Organization as process: Drawing a line between endogenous and exogenous views

Abstract

This paper attempts a typification of processes views in organization studies. As a basis for our analysis, we assume that distinctions may be drawn is the way that entities are conceptualised in the analysis, what we refer to as the process of "entification". From this point of departure we explore four different process views, namely: process as flows, process as programmes, process as recursive reproduction and process as connectivity. The first two views; process as flows and process as programmes tend to build on the assumption that the processes take place within relatively stable entified contexts, such as the organization or the institutional environment. This we refer to as an "exogenous" view. A second set of views of process is what we refer to as "endogenous" views. These two views are what we call endogenous, as they assume that entification resides in the process itself. Organization as process

Decoding network dynamics

“…The word "process" is seen as "movement" pieced together by actors' deliberate actions toward combining and recombining heterogeneous resources, permitting the pursuit of individual goals (Hernes & Weik, 2007). This notion of process can be exemplified by Woodside and Biemans (2005) whose work provides a holistic account of the interlinked processes that are pivotal to bringing innovation to markets.…”

Social Systems: Resources and Strategies

“…In fact, such sources of resources will become a subsystem of the opposite sources. The excess resource will be invested in the future flows of the opposite resource [20,21]. That is how hierarchy in the flows of each resource is established.…”

A self-determination theory perspective on mentoring relationships at work

“…A process approach stresses the flux of life as a starting point, preferring the use of verbs rather than nouns for describing the ever-evolving emerging of organizing. Within organization and management studies the tension between these approaches and their respective critiques are addressed regularly for important areas, including change (Hernes & Weik, 2007;Tsoukas & Chia, 2002;Weik, 2011), internationalization (Welch & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, 2014), leadership (Cunliffe & Eriksen, 2011;Uhl-Bien, 2006), learning (Cunliffe, 2008), and strategy (Sminia, 2009). In mentoring studies this division is almost completely absent in favor of the entity approach (see Jones & Corner, 2012, for an exception).…”

“…Several authors (Hernes & Weik, 2007;Van de Ven & Poole, 2005) propose taxonomies of approaches in which entity and process are two ends of a continuum. As our review has shown, the entity approaches are well-established.…”

“…Through these scripts about what it means to be a mentor or a protégé, meaningful interactions emerge. Alternatively, stressing "process as connectivity" (Endegenous view 1, in Hernes and Weik, 2007) …”