‘신화 비판의 기호학’과 조직의 신화 읽기

Reading Organizational Myths Using Roland Barthes’ ‘Semiology of Mytho-Critique’

이 글은 프랑스 기호학자 롤랑 바르트의 ‘신화 비판의 기호학’ 틀을 사용하여 조직신화 읽기를 시도한다. 이 글에서는 조직과 조직 실재에 관한 ‘자연스러움으로 위장된 이데올로기’라는 기호학적 ‘이차체계’라고 ‘조직신화’를 정의한다. 조직신화는 조직의 역사에서 나온 자료를 포착하여 언어활동이라는 단순한 지위로 환원하며, 기표와 기의, 그리고 이 둘의 결합체인 기호로 구성된 언어체계를 훔쳐서 그 기호를 텅 비워 신화체계의 기표로 삼고, 그 기표를 새로운 기의와 결합하여 자연화함으로써 만들어진다. 이런 조직신화에는 신화 독자나 소비자가 자연스러운 것으로 받아들이는 이데올로기가 당연시하는 ‘상식’으로 위장되어 담겨 있다. 조직신화는 역사에서 얻은 일면의 진실을 조직 실재 전면을 이해하는 데 적용하여 복잡하고 모호하고 다의적인 조직 실재를 단순명료하게 인식하게 한다. 나아가, 신화 소비자의 행동을 규제하여 ‘자기실현적 예언’의 기능을 발휘함으로써 조직 실재로 구현된다. 조직신화의 기표를 가득 찬 기표로 보아 그 의미작용을 해체함으로써 조직신화를 읽을 수 있다. 이 글은 조직이론과 조직현장에서 통용되는 수많은 조직담론이 조직신화라고 보고, 조직신화의 기본 성격을 제시한다. 그리고 그 보기로서 조직에 관한 근본 물음에 해당하는 ‘조직의 정의’에 관한 신화와 ‘합리성’의 신화를 읽어 본다. 나아가 현재 조직 이해를 지배하는 많은 조직신화가 특정한 이해관계를 반영하는 쪽으로 치우쳐 있다고 주장하고, 대항신화를 풍부하게 개발하여 그 불균형을 해소할 필요성을 제안한다.

According to Barthes(1957), ‘myth today’ is a second-order semiological system as naturalized ideology. A myth contains tri-dimensional pattern(the signifier, the signified and the sign), but it has been constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it. That which is a sign in the first system becomes a mere signifier in the second. Everything happens as if myth shifted the formal system of the first significations sideways. He represents this lateral shift in the following way as a metaphor：2) Language - Myth - 1. Signifier 2. Signified 3. Sign(meaning) Ⅰ. SIGNIFIER(form) Ⅱ. SIGNIFIED(concept) Ⅲ. SIGN(signification) The signifier of a myth is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other. A myth takes hold of a signification already built in meaning and turns it suddenly into an empty, parasitical form. Newly acquired penury of the form calls for a signification to fill it. The form impoverishes the meaning and holds it at one’s disposal. The concept, the signified of the myth, wholly absorb the history which drains out of the form. It is determined, it is at once historical and intentional; it is the motivation which causes the myth to be uttered. Through the concept, a whole new history is implanted in the myth. The relation which united the concept of the myth to its meaning is essentially a relation of deformation. The meaning is distorted by the concept. Myth transforms history into nature. Because the intentions are naturalized, myth is experienced as innocent speech. In the eyes of myth-consumers, the signifier and the signified have a natural relationship. A myth steals language to transform a meaning into form. In sum, what Barthes calls myth is a type of speech in which a sign, the associative total of a signifier and a signified, becomes a mere signifier of other signified. Myth contains an ideology mystified unconsciously or accepted as natural. Organizational life and reality is complex, ambiguous and equivocal, and hence organizations are open to multiple conflicting understandings all of which are plausible. Most descriptions and discourses about organizational phenomena usually contain truth to a certain extent. For this reason, it is often difficult to integrate competing plausible theories or explanations about the same phenomenon, and organizational theories and discourses have been discarded very seldom. The task to understand organizations is not to find the only one true picture of an organizational world, but to convert it into intelligible world. There are hidden ideologies about organization behind various organizational understandings. The ideologies seriously affect frames of reference, points of view, questions to ask and rules to find answers. There is some truth in most of all organizational understandings. Based on these understandings, we explain and interpret organizational reality, and make decisions and behave; nevertheless, seldom disclose hidden ideologies, and accept them as natural or taken-for-granted. These ways of understanding organizational reality have been dealt with under the topics of sense-making in organizational life, institutionalization, organizational discourse and organizational culture. But these approaches tend to focus on the discourses of organizational members and do not consider those of theorists. Organizational myth can be defined as a second-order semiological system as naturalized ideology about organization and organizational reality. In this article, I apply Roland Barthes'‘semiology of mytho-critique’ to organizational myths. First, the nature and a tentative classification of organizational myths are suggested. Many myths are widely spread in organizational field, and embedded in the organizational discourses developed by many theorists and practitioners. A myth turns meaning of a sign into an empty form and fills it with new meaning intentionally. Taken for granted by myth consumers a