The Organization is a Repair Shop

This paper looks at organization from the perspective of ‘broken world thinking’ (Jackson, 2014: 221). This means to appreciate the way organizational processes, structures and behaviours are subject to fragility, disintegration and breakdown and how, in response, they are incessantly held up, restored and fixed. I take repair as an analytical lens to look at the case of Company N., a midsized metal-working business. Going through the process of implementing anew Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, it finds itself in an exceptional situation entailing a lot of repair work. However, it turns out that repair is never completed. Rather, both before and after the system switch, Company N. is imbued with theneed of constant fixing. Thus, even though the company counts as a manufacturing business, it is basically a repair shop. Concentrating on the company’s practices of repair –in all its variations –points to the way organization is locally and precariously accomplished. It also shows how struggles over power and resources are situated within the never-ending business of repair.