Process thinking in strategic organization

Abstract

We need more process thinking in research on strategic organization. Others have said this before in different ways (Meyer et al., 2005;Pettigrew, 1992;Van de Ven, 1992), but when one looks at the majority of empirical work published in the major journals in strategy, it seems that the message bears repeating. Even Strategic Organization, a journal that represents an ideal outlet for this type of research and which, according to the editors, actively welcomes it, has been able to publish only a limited number of empirical articles that embody what I would call process thinking over the first four years of its existence -in my estimate, no more than one or two articles per year. This essay summarizes the case for more process thinking in strategic organization, suggests some ideas for making process thinking more central, and draws attention to some illustrative studies that have shown the way. I begin, however, with a definition. What do I mean by process thinking?Unfortunately, the word 'process' has come to take on such a variety of meanings that communication can be difficult. I do not want to embark on a taxonomic discussion here, as others have done this before (Chia and Langley, 2004;Van de Ven, 1992;Van de Ven, 2005), but I do need to specify what I mean by process thinking in this essay. For me, process thinking involves considering phenomena dynamically -in terms of movement, activity, events, change and temporal evolution. This corresponds to Van de Ven's (1992) third definition of process (the other two being process as an explanation of a relationship and process as a variable). This is also intended to be inclusive of weaker and stronger views of process as described by Chia and Langley (2004). Thus, process thinking may involve consideration of how and why things -people, organizations, strategies, environments -change, act and evolve over time (perhaps expressed best by Andrew Pettigrew [1992: 11] as catching 'reality in flight') or, adopting a more radical process ontology, how such 'things' come to be constituted, reproduced, adapted and defined through ongoing processes (nicely expressed in Tsoukas and Chia's [2002] reference to 'organizational becoming').

Activists and Incumbents Structuring Change: The Interplay of Agency, Culture, and Networks in Field Evolution

“…In the first stage, we identified events as key observational units (van de Ven & Poole, 2002), adopting a process-centric approach to agency (Hardy & Maguire, 2008;Langley, 2007). We define events as manifestations of individual and organizational actors' act ions that potentially contribute to the creation of new institutions or the transformation of existing ones in an organizational field.…”

Quo vadis, paradox? Centripetal and centrifugal forces in theory development

“…Likewise, while studies of paradoxes in communication and discourse have a long tradition, researchers have focused on identifying paradoxes and their effects (Fairhurst and Putnam, 2018). By applying ever more sophisticated linguistic techniques, researchers may surface temporal aspects and gain insights into underlying processes (Langley, 2007). For instance, recent studies detail how multiple tensions can become discursively entangled or 'knotted' (Sheep, Fairhurst, and Khazanchi, 2017) and how actors cope with strategic paradoxes using humor (Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017).…”

Paradox Research in Management Science: Looking Back to Move Forward

“…Likewise, research depicts paradoxes unfolding in cyclical (e.g., Langley, 2007) and dialectical (e.g., Harvey, 2014) processes. Building from the foundational work of Smith and Berg (1987), conceptual studies further elaborated on the dynamics of vicious and virtuous cycles (e.g., Smith ).…”

“…As paradox persists, the interplay between its contradictory and interdependent elements consistently shifts, intensifying tensions and/or opening new possibilities, and triggering responses in an ongoing, iterative process. Studies of paradox dynamics offer a valuable process perspective, providing insights into continuous change (Langley, 2007), and the vicious or virtuous cycles over time ). Yet despite the importance of this theme, only 24 of the analyzed studies (18%) investigate dynamics of paradox.…”