Does Organizational Nonsense Make Sense? Laughing and Learning From French Corporate Cultures

Empirical In this article, I address the questions of how and why organizational nonsense exists. I define organizational nonsense as the identifiable organizational cultures' traits that are apparently absurd or contrary to good sense and, yet, endure over time. This article thus explores a somewhat pedestrian aspect of organizational life that remains surprisingly overlooked in management research. It advances cultural research in management by establishing a precedent to the hermeneu-tical understanding of organizational nonsense. This article constitutes nontraditional research for it uses fiction to support cultural interpretation and humor to represent certain organizational phenomena. I have chosen, in particular , the case of some apparently absurd attributes recurrently associated with French corporate cultures, which I represented in three satirical vignettes. To examine what lies underneath these allegorical representations, I seek inter-disciplinary support in a history of intertwined factors of cultural , sociological, and institutional nature. In line with a fundamental precept of cultural interpretation, the adopted methodology aims at accessing a deeper cultural logic that could explain what, at the surface, may indeed look senseless or even playful and laughable. As a contribution pertaining specifically to the case under study, this article proposes an interpretation of French corporate cultures as systems of professional groups that continuously renegotiate hierarchical separations and seek for the cordial cohabitation that eventually allows an overall remarkably high quality of life. As contributions that are general or possibly generalizable, this article (a) opens a novel investigation path in cultural research in management , (b) sheds light on the phenomenon of organizational nonsense and its relations to both the partially hidden coherencies and actual vulnerabilities of organizational cultures, and (c) advances the fundamental debate of how to set apart the aspects of culture that change and those that remain stable. Following this introduction, this article presents the chosen theoretical ground among studies of national corporate cultures; the adopted methodology, which is based on the cultural interpretation of fictionalized representations; the three vignettes, followed by the construction of cultural explanations; and the proposed cultural interpretation followed by a final discussion of the limitations and contributions of this research effort. Abstract Organizational cultures can contain enduring traits that apparently make no sense. To shed some light on how and why organizational nonsense happens, I examine the case of some apparently nonsensical attributes often associated with French corporations. As nontraditional research, I propose a methodology combining cultural interpretation and production of fiction. I use humor to build ideal-typed representations through three satirical vignettes that depict elegant design generating widespread patching across organizations, working meetings becoming the ceremonial dumping of faits accomplis and absurdity being naturalized as normal organizational practice. These vignettes provide points-of-entry to examine some poorly understood aspects of French corporate cultures, interpreted with the support of arguments of historical, sociological, and institutional nature. The resulting interpretation depicts systems of groups that seek for a cordial cohabitation by continuously renegotiating their essentially ascribed positions.