Organization in a tangled world -- Process views of organization -- Alfred North Whitehead on process -- Bruno Latour on relativizing the social, and the becoming of networks -- Niklas Luhmann on autopoiesis and recursiveness in social systems -- James March on decision processes and organization : a logic of streams -- Karl Weick on organizing and sensemaking -- A scheme for process based organizational analysis -- Some implications for organizational analysis.

The Handbook examines 34 philosophical thinkers, both those commonly linked to process thinking, such as Whitehead, Bergson and James, and those that are not as often addressed from a process perspective such as Dilthey and Tarde. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work, and the potential contribution to organization and management research.

This Handbook presents key ideas of philosophers and social theorists whose ideas inform process approaches to organization studies. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work (with a focus on the processual elements), and the potential contribution to organization and management research.

Part 1. Some problems of organization theory and the potential of process organization theory -- Why assumptions in organization theory do not work for explaining organizing in a world on the move -- Assumptions for organizing in a world on the move -- Part 2. Toward a process theory of organization -- Temporality and process -- Organization, meaning structures, and time -- Articulatory models and agency -- Part 3. Process theory and selected aspects of organization management -- Process theory, organizational (...) continuity, and change -- Managing and leading in time -- Organizational culture, identity, and institutions -- Some thoughts on studying process -- A plea for mystery. (shrink)

Our purpose is not to define a particular philosophy of management but rather to demonstrate some of the ways in which philosophy — ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic and æsthetics — contributes to the practice of management. We identify a number of contemporary management questions, procedures or issues where the application of philosophical approaches is relevant and show how philosophical skills, an understanding of philosophical principles or exposure to philosophical discussion can contribute to improved management practice. In some ways the paper (...) is a report on progress in the quest begun by Nigel Laurie and Christopher Cherry in the first issue of Philosophy of Management, then entitled Reason in Practice (2001), when they asked why philosophers have interested themselves so little in the entire field of management. We include some examples where philosophers have written about management, some where managers have shown the direct impact of philosophy on management effectiveness and somewhere potential remains. In much, we see links to process philosophy and to the need for conversation and reflection by and between managers and philosophers. This does not of itself show how philosophy can contribute to management education. A brief final section discusses the way in which moral creativity skills can be developed through reflection and describes how this has been done in the Manufacturing Leaders’ Programme at the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge and in the International Management Ethics & Values course taught to undergraduate management students in Adelaide, Singapore and Hong Kong. This will be taken up in a subsequent paper. (shrink)

Process physics2 is, like all physics, a model of reality. However, unlike traditional substance-based versions, process physics implements many process philosophical concepts, perhaps most notably, the notion of internal relations. It argues that the universe can best be understood in terms of selfreferential semantic information that is remarkably similar to mathematical stochastic neural networks research in biology. It argues that information patterns generate new information through causal efficacy and, ultimately, internal integration, generating self-organising patterns of relationships. These patterns or relations (...) have an intrinsic value inherent in their self-actualisation and thereby experience a subjective unity in response to influences from the totality of their past. The result is an internally related self-organising stream of experiences that provides a defining essence objectively distinguishable in abstraction and as exhibiting all the characteristics of a quantum space and quantum matter. In process physics, therefore, quantum phenomena emerge where no prior assumption regarding their existence is made or prescribed at the start. Rather, they are internally generated as an inherent feature of an experientially becoming reality, growing in size over time and thus having an observable key feature — i.e. a ‘defining essence’ — of an expanding universe. Reality itself is now understood — and modeled — as having a primitive form of self awareness. By this we mean that it has, in the process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s words, prehensions of other actualities as objects in terms of their ‘provocation of some special activity within the subject’.3 In more biologically complex information systems these ultimately lead to experiential integration as conscious discrimination of contrasts in prior experiences. Reality is, ultimately, not about the identification of isolated individuals through externality, but related individuals through internality. The purpose of this paper is to arrive at a point whereby we might apply these ultimate principles of reality to management. To do this, we shall start by considering Whitehead’s own renderings of management issues, before turning to the use management studies has or has not made of his work. In the light of this discussion, we shall question the principle of deconstructive postmodernism that underpins this body of work. We shall then ask whether and to what extent Whiteheadian principles might help explain organisations as ‘event fields’ 4 within which ‘persons-in-communities’5 reside. This will then allow us to consider organisations in terms of a process reinterpretation of physics. In so doing, we shall uncover a final contradiction, between Whitehead’s understanding of organisation and his principles concerning the application of metaphysics, to which we shall at least indicate a solution. (shrink)

Mikhail Bakhtin is a Russian philosopher who offered a different way of viewing sociality and its representation—a recurring theme in much of his writing. This chapter discusses four interrelated aspects of Bakhtin’s work that are of particular relevance to process thinking in organization studies and offer a distinct way to understand and represent sociality: the role of dialogue in the formation and understanding of social experience, the nature of language as lived conversation and responsive utterances, synthesizing the lived world and (...) the world of reason, and carnival and culture. It also examines the implications of Bakhtin’s philosophy for organization studies. (shrink)

The stability versus novelty relationship remains a conundrum in organization studies, partly owing to conventional views of time and temporality. In this article, we address organization as a stability-novelty intertwinement through the lens of organizational events. The advantage of an events-based approach is that stability and novelty are expressed as parts of the same acts, and not different acts, which tends to be the assumption among mainstream theories of organization change. The events-based approach developed for this paper shows how the (...) organization may be defined as a structure of past and anticipated events, defined and redefined on an ongoing basis. From a case study of the development of a competency management tool in a bank, we show how the intertwinement between stability and novelty is articulated through events throughout the project and how every event is both an act of stability and an act of change. (shrink)

This chapter examines Heraclitus’ philosophy and its relationship to process thinking in organization studies. It argues that thinking with Heraclitus makes us think beyond conventional categories and concepts and rethink our views on organization. After providing an overview of Heraclitus’ life, the chapter looks at his writings and discusses the challenges facing Heraclitus scholars. It also provides a background understanding for a way to read Heraclitus that seriously accounts for linguistic density and resonance, considers the meanings and connections of Heraclitus’ (...) fragments, and outlines the challenges facing organizational scholars in reading and engaging with Heraclitus. Moreover, the chapter analyses the themes of hidden unity, opposition, and transformation that dominate Heraclitus’ fragments and which find their popular expression in the pairing of Heraclitus with Democritus. Finally, the chapter discusses Heraclitus’ concept of knowledge and his use of logos. (shrink)