Whyte, 1956). The present study will pursue the significance of Kafka’s stories in terms of his development of an ‘organizational mythology’. This builds on the existing work on Kafka within the field and draws extensively on Kafka’s primary texts as well as the exemplary commentaries provided by Adorno (1997 [1967]), Benjamin (1999 [1968]), Canetti (1974), Deleuze and Guattari (1986), and others. This article will develop the concept of ‘counter-mythologies’ in order to enrich existing narrative approaches to organization theory, and it will show how Kafka’s counter-mythologies can be used to explore organizational rationality and, more specifically, the limits of sensemaking in organizations.

Warner (2007) has already introduced the work of this important writer to the study of organization by taking a somewhat biographical approach to this work. In addition to drawing upon relevant biographical and theoretical resources, the present study explores the richness of Kafka’s works themselves. We demonstrate the significance of Kafka’s mythology for scholars of organization in two key respects. First, he develops a dystopian counterweight to managerialist views on organizational rationality by creating a mythology of organization, and more specifically of bureaucracy. It is this position of Franz Kafka’s literary work and its closeness to the Weberian theory of bureaucracy (Warner, 2007) that makes him distinctively interesting to organization studies and the focus of this article. In this respect, this article will develop the concept of ‘counter- mythology’ to extend existing narrative approaches to organization theory. Second, his mythology of organization, and his stories more generally, provide a rich source of material for understanding processes of sensemaking, which extends his critical approach to social relations well beyond the study of bureaucratic organizations. Kafka’s distinctive style highlights the limitations of sensemaking and the variety of traps that one may be drawn into by these very processes. By drawing upon Kafka’s work we are able to problematize the Weickian conception of sensemaking, and thus further develop these key ideas. In this article we argue that Kafka’s work can be under- stood as an original mythology that provides a unique contribution to our understanding of organizations. This contribution is thus twofold, providing a novel inquiry into the significance of mythology for the study of organizations in terms of the concept of ‘counter-mythology’, and then developing a critique of the limits of sensemaking in terms of the counter-mythologies of Kafka.

The article is structured in three main sections: first, we will outline the relationship between literature and organization theory and the significance of the genre of mythol- ogy to this relationship. Second, we will develop the concept of counter-mythology with a focus on the way Kafka’s literary creations exemplify a counter-mythology of organization. And finally, we will explore characteristics of these counter-mythologies in more detail by contrasting the distinctive account of sensemaking given in Kafka’s stories with the Weickian conception of sensemaking, exposing the mythological aspects of this theory and thus highlighting the limitations of the existing sensemaking literature.

Mythology, epistemology and organization

In the present section we will explore the significance of mythology within organization theory. This will begin with an analysis of the relationship between literature and organization theory and then situate the concept of mythology with respect to the existing narrative approaches within this field. The distinctive significance of Kafka’s work will be explained with particular focus on his role as a ‘counter-mythologist’ of organization.

Literature and organization theory
There has been a plethora of different approaches to the use of literature within organization studies, among which mythology has been a relatively under-explored genre. Many scholars have argued that literature can provide rich material for organizational analysis; for example, Beyes (2009) has recommended that literature can be used for the purposes of a ‘symptomatology of society’, and Rhodes (2009: 397) observes that literature can give us insight into the ‘realm of exemplary experience’. Land and Sliwa (2009) have argued that it is precisely the ‘unreality’ of literature that gives utopian novels their value as spaces for experimentation and learning within organization theory. Rhodes and Brown’s (2005: 179) review of narrative approaches to organization theory has argued that narrative methods have a key methodological advantage over other methods because they are able to ‘engage reflexively with the lived experience of work’. Common to such arguments is an appreciation that literary fiction can reveal important truths about organizational life without recourse to the representation of factual events. Narrative approaches to management research can serve a variety of roles within the field of organization theory in terms of ‘complementing, illustrating and scrutinizing logico-scientific forms of reporting’ (Czarniawska, 1999: 23). In her book Writing Management, Czarniawska extends this logic to its extreme, arguing that organization theory is more of a literary genre than it is a scientific discipline. This work proposes that ‘polyphonic realism’ can provide a model for narrative approaches to organizational research, where the ideas and scenarios found in literature do not necessarily serve as accurate models of the world but as sources of ‘inspiration’. Czarniawska explains that polyphonic realism allows the multiplicity of voices that characterize the everyday reality of collaborative projects to be heard, where under such circumstances, ‘[t]he simultaneous presence of contradictory narratives creates a permanent state of paradox’ (1999: 61). This approach to organization theory is precisely the condition of organizational life as it is encountered in the novels and stories of Franz Kafka.

De Cock and Land (2005) have summarized three broad ways in which literature has been appropriated within the field of organization studies: i) the use of literary theory to provide new theories and concepts to enrich organizational analysis; ii) the use of literary genres to provide alternative modes for the presentation of research findings; and iii) the use of literary fiction itself as a tool for illustrating organizational theory. These authors also developed a new category of their own, which entails employing literature for ‘a kind of viral contagion’ between the two domains (2005: 518). The stories of Franz Kafka are particularly relevant for this last type of research, given that few authors of fiction have had such a profound affect on our everyday understanding of organizations, to the extent that Kafka’s own name has itself become an adjective for dysfunctional and oppressive situations. De Cock and Land explain the relationship between literature and organization in the following terms: ‘[literature] gives us other worlds and becomings and does so not by being a copy of the actual world but by extending the virtual tendencies of the given world’ (2005: 526). The approaches developed by Czarniawska (1998, 1999) and De Cock and Land (2005) both explore the ‘virtual tendencies’ of literature in the creation of concepts and new ways of framing the world in which we live. These perspectives on the relationship between the domains of organization studies and literature are particularly apposite for the work of Kafka and his stories about the labyrinthine workings of ostensibly rational organizations. The ‘virtual tendencies’ of Kafka’s stories are precisely the most forceful elements of his stories – the labyrinthine buildings and sets of rules, the animal-becomings, and the everyday misunderstandings between the various characters. It is these virtual tendencies that constitute a ‘mythology’ of bureaucracy, which while being generally complementary to Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, bears its own distinctive characteristics.

For scholars of organization, Kafka stands out among novelists of the 20th century for a number of reasons. Within the field of organization theory, Parker (2005: 160) has observed that Kafka’s works are of central importance to the study of ‘20th Century organizational gothic’, but as yet there has been little sustained analysis of this author within this field. Most importantly, he deals with issues that lie at the heart of the con- temporary study of organization: rationality, bureaucracy, power, resistance/escape, domination and, as we argue in this article, sensemaking. Many commentators have noted that Kafka wrote at the dawn of modernity. Writing in 1934, Walter Benjamin called him ‘a prophetic author’ (1994 [1934]: 462). Kafka has been held up as being an exemplary critic of modernity and a harbinger of post-modern thought. Warner (2007: 1020) remarks that Kafka ‘articulated a reaction of deep “cultural pessimism” . . . derived from the onset of “modernization” (involving more specifically, contemporary organizational structures and processes)’. Litowitz (2002: 104) comments: ‘Although Kafka has been dead for more than 75 years, he is widely recognized throughout Western culture as a “representative man” who captured the anxieties of the modem age . . . and heralded the emergence of postmodernism.’ For the present analysis, Kafka’s importance is his originality as a creator of ‘counter-mythologies’ about organizational life. This article will develop the concept of counter-mythologies, not only to explore the notion of organizational mythology, but also the limitations of sensemaking within organizations.

Mythology in organization theory
Mythology has yet to be fully developed into an analytic concept for the study of organization and management. The crucial importance of myth in understanding social organization has received greater attention in other social sciences such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, history and semiology, in the works of Freud (2002 [1930]), Levi-Strauss (1962), Adorno and Horkheimer (1972 [1944]), Finley (1990), and Barthes (2009 [1957]), to name just a few prominent exemplars. The term ‘myth’ first entered the English language in the 19th century, deriving from the original Greek word, mythos, for fable or story (Williams, 1983). Despite its different usage across a variety of academic disciplines, there is a broad agreement that a myth is a kind of story. In his analysis of the social and epistemological status of ancient Greek myths, Veyne (1988) gave an elementary definition of myth as being information that has been obtained and passed on by somebody else. Other scholars have noted that myths serve a variety of important social and psychological functions, chief among which is that they provide foundation stories that act as guides for action and help us in our search for meaning (Armstrong, 2005; Bowles, 1989; Veyne, 1988). Myths tend to be highly repetitive. The same events may appear in different forms, giving rise to any number of variations (Calasso, 2005; Levi-Strauss, 1978). The existence of different variants of a given myth raises clear problems with respect to the supposed truth value of myths. Levi-Strauss (1955: 436) observed that, ‘[t]here is no one true version of which all the others are but copies or distortions’. Ambiguity is thus a defining feature of myth. Despite this problem, the notion of ‘truth’ remains an important concern for the study of myth. For instance, Levi-Strauss (1978) argued that mythology and history formed a continuum where each is concerned that the future remains faithful to the past. Paul Veyne’s (1988: 15) commentary on ancient Greek myth explains that both history and myth contain their own truths where, ‘truth means many things . . . and can even encompass fictional literature’. Czarniawska (1998) draws upon Veyne’s analysis of mythology in her problematization of the relationship between fact and fiction as a means for better understanding our experience of organizational life. Myths may thus be recognized as having some kind of truth claim, even if they are heavily fictionalized accounts of past events.
Bowles’ (1989) essay on the significance of mythology to organization studies found that where it has been discussed within the literature it has tended to be understood as an entirely negative phenomenon. There is already research within the area of management and organization that has developed the concept of mythology into a positive analytic tool to better understand how organizations work, particularly with respect to the crucial significance of narrative and storytelling within organizations (Gabriel, 2003). In this respect the concept of mythology has been adapted for the analysis of a variety of organizational issues, including the creation of an organizational identity (McWhinney and Batista, 1988), the meaning of modern work (Bowles, 1989), the appeal to an organizational mythology in the management of organizational change (Cummings and Brocklesby, 1997), and the cathartic effects of myths within organizations (Gabriel, 1991). Mythology is closely allied to storytelling as an object of research within management and organization studies (Gabriel, 1991, 2004). As Levi-Srauss has explained, the significance of a myth ‘does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells’ (1955: 430, original emphasis). Gabriel and Griffiths have cautioned that when looked at in terms of mythology, stories from organizational life may appear ‘mundane, lifeless, and unimaginative’ (2004: 123). Kafka’s stories are distinctive in this respect because rather than focusing upon acts of heroism and excellence as did ancient myths, they create an unusual form of mythology out of the mundane events of everyday life both at the workplace and in the family.

Organizational ‘counter-mythologies’
The mythical aspects of Kafka’s work have been discussed by numerous commentators including Adorno (1997 [1967]), Benjamin (1999 [1968]), Calasso (2005) and Deleuze and Guattari (1986). On the whole, these thinkers point out that while Kafka’s stories appear to take on many of the characteristics of myth, they simultaneously undermine and dispel the bourgeois myths under which we are currently labouring. For example, Adorno described Kafka’s stories as a reaction to the enlightenment and ‘to its reversion to mythology’ (1997 [1967]: 268). Adorno argued that Kafka was a rationalist who had attempted to write a ‘corrective’ to the enlightenment myths, such as man’s mastery over nature and its domination through rationality. In this regard Adorno explained that, ‘[t]he variations of myths which were found in his unpublished writings bears witness to his efforts in search of such a corrective’ (1997 [1967]: 268). For example, in Kafka’s variation of the Poseidon myth, he describes the god as a deskbound bureaucrat, whose time is completely absorbed in going over his accounts and occasionally reporting to his boss, Jupiter. Owing to his work commitments this modernized god rarely finds the time to go ‘cruising through the waves with his trident’ and is deeply irritated by the many rumours he hears to the contrary (1999b: 435). Sitting at his desk Poseidon looks forward to the end of the world when ‘there might be a quiet moment . . . [to] make a quick little tour’. Kafka produced many remarkable variations on the ancient myths such as the Tower of Babel (in The Great Wall of China), The Hunter Gracchus, Prometheus, Poseidon and The Silence of the Sirens and much of his work exhibits a similar mythological structure. In this way, Kafka forged a weapon against modern myths of the Enlightenment by using what Adorno termed the ‘reflected image of myth’ (1997 [1967]: 270).

In his extended essay on Kafka, Calasso (2005) shows how the structure of Kafka’s writing bears many of the characteristics of a mythology. Calasso explains that:

As Kafka found his narrative substance in something that preceded even the division of gods and demons, indeed of the powers in general, so the narration itself seems to have gone back with him to the origin of the variants, to that most mysterious of points where every story begins to branch and proliferate, while still remaining the same story. Such branching is the lifeblood of every mythology. (Calasso, 2005: 39)

The animal-becomings in stories, such as The Transformation, A Report to an Academy and Josephine the Songstress or: The Mouse People, provide lines of escape from the organizing myths of the family and the modern bureaucracy. Both Adorno (1997 [1967]) and Deleuze and Guattari (1986: 26) agree that these are by no means optimistic and they do not herald our salvation – we will ‘no longer be saved by culture or by myth’. It is in this respect that Deleuze and Guattari claim that Kafka was concerned with the problem of lines of flight and escape rather than that of liberty. Benjamin’s (1999 [1968]) essay on Kafka also picked up on this underlying theme of escape and the mythological resources that he employs for precisely this purpose. Benjamin describes Kafka’s stories as being part mythology, part fairy tale in which Kafka, ‘inserted little tricks into them; then he used them as proof “that inadequate, even childish measures may also serve to rescue one”’ (1968: 114). His stories employ various mythological devices such as branching stories, metamorphoses, animal-becomings, flight and escape. By incorporating these mythological devices into his tales, Kafka was able to develop counter-mythologies, a warning of the dangers of the bureaucratic forms and ever more rational systems of organization, operating simultaneously on the level of great literature, as a modern fairy tale and as a significant contribution to the art and science of organization.
A key methodological guideline employed throughout this article is taken from Canetti’s own study of Kafka, which observed that:

There are writers, admittedly only a few, who are so entirely themselves that any utterance one might presume to make about them must seem barbarous. Franz Kafka was such a writer; accordingly one must adhere as closely as possible to his own utterances, with the risk that one might seem slavish. (1974: 30)

Following Canetti’s insight we aim to respect the distinction between organization theory and literature, thus preserving some of the quality of Kafka’s unique voice (1). De Cock and Land (2005) have also argued that in order to preserve the insights of the original works, literature must not be subordinated to the demands of ‘organizational theory’, particularly in its more managerialist forms. They are concerned that we are in danger of doing a disservice to the original texts by subordinating literature to the ends of organization theory, which leads them to propose the relationship be investigated in terms of what the two domains might do to each other through a process of mutual contamination (2005: 518). As such, they stress the need to preserve the distinction between the two domains. In the terminology of Deleuze and Guattari (1986) a ‘line of flight’ can be said to pass between literature and organization theory, which in the case of Kafka is characterized by a concern for the victims of prevailing power structures of organizations (2). While recognizing that both literature and organization theory deal with common problems, literature does not have to surrender to the strictures of the social sciences in order for us to learn from it. A second related methodological guideline for this article concerns the difficulties of interpreting his stories. To some extent we agree that Kafka’s biographical context is important, as has been aptly demonstrated by Warner’s (2007) comparison between the lives and works of Kafka and Weber. An early interpreter of Kafka, Walter Benjamin, observed that, ‘his parables are never exhausted by what is explainable; on the contrary, he took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings’ (1999 [1968]: 120). As such, it is hardly surprising that Kafka has spawned so many diverse interpretations (Kundera, 1996). We can draw on Benjamin’s insight in our approach to this work where Kafka himself makes clear that the process of interpretation or sensemaking is itself highly problematic, even in mundane everyday encounters.

The present study will explore the concept of ‘counter mythologies’ as a way of intepreting the mythological aspects of everyday life. In Canetti’s account of Kafka’s Other Trial, a number of common themes are highlighted that appear in both Kafka’s life and literature, without stipulating any simple relationship in either direction. For Kafka, life and literature are not neatly distinguishable realms, and in his letters he explains this relationship in the following way: ‘I don’t have literary interests, I’m made of literature, I’m nothing else and can be nothing else besides’ (Kafka quoted in Calasso, 2005: 117). It is in the intersection and imbrication of life and literature that leads Canetti to describe Kafka as engaged in creating ‘counter-mythologies’. Several other commentators upon Kafka’s work have also remarked upon its ‘counter’ mythological elements, particularly Adorno (1997 [1967]), Benjamin (1999 [1968]) and Calasso (2005). This approach echoes Barthes’ (2009 [1957]: 135) conception of mythologies where he explains that: ‘Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth’. Barthes employed the term ‘counter myth’ to describe literary works that satirized and undermined the prevalent bourgeois myths of their age. Barthes’ analysis revealed the existence of contemporary myths in fragments of everyday discourse, in magazine advertisements, in national stereotypes, in wrestling matches where the roles of good and evil heroes are acted out before the audience, and even in the circulation of scientific ideas in popular culture. He argued that modern myths are a form of depoliticized speech, where colonial history and political struggles are glossed over in what he described as ‘a privation of history’ (Barthes, 2009 [1957]: 178). What is thus historical and culturally contingent appears in mythical form as if it were universal and natural, where ‘the very principle of myth . . . [is that] it transforms history into nature’ (Barthes, 2009 [1957]: 154). Thus, Barthes proposed the use of ‘counter-mythology’ as an effective antidote to these myths and the creation of alternative artificial myths to attack and undermine the dominant mythology. These methodological guidelines may be seen to be an extension of Gabriel’s (2004: 872) pioneering study of organizational mythology, which recommended that, ‘like all myths, [organizational myths] must be approached with suspicion’. Counter-mythologies are something that only literature can produce, where Kafka can be seen as an exemplary exponent of such an approach (3). This form of literature openly confronts the issue of polyphony, creating a parody of dominant social myths and giving voice to the marginalized. We will now show that Kafka is a master of suspicion and explain his own distinctive organizational ‘counter-mythologies’ that he created to better understand our experience of the modern world.

A mythology of bureaucracy: Reality as an error

Whereas Weber’s historical studies developed a theory of bureaucracy, Kafka’s work may be described as a ‘mythology’ of bureaucracy. In Kafka’s work bureaucracy is not simply one system of organizing among others, it is the organization of reality itself. This is clear precisely in the confusion between nomos (social laws) and physis (natural laws) within these stories; for example, in The Trial, the Law of the legal system is treated as if it were a law of nature akin to the law of gravity or magnetism, in which the officers of the Court gravitate naturally towards the guilty. The equation of human conventions with natural law is made at the very start of The Trial:

‘Our officials, so far as I know them, and I know only the lowest grades among them, never go hunting for crime in the populace, but, as the law decrees, are drawn towards the guilty and must then send out us warders. That is the Law. How could there be a mistake in that?’ ‘I don’t know this Law,’ said K. (1999a [1925]: 12)

Barthes (2009 [1957]) described such a view of society, where social rules that are contingent upon history and culture are understood by those who apply them as being universal, natural laws, as the ‘mythology’ of social conventions.
While Kafka seems to be writing about a peculiarly modern, bureaucratic conception of the law, we can find related issues raised by the ancients; take for instance the following description of the operation of the law in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:

all law is universal, and there are some things about which it is not possible to pronounce rightly in general terms; therefore in cases where it is necessary to make a general pronouncement, but impossible to do so rightly, the law takes account of the majority of cases, though not unaware that in this way errors are made. And the law is none the less right; because the error lies not in the law nor in the legislator, but in the nature of the case; for the raw material of human behaviour is essentially of this kind. (Aristotle, 1976: 199)

As in Kafka, we hear the assertion that if there is such a thing as error it cannot be found in the law itself, which is universal and, one might add, infallible. Like Kafka, Aristotle asserts that error exists only in reality, in ‘the nature of the case’, and not in the law. Kafka exaggerates this elementary problematic, so that the case is not only the source of error, but becomes identical with it. This is not merely a literary device but springs from the fact that the Court derives its authority from the law, and to the extent that it identifies with the law, it can admit to no error (4). We are confronted with such situations throughout the texts of Kafka’s novels. Consider, for instance, the following example from The Castle, where the story’s protagonist, K., asks the Superintendent of the Castle whether a mistake might not have been made:

Only a stranger could ask a question like yours. Is there a Control Authority? There are only control authorities. Frankly, it isn’t their function to hunt out errors in the vulgar sense, for errors don’t happen, and even when once in a while an error does happen, as in your case, who can say finally that it’s an error? (Kafka, 2000 [1915]: 66–67)

In this story, as in many of Kafka’s tales, it is difficult for the protagonist to discover whether or not he is the victim of an error, not least because the formal rules of the organization appear to be impenetrable. The authorities are unwilling to reveal the rules, even in the case of a supposed violation, and it is not clear whether they really know them. A key element of Kafka’s counter-mythologies is that the rules are them- selves often unclear and ambiguous, exacerbating problems relating to their interpretation. In The Castle it takes a long time for K. to even begin to grasp the various organizing principles of the castle, some of which are formal and others rather informal relating to the villagers’ everyday dealings with the castle. Likewise in the novel Amerika, Karl begins to appreciate a whole world of informal rules that may be subject to sanction, where he reflects that, ‘[t]here was probably no actual rule . . . but that was only because the unimaginable was not expressly forbidden’ (Kafka, 2007 [1996]: 114). A key mechanism that facilitates the operation of formal systems of organization within his stories is the role of informal networks of communication. For instance, in The Trial the Defence is not even a part of the formal legal system: ‘the Defence was not actually countenanced by the Law, but only tolerated . . . Strictly speaking, therefore, none of the Advocates was recognized by the Court’ (1999a [1925]: 128). If you wanted a defence at all, then you must by necessity appeal to informal means to obtain it. Kafka’s protagonists are often confronted with formal systems of organization that are realized only by means of an evasive, sometimes imaginary informal system that functions through a widespread complicity. Another example of the crucial role of informal systems of organization is the social exclusion of Amelia and her family in The Castle. After declining a sexual offer by the official Sortini, the townsfolk push her family’s business into bankruptcy, her father towards insanity, and they stigmatize her and her family in fear of retribution by the officials of the castle. However, no official or unofficial attempts to exact punishment are made by the members of the castle, casting doubt over whether there is any genuine reason for the villagers’ anxiety beyond their own paranoia.

Organization theory comes closest to mythology when dealing with this relationship between the informal and formal dimension of organization. The way in which rules become distorted in practice has been the subject of some of the earliest research within organization theory into the latent functions of rules and other ‘bureaucratic dysfunctions’ (Gouldner, 1954; Merton, 1957). The informal system appears to be necessary for the functioning of the formal one (Blau and Scott, 1962), but at the same time, it has a distorting effect upon this system. In Kafka’s stories, the formal and informal systems of organization are very closely interwoven to the extent that they take on absurd and oppressive characteristics far from their ostensible goals. For instance, in The Trial, Josef K. comes to understand that there is nothing outside of the trial, which appears to be omnipresent, extending throughout all aspects of social life. As we shall see in the analysis that follows, Kafka’s work embodies a mythology in which the forces of organization confront us as if they were inescapable laws of nature, as compared with the reality of our own circumstances, which appear as little more than sources of confusion or, as Aristotle would have it, error.

It may well be true, as Weber observed, that bureaucratic rationalization is leading to a disenchantment of the world, but for Kafka mythologies still persist within this disenchanted world. While Kafka’s counter-mythology is very pessimistic, it is by no means passive. Wasserman (2001) has shown that Kafka’s literary concerns for alienation and repression were mirrored by a range of active engagements in the world in his role as a key industrial reformer of his time and in his position as a lawyer working for a large workers’ insurance company. Drawing on his experiences of working in a bureaucracy, Kafka wrote fictional accounts of rational organization in his novels The Trial and The Castle, which show how rational organizations grow into indecipherable labyrinths and how these same organizations turn against the very people they are supposed to serve. Within these organizations, rationality takes on a circular, labyrinthine form, as for instance in The Trial where, ‘[i]t is just as possible for the acquitted man to go straight home from the Court and find officers already waiting to arrest him again’ (Kafka, 1999a [1925]: 216). His novels are counter-myths that undermine the enlightenment myth of a world organized according to the unambiguous rules of rationality. Kafka’s approach to storytelling is very much in line with Barthes’ theory of mythology, which argues that the best way to fight the bourgeois mythologies of capitalism is to invent new subversive mythologies. We may appreciate Kafka’s stories in precisely this manner, as a weapon against the mythologies of the new bureaucratic order. These stories may be fiction, but as a new mythology they have served to extend the ‘virtual tendencies’ of literature, helping us to cast a critical eye upon the blind spots of both organizational rationality and its underpinning theory. We shall now turn to an analysis of a key theme of this disquieting mythology, the failed attempts of sensemaking, which are so characteristic of many of his stories, and highlight several lessons that we can learn to enrich our conception of storytelling and sensemaking in organization studies.

The limits of sensemaking

In this section we will demonstrate the powerful critique of organizational rationality inherent to Kafka’s counter-mythology by drawing on his portrayal of processes of sense- making, which are such a prominent feature of his stories. Kafka’s work is an immensely rich source of material for the processes of sensemaking, particularly concerning the difficulties we face within organizations and in our everyday personal encounters. In this section we shall outline some of the most significant themes in Kafka’s work; first, in terms of the limits of sensemaking owing to ‘disruptive ambiguity’, second, in terms of sensemaking based on wrong maps, and, third, in terms of a ‘bias’ towards plausibility, which may unnecessarily restrict the analysis of cases using the sensemaking approach. In each of these discussions we can see how Kafka characterizes the limits of sensemaking, without allowing us a comfortable escape from these limits.

Sensemaking and ‘disruptive ambiguity’
Kafka’s conception of the process of sensemaking is extraordinary. This appears both in his stories and in his letters. He often complained of his difficulties in communicating with others, which one might think remarkable given his mastery of the written word. The situations in which he finds himself appear to be ambiguous or impossible to grasp owing to their continual metamorphosis; he writes that, ‘The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always “something,” and if for once I am “something, I pay for it by “being nothing” for months on end’ (Kafka quoted in Canetti, 1974: 33). His efforts to make sense of his relations with other people appeared futile to him, where in one letter he despaired that, ‘I really do believe I am lost to all social intercourse’ (Kafka quoted in Canetti, 1974: 32). This continual struggle and inability to make sense of one’s circumstances is a motif that runs throughout his letters and his stories. Misunderstandings proliferate within Kafka’s stories, especially in his novels. He portrays a world in which miscommunication is the norm, a world in which one misunderstanding leads to yet another, without resolution excepting for eventual death. ‘Perhaps you misunderstand me’, says K. to the police Inspector in The Trial (1999a [1925]: 17). And shortly thereafter the Inspector responds to K. with the counter-accusation that, ‘You are labouring under a great delusion’ (1999a [1925]: 18). Later, the Inspector again tells K., ‘You have misunderstood me’ (1999a [1925]: 21), also accusing him of being ‘a quibbler over words’ (1999a [1925]: 22). The dialogue between the various characters is written with exceptional clarity, and the misunderstandings do not arise from ‘noise’ in the communication channel, but are inherent in the communication itself. This novel and provocative conception of communication could have significant implications for organization studies given the absolutely crucial role that communication is held to play in the act of sensemaking within organizations (Weick et al., 2005). The characters of Kafka’s stories are continually misinterpreting each other, taking a casual remark too seriously, missing the intention of a flirtatious comment, being candid when they should be tactful, and on and on. The will to make sense out of this babble, this ‘undifferentiated flux’, is not an innocent tool of rational inquiry, but is essential to the whole mechanism of The Trial, The Castle or whichever system within which one is embroiled. The process of sensemaking and the promise of an answer is precisely what draws the protagonist ever onwards, deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine mechanisms of the social and mythological order.

The categorical nature of this miscommunication in Kafka’s work is perhaps best expressed in a conversation in The Trial between Frau Grubach and K., where he explains to her that, ‘I didn’t mean what I said so terribly seriously either. We misunderstood each other. That can happen occasionally even between old friends’ (1999a [1925]: 87). This admission that misunderstandings can happen ‘even between old friends’ stands out precisely because it is happening more or less continuously, not incidentally. Deleuze and Guattari call this the ‘informational myth’ of language, i.e. that it exists purely to transmit information. To undermine this myth they explain that Kafka worked to become a ‘stranger within his own language’ (1986: 26), which he saw as the language ‘of the masters’. Adorno also picked up on the peculiar role of language as a communicational tool in Kafka’s work in his analysis of the prominent role of bodily gestures within these stories. Owing to what Adorno describes as the ‘second Babylonian confusion’ of language, the gesture takes on a pre-eminent role in communication between the characters, whether it was a laugh, a glance, an embrace, a tussle or a crawl. Spoken language takes on an ambiguous role because ‘language, the configuration of which should be truth, is, as a broken one, untruth’ (Adorno, 1997 [1967]: 249). According to Adorno, Kafka revealed the deeply flawed and, in his words, ‘broken’ qualities of language. Communication thus entails misunderstanding, not exceptionally, but essentially.

One of the few uses of Kafka’s work within the field of organization studies has focused on the pitfalls of communication by drawing upon his reworking of the myth of the Tower of Babel (Kornberger et al., 2006) but has taken quite a different approach from the one that we have outlined here. The interpretation offered by Kornberger et al. highlights the Babylonian confusion, which they suggest provides a rich fictional characterization of the modern world. However, they offer a far more optimistic way out of this problem than does Kafka, recommending that ‘translation’ can be used to over- come the polyphony of voices inherent in interpersonal communication. We would argue that while this is a fruitful exploration of Kafka’s work for organization studies, it mistakes Kafka’s formulation of the problem for its solution. Czarniawska (1999) has also explored the issue of polyphony in the myth of the Tower of Babel, but without reference to Kafka’s own variant story. Her approach identifies exactly the kind of problems of translation highlighted here, but she does not propose translation as a solution, presenting it in more ambivalent terms as an ‘uneasy task’ that organization scholars must address. Following Adorno’s interpretation of the story, we suggest that the interpretation offered by Kornberger et al. relies for its efficacy upon the existence of an ‘unbroken’ language that can be employed for the purposes of a successful ‘translation’. Otherwise, what would be the point of translating from one language into another, where misunderstandings persist and proliferate with each attempted ‘translation’. If we were to attempt such a thing, we would be living in precisely the same world that is portrayed by Kafka, where polyphony is essential rather than incidental and where misinterpretation is inevitable.

In certain respects Weick et al. (2005: 413) have defined the role of sensemaking in very Kafkaesque terms, highlighting its ‘genesis in disruptive ambiguity’. Many of Weick’s stories contain incidents where sensemaking begins as a result of a breakdown of normal routines, after which misunderstandings begin to proliferate, for instance, in the use of the ambiguous phrase ‘we are now at takeoff’ by the pilot at a crucial point in the Tenerife air disaster (Weick, 1990), or in the misperception of the course of the fire in the Mann Gulch disaster (Weick, 1993). The limitations of sensemaking are further reinforced by the fact that, ‘[p]eople may get better stories, but they will never get the story’ (Weick et al., 2005: 415). Thus, Weick suggests that the best that people can strive for in the stories they tell is ‘plausibility’ rather than any ‘accuracy’. We would agree with Weick’s cautious evaluation of the limitations of sensemaking but with the additional proviso that sensemaking is understood primarily as a problematic rather than necessarily moving towards a solution. Weick has himself been criticized for his ambigu- ous usage of the term sensemaking, where sensemaking plays ‘seemingly contradictory roles’ in the evolution of organizational crises (Maitlis and Sonenschein, 2010: 565). Weick has analysed numerous cases where the processes of sensemaking reinforced the poor decision making of people confronted with exceptional events (Weick, 1990, 1993; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003). In the Mann Gulch case he argues that, ‘[w]hen meaning becomes problematic and decreases, this is a signal for those people to pay more attention to their formal and informal social ties and to reaffirm and/or reconstruct them’ (1993: 646). Weick takes the view that a sudden loss of structure can lead to a loss of meaning and should thus prompt a re-evaluation of the situation and an affirmation of the need for more (perhaps different) structure. While this is an insightful observation regarding the psychology of problem solving, Kafka takes a rather different view. For him, structure is not necessarily the solution to a situation and, in contrast to Weick’s stories, his tales show how the search for structure can itself lead to an ever increasing sense of meaninglessness. Kafka’s stories contain a polyphony of voices, in which the loss of meaning appears to be intimately linked to the proliferation of meanings as these stories progress (5). For Kafka, the desire for meaning and structure is not a solution to such problems, but is a part of their very constitution.

Sensemaking with the wrong map
Let us pick up once again the theme of failed attempts at sensemaking, and the prolifera- tion of misunderstandings that characterize so many of Kafka’s stories. Through the seminal works of Weick, scholars of organization have learnt that success does not depend solely on the accuracy of their sensemaking, a point that Weick illustrates on many occasions by drawing an analogy between managing and map-making (Weick, 1983, 1987, 1990). In particular, he draws upon the story of a small group of Hungarian soldiers who had become lost in the Alps on military manoeuvres during the Second World War (Weick takes this story from a poem by Miroslav Holub titled Brief Thoughts on Maps). After a few days the group of soldiers began to despair of ever finding their way back to their rendez-vous point. By luck one of its members found a map in his pocket, which was then used to find the way back to their detachment. Later, however, they discovered that the map that they had used was not a map of the alpine mountain range in which they had been lost, but a map of the Pyrenees. Weick concludes from this story that the map was important for the group because it served to get them moving rather than because it was accurate in any respect (Weick, 1983). Questioning the primacy of planning over acting he asserts that we often lack the means of communication to make sense of unexpected events, which is a major obstacle in the prevention of failure. However, he proposes that we can make sense of our environment as we interact within it, constantly adjusting our mental interpretations and thereby learning to be mindful and thus prevent mistakes (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007). The story of the wrong map holds particular prominence in Weick’s explanation of sensemaking and he draws on it on no less than six occasions in the explanation of his theories (Basbøll and Graham, 2006). In this example we can see certain similarities between Kafka’s work and that of Weick, not just in the use of narrative to explore the process of sensemaking but in the problematization of the function of cognitive maps within organizational life.

The stories of both Weick and Kafka tend to focus on tales of failed sensemaking. However, in contrast to Weick, Kafka denies the very possibility of unambiguous communication, and instead his characters often cause and amplify misconceptions. Whereas Weick et al. (2005) appeal to the ‘plausibility’ of a story as a possible way through any given problem, Kafka sees such ‘plausibility’ as a means of drawing us ever deeper into the labyrinthine folds of an indecipherable social order. Kafka’s novels are often punctuated by moments where, after encountering a disorientating situation, the protagonists set out in search of a plausible explanation for their circumstances. As the main character of Amerika reflects, ‘It’s just a matter of knowing how it’s done’ (Kafka, 2007 [1996]: 80). Here we are witness to a typical scene where the novel’s protagonist expresses their commitment to understanding and following the prevailing social order. However, as the story unfolds we come to appreciate the impossibility of discovering this underlying order. One merely moves from one misunderstanding to another. The idea of an underlying mythological order to the world is itself turned on its head. The social world as such is constituted by a web of misunderstandings. This is very much at the heart of Kafka’s counter-mythologies. In Weick’s terminology, we might say that the search for plausibility is revealed to be groundless. Kafka’s work thus emphasizes a very different aspect of the process of sensemaking than does Weick’s, being far more ambivalent about the possible functions of maps and leaving the reader uncertain as to existence of a clear path to safety.

Kafka and Weick both problematize the function of cognitive maps within organizational life, but in slightly different ways. In Weick’s story of the map, the actors appreciated their good fortune when it becomes possible for them to realize they had not been using an accurate map of their situation, but had been relying on the wrong map. In contrast to this, in Kafka’s stories there is no point at which the actors see themselves from a god’s eye position, realizing the folly of their blinkered views. Each of them continues to be trapped within the labyrinthine folds of their own stories, each with their own peculiar map.

Sensemaking, myth and counter-myth
Thus far we have highlighted the fact that Weick and Kafka share a number of similarities in their approach to constructing narratives about organizational sensemaking, especially with respect to the primacy of storytelling in ordering the world and the absolutely crucial role that ‘disruptive ambiguity’ plays in triggering sensemaking. However, Weick attributes sensemaking with a much greater problem-solving potential than does Kafka, for whom death or metamorphosis are the only lines of escape from the organizations and institutions that tyrannize over us. At this point in the argument we shall build on the concepts that we have developed in the preceding sections to evaluate sensemaking in terms of the concept of ‘counter-mythology’. In order to sketch out such a critique the key question that we wish to pursue is, to what extent can Weick be understood as being either a mythologist or a counter-mythologist?

Weick has been praised as being a superlative storyteller and foremost among the practitioners of the narrative approach to organization studies (Czarniaswska, 1999, 2005; Van Maanen, 1995). Within the confines of our own field of study, it would be hard to dispute the claim that Weick has proved a formidable creator of stories, passing on variants of existing stories that contain important lessons, which it is believed will pro- vide useful guides for action (6). Weick himself tends to use the term ‘myth’ in its pejorative sense, for instance, in a cautionary note about the use of plausible stories by managers he warns that, ‘[m]yth can sneak through reality checks as well as imagined realities’ (Weick, 1989: 528). He gives a nod in the direction of mythology in his characterization of so-called ‘cosmology episodes’ in which the presumed cosmic order is seen to break down during an unfolding disaster (Weick, 1993: 633). In fact, a number of similarities can be identified between mythology and Weick’s approach to organization studies: i) storytelling is a means of expression; ii) stories are used as a guide for action; iii) there is a focus on stories that raise questions about the identity of the characters involved; iv) the stories often concern a search for meaning in ambiguous situations; v) plausibility is given primacy over accuracy; and vi) there is a proliferation of variant stories in Weick’s work as well as in mythology. Some have seen the proliferation of variant stories as a cause for concern about the scholarship of this research (Basbøll, 2010; Basbøll and Graham, 2006), although it is not necessary to agree with this particular line of critique in order to recognize the mythological elements of Weick’s narrative approach (7).

The divide between Weick’s approach and that of Kafka’s counter-mythology is most clearly apparent in their conception of ‘plausibility’. For Weick, plausibility is a key characteristic of sensemaking where, ‘[i]f accuracy is nice but not necessary in sense- making, then what is necessary? The answer is something that preserves plausibility and coherence’ (Weick, 1995: 60). Here the emphasis of the narrative approach of Weick’s stories may be seen to diverge from that of Kafka’s in an important respect. Whereas Weick’s stories may be characterized in terms of the search for plausibility, Kafka’s can be characterized as ‘breaking through the plausibility barrier’ in a fusion of dream and reality (Kundera, 1996: 52–53).

As an organization theorist Weick chooses to focus on the search for plausible stories to make his point, in contrast to Kafka the novelist, who focused on the significance of the implausible to underline the ambivalent features of modern institutional life. We can see this contrast most clearly in Weick’s (1989) essay on ‘disciplined imagination’ in which he suggests that plausibility is, or should be, a substitute for theoretical validity. He explains that plausibility plays a crucial part in theory generation where an anecdote can be used to generate ‘a plausible theory, and a theory judged to be more plausible and of higher quality if it is interesting rather than obvious irrelevant or absurd . . . or correspondent with presumed realities’ (Weick, 1989: 517). We might think of this as expressing a ‘bias’ towards plausibility because it tends to favour the status quo within the academic community to the extent that this community constitutes and frames prevailing ideas of what might be considered ‘plausible’ theory. Weick himself raises this issue noting that there is a ‘thin line’ between what is plausible and what people want to hear. While he is aware of this limitation, his proposal to develop ‘plausible theory’ clearly distances his approach from counter-mythologies such as Kafka’s, which force us to re-evaluate our situation precisely because of their implausibility. This issue is not simply a matter of literary technique. The role of implausibility in the history of science is a key feature of Paul Feyerarbend’s (1993) critique of the idea of ‘scientific method’. In this critique he demands that, ‘We must invent a new conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with, the most carefully established observational results, confounds the most plausible theoretical principles, and introduces perceptions that cannot form part of the existing perceptual world’ (1993: 22–23, emphasis not in original). Thus, he argues that implausibility and what he terms ‘counterinduction’ are necessary elements in the development of major scientific advances and can be seen in the work of scientists from Galileo to Einstein (8). With regard to our own field of study, Kafka’s stories might be seen as a literary form of such counterinduction.

Drawing on Kafka’s rich description of the process of sensemaking, it can thus be understood more in terms of the formulation of a problem than in terms of establishing a solution. Kafka’s work provides us with important insights into the limits of sense- making, in which the interruption of sense that is experienced by his characters leads us on a journey that causes us to confront the very limits of sensible experience (Panagia, 2009). This can be seen in at least three respects: i) in terms of how sensemaking leads us from one misinterpretation to another, where their ‘disruptive ambiguity’ highlights a polyphony of voices rather than reconciling or ‘translating’ them; ii) in terms of the limitations of sensemaking with the wrong map; and iii) in terms of the ‘bias’ towards plausibility in the creation of stories and myths in sensemaking that may unnecessarily restrict the analysis of cases using this approach. Brown et al. (2008) have remarked on the limitations of the existing literature on sensemaking stating that, ‘most interpretive case-based research still culminates in a single, homogenized account. By attending to individual differences in sensemaking we may ultimately be better able to explain how organized activities emerge from dissensus, ambiguity and disagreement’ (p. 1057).

This characterization of the limitations of the literature on sensemaking and the role of dissensus and ambiguity is very much in the spirit of Kafka’s own world view. In keeping with this sentiment, we have drawn on Kafka’s literature to outline the limitations of the processes of sensemaking and while we have not developed ‘improvements’ to the sensemaking process, we have shown how Kafka’s parables give us valuable insights into the dangers that appear to be inherent to sensemaking and organizing.

Conclusion

We have argued that Kafka merits special consideration among the novelists of the 20th century with respect to his remarkable portrayal of organizational life. His work is unique in the way in which it highlights the ambivalence of the social institutions that ostensibly exist to help us, whether it be our system of justice, our family or our work organizations. In this article we have begun to develop the potential of Kafka’s work for scholars of organization in three key respects: i) by outlining his development of a ‘mythology of organization’; ii) by developing the concept of ‘counter-mythology’ to extend existing theory on narrative approaches to organization studies; and iii) drawing upon aspects of these counter-mythologies that expose the limits of sensemaking. For organization studies, Kafka’s work provides a literary counterpoint to Weber’s historical analysis of different organizational forms, but whereas Weber observed the emergence of a ‘disenchanted world’, Kafka exposed the mythological elements at work underneath rational organization and created his own counter-mythologies. The organizational counter- mythologies that have been identified within this analysis include the myth of organizational rationality presented as an unending labyrinth, the myth that errors exist only in the reality of cases but not in the rules themselves, the myth of communication understood as a continual proliferation of misunderstandings, and the myth that plausibility is less a means of sensemaking or escape than it is a means of drawing us deeper into an indecipherable social order. We have argued that counter-mythologies can provide an insightful contribution to the existing work on mythology and storytelling within organization studies, particularly in terms of its ‘virtual tendencies’, which exist in exaggerated form in Kafka’s stories, but nonetheless resonate with our everyday experience.

Kafka’s stories provide excellent examples of what Karl Weick has termed ‘disruptive ambiguity’, which often initiate the stories and the process of sensemaking itself. However, in contrast to Weick’s own approach, the search for ‘plausibility’ in Kafka’s world leads to a further proliferation of misunderstandings. Kafka thus provides us with an exemplary study of the limits of sensemaking, where the process of sensemaking is understood more as a problematic than as a means of resolution. In his stories, every attempt at escape only leads to further entanglement within the bureaucracy. Behind every office lies another office. Escape is found only in extremis, through radical transformation or death. Kafka’s work displays a great deal of scepticism regarding our modern institutions and even the pursuit of knowledge itself. In many respects his literary counter-myths echo the genealogical themes of Foucault’s work, demonstrating the ways in which the ‘will-to-knowledge’ is itself drawing us further into a kind of administrative trap (Miller and Rose, 2008). With the disciplines of the human sciences people have increasingly become an ‘object of information’ to be categorized and administered accordingly (Foucault 1977, 1981). In terms of future research, this article has opened up a space in which mythology may be seen as playing an equally important role in our understanding of organization theory. The limits of sensemaking that have been outlined here reveal a bias towards plausibility in the existing theory, in contrast to which we suggest the development of more counterinductive approaches to organizational research. In this respect, we have also opened up the exploration of ‘counter-mythologies’ within the study of organization, a further development on Gabriel’s (1991) advice that we must treat organizational myths with suspicion. In terms of the relationship between literature and organization theory it would be fruitful to explore other authors who have developed counter-myths of organizations, the more obvious examples being Orwell’s 1984 or Heller’s Catch 22, both of which are works that have also affected the popular imagination (9). Kafka’s work is important, not simply in terms of the many theoretical insights that we may derive from it, but because his counter-mythologies have already seeped into our everyday understanding of organizational and social life.

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers and Silvia Jordan, Darren McCabe and Greg Vit who commented on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes
(1)       We have been only partially successful in this endeavour, being subject to the limitations of the journal article format. However, we hope to have avoided the pitfalls of what Kundera (1996) has criticized as ‘Kafkology’ by avoiding an interpretation overly determined by a biographical or psychological reading.
(2)       We would like to thank the reviewer who pointed out the importance of the concept of Kafka’s ‘minor literature’ in this regard.
(3)       The novels of Gustave Flaubert are also highlighted by Barthes (2009 [1957]) as being counter-mythologies and we might consider others such as those of Joseph Heller and George Orwell.
(4)       In Kafka’s novels this is true for both bureaucratic rules of organizations and the law itself.
(5)       Writing in the same period, Weber (1991 [1915]: 357) remarked upon a similar characteristic in modern culture where‚‘culture’s every step forward seems condemned to an ever more devastating senselessness’.
(6)       With respect to the role of myths as a guide for action, one might usefully compare Armstrong’s (2005) description of mythology with Czarniaswska’s (1998) discussion of Weick’s own approach.
(7)      In this respect, it is interesting to compare Czarniaswska’s (1998) discussion of the role of referencing within the academic discourse, which describes the prevailing fashion for excessive referencing as interfering with the aesthetic qualities of the discourse in favour of lending it a superficial gloss of rigour, with that of Basbøll (2010) and Basbøll and Graham (2006) who frame referencing very much in terms of the hallmark of good scholarship.
(8)       Of significance to the present analysis Feyerarbend (1993: 21) also remarks upon the role that myth plays in the generation of scientific theory by means of the process of counterinduction, in which he describes knowledge as ‘an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation’.
(9)       Existing research by Willmott (1993) may be seen as offering elements of this kind of counter-mythology.

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