GRI-rapport,
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg Research Institute GRI

Abstract: This text focuses on the wealth of insight that Tarde has to offer organization theory. It revolves around three pairs of concepts: –imitation and invention, identity and alterity, custom and fashion, illustrating their relevance for understanding organizing by relating them to a study of big city management. Imitation, according to Tarde, is the main mechanism of sociality, the main mode of binding people (and things) to one another. If so, how can invention and innovation occur? Tarde answers that inventions occur because of imitation and fashion. Ideas, practices, or objects that became imitated and therefore widely spread are not fashionable anymore. An established fashion becomes its opposite – a custom or an institution. Fashion constantly renews itself, but it chooses among many inventions that are present at a certain time and place. Those chosen are allegedly superior, on the grounds of their qualities, or on the grounds of their provenience in time and place, or because they are well anchored and do not threaten the institutionalized thought structure. Yet, neither imitation not fashion leads to homogenization of social practices, as both are used by the social actors to construct their identity, but even more so to construct their alterity, or the difference.The main attraction of Tarde's thought for organization theory is the capacity of its metaphors to capture paradoxes typical for all organizing. Tarde managed to render a world that was populated with individuals – human and not – who were associated. Following his insights, it is possible to understand that each person employed in a company is much bigger and much more complex than the company itself, the latter being a collection of a repetition of one or few properties of its employees and machines. In the same vein, imitation and fashion – those basic mechanisms of sociality and therefore of its special case, organizing – can be given proper attention with Tarde as a valuable source of inspiration.

Keywords: imitation; alterity; fashion; city management

23 pages, September 29, 2004

Note: Published in Distinktion, 2004 (9): 81-95

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