Introduction: A Code of Many Colors

I 1983 by Cornell University. 0001 -8392/83/2803-0331/00. 75 Kohlberg (1969) and Perry (1970) argued that moral reasoning develops as individuals move from simple imperatives (do this; avoid that) through more complicated analysis (there are criteria for analyzing moral situations) to the ambiguous, the uncertain, and even the paradoxical and contradictory as bases for moral decision. We propose that organizational analysis has been evolving in the same fashion, toward more complex, paradoxical, and even contradictory modes of understanding. Instead of monochromatic thinking, we suggest an interpretive framework more like a rainbow-a code of many colors that tolerates alternative assumptions. Like physicists in dealing with light, we can explain what we see as a flow of particles and gain some insights, or as a wave to gain others; but light itself seems to partake of both the one and the other, rather than either or. For organizational analysis, we need to be able to perceive and understand the complex nature of organizational phenomena, both micro and macro, organizational and individual, conservative and dynamic. We need to understand organizations in multiple ways, as having machine-like aspects, organism-like aspects, culture-like aspects, and others yet to be identified. We need to encourage and use the tension engendered by multiple images of our complex subject.