The Review Function in Organizations and its Implications for Organization Theory, Cybernetics, and Ethnography
Paul D. Nugent, Richard Montague
This paper analyzes the “review function” in organizations and its
implications for theory and for ethnographic methods. Whether it
is scholars peer-reviewing each other’s work, or a quick informal
“bouncing of one’s ideas” to another, or a formal product review
with a powerful customer, the review is a function within and
across organizations that is so ubiquitous that it has eluded
exploration as a distinct structural entity. Yet it is also at the heart
of the signaling and feedback features undergirding cybernetic
systems. Therefore, this paper looks at the kinds of
signals/feedback that review activities reveal as well as drawing
on foundational works in ethnography to consider how
ethnographic methods can be better attuned to acknowledging the
centrality of feedback and signaling in any social system. Full Text
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