Levels

Description

Comments

Intellectual creation plan (structured in two parts; a critique of the existing and a description of the ideal)

· Historical process, helps knowledge to progress

· Close to the hypothetico-deductive method, it exerts the creative force of hypotheses.

· Managers and reform designers see social issues as controllable and deformable, to make it harmonious, transparent and coherent.

“The utopian dream is a dream made up of frames or scenarios that are constantly rewritten, repainted and reworked with each generation” ( Fischer, 1993: p. 220 ; quoted by Metzger, 2000: p. 220 ).

· See Friedberg’s levels of analysis and diagnosis of intervention ( Friedberg, 1997: p. 359 )

Level of the imaginary, of beliefs (the details of the city constitute so many strict applications of the general principles organizing global society. Here, the local embodies the global).

The ideal model is a complex set of force-images designed to rationalize the imaginary. It is made up of beliefs that value the will, such as:

· Progress is in the nature of things;

· Public opinion is ignorance (elitism);

· Social hierarchies are based on hierarchies of knowledge.

Presents the risk of ideological drift/recovery. Can be enriched and interacts with reality. The reform project, as an a priori model, claims: 1) to respond to dysfunctions; and 2) to have been developed by applying rational principles.

Through these powerful images, “utopia arouses enthusiasm or deepens dissatisfaction” ( Thomas, 1997: p. 32 ; quoted by Metzger, 2000: p. 220 ).

· See Friedberg’s concept of project-groups ( Friedberg, 1997: pp. 382-384 ) and Muller’s concept of global and local frames of reference ( Muller, 2005: p. 411 ).

Level of practice: utopia realized (producing harmony may require oppressive social control by experts or by everyone)

The institutionalization of the ideal model is not without consequences, for “to realize utopia is to stop time and establish conformism; to ensure the stability of the perfect world, all conflict must be evacuated” ( Metzger, 2000: p. 221 ).

The ideal is a detailed guide to action. Requires absence of conflict and ignores dialectics.

Implies: an-historicism; conformism; reinforcement of the feeling of omnipotence.

Leads to transformation of the original model (experimentation), or to totalitarianism.

During implementation: 1) if injunctions are taken literally, with zeal, the organization’s structures and functioning will become rigid; 2) if, on the other hand, successive experiments are carried out, the management group will learn to master new change auxiliaries.

“Utopia consists in treating problems as problems of architecture and urban planning” ( Ruyer, 1950: p. 44 ; quoted by Metzger, 2001: p. 251 ).

· See, for example, all the criticisms of bureaucratic systems in the literature.

· See the difference, for a given reform, between “prescribed work” (the ideal model) and “real work” (transformation, actualization of the ideal model during implementation); between “prescribed performance” and “real performance”; between “paper implementation” and “performance implementation” in Fixsen et al. (2005: p. 6) .