The Performativity of Organizational Culture in a No Excuses Charter School

Theories developed by academics influence those they study, in some cases fundamentally shaping the world we study. This influential relationship, often called performativity, has gone largely unnoticed and uncommented on in organizational theory and research. The few studies investigating performativity in organizations or other fields typically focus on cases in which the ultimate success of theory's implementation is known. In this paper, I examine how one high-performing charter school sought to turn a prescribed organizational culture into reality. I find that path to successful performance is very narrow and ambiguous. The school succeeded and failed in many steps of the process, making it difficult to assess whether the initiative was successful and to attribute their successes and failures to the theory or their implementation. I conclude that performativity is a cyclical process occurring at multiple time scales. During these cycles, organizations iteratively test new implementations of the theory, seeking to gain clear insight into the success of their strategy and correctly attribute their successes and failures to decide whether the theory actually works or not.