(EBOOK)Haridimos tsoukas, robert chia philosophy organization theory

PHILOSOPHY AND
ORGANIZATION THEORY


RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY
OF ORGANIZATIONS
Series Editor: Michael Lounsbury
Recent Volumes:
Volume 15:
Volume 16:

Deviance in and of Organizations
Networks in and around Organizations

Volume 17:

Organizational Politics

Volume 18:
Volume 19:

Social Capital of Organizations
Social Structure and Organizations Revisited

Volume 20:

The Governance of Relations in Markets and
Organizations
Postmodernism and Management: Pros, Cons and the
Alternative

Volume 21:
Volume 22:
Volume 23:

Legitimacy Processes in Organizations
Transformation in Cultural Industries

Volume 24:
Volume 25:

Professional Service Firms
The Sociology of Entrepreneurship

Volume 26:

Studying Difference between Organizations:
Comparative Approaches to Organizational Research

Volume 27:
Volume 28:

Institutions and Ideology
Stanford’s Organization Theory Renaissance,
1970–2000

Volume 29:

Technology and Organization: Essays in Honour of
Joan Woodward

Volume 30A:

Markets on Trial: The Economic Sociology of
the U.S. Financial Crisis: Part A

Volume 30B:

Markets on Trial: The Economic Sociology of
the U.S. Financial Crisis: Part B

Volume 31:

Categories in Markets: Origins and Evolution


RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS
VOLUME 32

PHILOSOPHY AND
ORGANIZATION THEORY
EDITED BY

HARIDIMOS TSOUKAS
University of Cyprus, Cyprus & Warwick Business School,
University of Warwick, UK

ROBERT CHIA
University of Strathclyde Business School,
Glasgow, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan
India – Malaysia – China


Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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First edition 2011
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ISBN: 978-0-85724-595-3
ISSN: 0733-558X (Series)

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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

vii

ADVISORY BOARD

ix

INTRODUCTION: WHY PHILOSOPHY
MATTERS TO ORGANIZATION THEORY
Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia

1

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION
THEORY: PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS AND
SCIENTIFIC SOLUTIONS
Gabriele Lakomski and Colin W. Evers

23

PRAGMATISM: A LIVED AND LIVING

PHILOSOPHY. WHAT CAN IT OFFER
TO CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATION
THEORY?
Bente Elkjaer and Barbara Simpson

55

MACINTYRE, NEO-ARISTOTELIANISM AND
ORGANIZATION THEORY
Ron Beadle and Geoff Moore

85

MARXIST PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION
STUDIES: MARXIST CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
UNDERSTANDING OF SOME IMPORTANT
ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS
Paul S. Adler

v

123


vi

CONTENTS

BEYOND UNIVERSALISM AND RELATIVISM:
HABERMAS’S CONTRIBUTION TO DISCOURSE

ETHICS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR
INTERCULTURAL ETHICS AND
ORGANIZATION THEORY
Andreas Georg Scherer and Moritz Patzer
HERMENEUTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY
Frank J. Barrett, Edward H. Powley and
Barnett Pearce

155

181

PHENOMENOLOGY AND ORGANIZATION
THEORY
Robin Holt and Jo¨rgen Sandberg

215

ORGANIZING DERRIDA ORGANIZING:
DECONSTRUCTION AND ORGANIZATION THEORY
Andreas Rasche

251

THINKING BECOMING AND EMERGENCE:
PROCESS PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION
STUDIES
Ajit Nayak and Robert Chia

281

THEORY AS THERAPY: WITTGENSTEINIAN
REMINDERS FOR REFLECTIVE THEORIZING IN
ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT THEORY
John Shotter and Haridimos Tsoukas

311

TRIANGULATING PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE
TO UNDERSTAND COMPLEX ORGANIZATIONAL
AND MANAGERIAL PROBLEMS
John Bechara and Andrew H. Van de Ven

343

RICHARD RORTY, WOMEN, AND THE NEW
PRAGMATISM
Barbara Czarniawska

365


LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Paul S. Adler

Department of Management and
Organization, Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Frank J. Barrett

Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey,
CA, USA

Ron Beadle

Newcastle Business School, Northumbria
University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

John Bechara

Carlson School of Management,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
MN, USA

Robert Chia

Department of Management, Strathclyde
Business School, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, UK

Barbara Czarniawska

GRI, School of Business, Economics and
Law, The University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden

Bente Elkjaer

School of Education, University of Aarhus,
Copenhagen, Denmark

Colin W. Evers

University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia

Robin Holt

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Gabriele Lakomski

University of Melbourne, Melbourne,
Australia

Geoff Moore

Durham Business School, Durham
University, Durham, UK

Ajit Nayak

University of Exeter Business School,
Exeter, UK
vii

viii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Moritz Patzer

Institute of Organization and
Administrative Science (IOU), University
of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Barnett Pearce

Fielding Graduate University, Santa
Barbara, CA, USA

Edward H. Powley

Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey,
CA, USA

Andreas Rasche

Warwick Business School, University of
Warwick, Coventry, UK

Jo¨rgen Sandberg

University of Queensland, Queensland,
Australia

Andreas Georg Scherer

Institute of Organization and
Administrative Science (IOU), University
of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

John Shotter

KCC Foundation, London, UK

Barbara Simpson

Department of Management, University of
Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow, UK

Haridimos Tsoukas

University of Cyprus, Cyprus; and
Warwick Business School, University of
Warwick, Coventry, UK

Andrew H. Van de Ven Carlson School of Management, University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA


ADVISORY BOARD
SERIES EDITOR
Michael Lounsbury
Alex Hamilton Professor of Business,
University of Alberta School of Business, and

National Institute for Nanotechnology, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

ADVISORY BOARD
Howard E. Aldrich
University of North Carolina, USA

Paul M. Hirsch
Northwestern University, USA

Stephen R. Barley
Stanford University, USA

Renate Meyer
Vienna University of Economics and
Business Administration, Austria

Nicole Biggart
University of California at Davis,
USA
Elisabeth S. Clemens
University of Chicago, USA

Mark Mizruchi
University of Michigan, USA
Walter W. Powell
Stanford University, USA

Barbara Czarniawska
Go¨teborg University, Sweden
Gerald F. Davis

University of Michigan, USA

Hayagreeva Rao
Stanford University, USA
Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson
Uppsala University, Sweden

Marie-Laure Djelic
ESSEC Business School, France
Frank R. Dobbin
Harvard University, USA

W. Richard Scott
Stanford University, USA
Robin Stryker
University of Minnesota, USA

Royston Greenwood
University of Alberta, Canada
Mauro Guillen
The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, USA

Haridimos Tsoukas
University of Cyprus, Cyprus and
University of Warwick, UK
Richard Whitley
University of Manchester, UK
ix

INTRODUCTION: WHY
PHILOSOPHY MATTERS TO
ORGANIZATION THEORY
Haridimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual
order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes. (James, 1911/
1996, p. 51)
Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity
y The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection. (Whitehead,
1929, p. 20)

The relentless demand for a better understanding of the world around us and
the justification of appropriate human action has been a major motivational
impulse in the growth and evolution of modern societies. The need to know
what human life is about, what reality is made of and how we should live a
rich and fulfilling life has been an abiding preoccupation since the dim and
distant dawn of human civilization. One noticeable inexorable trend in this
civilizing process has been the gradual shift from an overwhelming reliance
on brute force to the cultivation of reasoned curiosity and the consequent
development of knowledge as a means of meeting basic survival needs and
attaining collectively desired ends. It may be that, as Aristotle famously
remarked, human beings have the innate desire to know; however, the
particular forms of knowledge generated have varied over time.

Philosophy and Organization Theory
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 32, 1–21
Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X(2011)0000032003

1


2

HARIDIMOS TSOUKAS AND ROBERT CHIA

The form and conception of knowledge we presently rely on to justify our
actions has not always been what it is. It, too, has undergone substantial
evolution and transformation over the centuries. Michel Foucault (1970), in
The Order of Things, notes that each historical epoch brings with it a different
conception of what it means to know and that this is itself grounded on the
epoch’s experience of order. Thus, Renaissance thought, for instance, relied
heavily on the idea of an unending spiral of linked resemblances in both the
material and symbolic worlds as its basis for knowledge. Proximity,
convenience, analogy and emulation provided the organizing code for the
creation of knowledge during this period, so much so that the walnut, which
resembles the human brain, was believed to cure wounds of the pericranium.
Similarly, signs observed in nature and human signs were believed to be
inextricably intertwined so that there was nothing bizarre, for instance, about
Paracelsus’s claim that snakes may be repelled by chanting certain Greek
words (Foucault, 1970, pp. 27–33).
This Renaissance conception of knowledge as deriving from observation of
similarities and resemblances, however, was replaced by a Modern
consciousness involving the breaking up and analysis of representations and
the establishment of causal relations through the principles of identity and
difference. Naming, representing, classifying and the establishment of causal
relations became the key activities of a knowing mind. Knowledge took on an

air of certainty so much so that it became vital to demonstrate the universality
and irrefutability of their truth claims; proof was now needed. With this need
for proof and justification came the demand for theoretical conjectures that
adhered closely to the principles of objective observation, logical rigor in
analysis, and transparency and accuracy in representation. Theories came to
be recognized as empirically verifiable and intellectually justifiable claims
regarding the nature of reality.
As Modern consciousness gradually took roots, developed and yielded
results, such theoretical representations became no longer unquestioned, selfjustifying starting points (Foucault, 1970, pp. 238–239). Quite the contrary.
The Cartesian doubt was eventually turned to the cognizing subject too.
What defines the late Modern episteme, in particular, is not the security of a
single authoritative representation of things but a confusing proliferation of
competing accounts (Foucault, 1970, p. 346); interpretation is now needed.
The late Modern episteme ushered in a heightened awareness of a certain
historical consciousness and a realization of importance and limitations of
perspective in the apprehension of things. Our knowledge is now acknowledged to be incomplete and partial; we recognize an inevitable ‘owing’ in our
‘kn-owing’.


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

3

Conceptual knowledge is ‘forever inadequate to the fullness of reality to be
known’ (James, 1911/1996, p. 78). Our concepts are secondary formations
‘inadequate and only ministerial y they falsify as well as omit’ (James, 1911/
1996, p. 79). What we do in the act of theorizing is to ‘harness up reality in our
conceptual scheme in order to drive it better’ (James, 1909/1996, p. 248). This
power of framing abstract concepts from the flux and flow of lived
experiences is one of our most sublime human prerogatives in that our

intellectual journeys into these abstractions enable us to return to the concrete
with ‘an increase both of vision and power’ (James, 1909/1996, p. 217),
provided that we do not ever forget that these theories and concepts are ‘manmade extracts from the temporal flux’ and allowed to become a ‘tyranny that
defeats the end’ it was intended to serve (James, 1909/1996, pp. 218–219). It is
this late modernist equation of theory with a partial perspective or ‘viewpoint’
that dominates our contemporary intellectual consciousness and that, thus,
accounts for the proliferation of competing perspectives in the social sciences
in general and in organization theory (OT) in particular.
The etymology of theory is revealing. As Toulmin (1982, p. 239) notes, the
word theoros in classical Greece was mainly used to indicate the official
delegate who was dispatched from the city-state to attend intercity athletic
Games, especially the Olympic Games. He was not meant to take part in
those games, only to observe them. Gradually theoros was used to refer to
any spectator at the Games, official or unofficial, in contrast with a
participant. Eventually, the abstract noun theoria acquired the meaning of
spectating, in contrast to participating. With Aristotle, theoria came to refer
to the philosopher’s detached intellectual inquiry as opposed to the praxis
of the ‘man on the street’ – the carpenter, the farmer, the trader (Toulmin,
1982, p. 239).
Theoretical conjectures are in effect ‘organized’ collections of propositional
statements making claims regarding the phenomenon under investigation that
renders them plausible and logically coherent to a community of inquirers.
The impetus for a specific configuration of such propositional statements into
a coherent whole derives from deeper, and frequently unexamined,
metaphysical presuppositions regarding the nature of reality, our relation to
it and the nature of knowledge thus produced. As philosopher of science
Harre (1985, p. 16) notes, ‘we have to choose some concepts with which to
think about the world, and this amounts to devising or learning a language,
and accepting a system of picturing and conceiving the structure of the world’.
The world causes us to have beliefs but does not dictate the content of our

beliefs (Rorty, 1989, p. 6). It is our ‘system of picturing’ of the world that
guides the questions we raise and the explanatory forms we deem plausible.


4

HARIDIMOS TSOUKAS AND ROBERT CHIA

In this way, the study of organization is inextricably dependent on the prior
organization of mentalities and modes of thought.
For some time now, it has been recognized that, especially in the human
sciences, there can be no unbiased conceptualizing of human experiences
without our implicit reliance on both an existing ‘observational order’ in
terms of the types of things we do in fact discriminate and a dominant
‘conceptual order’ in terms of which we do interpret (Whitehead, 1933,
p. 183). For Whitehead, observational discrimination ‘is not dictated by the
impartial facts. It selects and it discards and what it retains is rearranged in a
subjective order of prominence’. It is therefore a key task of human inquiry
to urge observation and conceptualizing beyond the boundaries of their
‘delusive completeness’ (Whitehead, 1933, p. 184): a task that necessitates
not in asking if a theory is true or false, but in ‘noting its scope of useful
application and its failure beyond that scope’ (Whitehead, 1933, p. 257).
Theories are tools for interrogating reality and for deriving their practical
imports. They are not irrefutable truth claims. As such, it becomes
incumbent on scholars of all stripes and persuasion to open themselves to
the possibility of alternative, plausible theoretical viewpoints and to engage
in a robust critical consideration of the competing perspectives on offer in
their own specific field of study.
Yet, there is much evidence to suggest that this intellectual openness does
not always characterize the world of academia, as particular types of

knowledge become accepted as legitimate and are institutionalized. Academic
institutions, after all, function as all institutions do: they provide closure to
meaning, privileging particular ways of observing, thinking and arguing, and
build particular reward systems around them. In that respect, it is only too
easy to be seduced by a favourite theory and to dogmatically cling on to that
which we are familiar and comfortable with. This is a condition that William
James was at pains to warn us of. He notes that a misunderstanding of the
status of theories and concepts often led to the denial of the very properties
that sensibly presented themselves to us, which the theories were intended to
capture, because we remain overly enamoured by the elegance and apparent
completeness of the theory itself (James, 1909/1996, pp. 218–219).
This tendency to cling on to our own preferred views and to dismiss
theories that do not conform to our own operating premises and hence to
avoid sustained critical questioning of our own assumptions is widespread
in the human sciences. Indeed, it has, at times, led to blatant ridiculing
or offhand dismissal by the academic doyens of the establishment.
One example of the hostility to provocative plausible accounts that comes


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

5

to mind was the intense reaction to the controversial work of the
political philosopher Bloom (1987) in The Closing of the American
Mind, when he forcefully argued that modern higher education, in
particular, has essentially failed democracy and impoverished the souls of
its students.
For Bloom the unthinking promulgation of an uncritical relativism has
threatened to overwhelm Western democracies and to paradoxically

propagate an ‘openness to closedness’ through its refusal to countenance the
provision of an intellectual space for the airing of deeply entrenched
prejudices. It is in fact an openness that denies the special claim of reason,
an openness of ‘indifference’ that obscures awareness of a deeper, more
abiding level of ignorance. He points out that, while it took a lifetime of
unceasing intellectual labour for Socrates to come to the realization that he
was ignorant, ‘Now every high school student knows that. How did it become
so easy?’ (Bloom, 1987, pp. 40–43). Ignorance is now no longer construed as
an acute and abiding awareness of the existence of a background ‘unthought’
that circumscribes the thinkable, but a mere ‘gap’ in our knowledge. Socrates,
on the other hand, was acutely aware of what he did not know and hence
always open to the possibility of otherness.
Literary critic Johnson echoed this deeper insight on the importance of the
‘unthought’ when she wrote most passionately: ‘Ignorance, far more than
knowledge, is what can never be taken for granted. If I perceive my ignorance
as a gap in knowledge instead of an imperative that changes the very nature
of what I think I know, then I do not truly experience my ignorance’ (1989,
p. 16). In other words, it is only when we become painfully aware that it is
ignorance of our ignorance, and not simply a gap in knowledge that prevents
deep insights into the human condition, we begin to glimpse that illusive
realm of complex thinking that characterizes Socratic ignorance. To heighten
our awareness of this ignorance of ignorance, Bloom argues forcefully for a
return to the Socratic style of learning in which the persistent questioning of
conventional wisdom in pursuit of deeper insights becomes a dominant
feature of academic life. Bloom cites de Tocqueville as showing that the
greatest democratic danger is not so much the threat of novel radical
perspectives but ‘enslavement to public opinion’ because of a refusal to
openly engage with subjectivities and prejudices.
There is, as the German philosopher Hans George Gadamer remarked,
an enduring modern intolerance or ‘prejudice against prejudice’. Prejudice

and subjectivity are inevitably infused into our understanding and comprehension of life and, as Whitehead points out, it is precisely the task of


6

HARIDIMOS TSOUKAS AND ROBERT CHIA

philosophical inquiry to engage in the relentless self-correcting of our own
initial ‘excess of subjectivity’. In other words, it is only by allowing the airing
of our deeply entrenched subjective prejudices and critically engaging with
them that we can then begin to ‘recover the totality obscured by the
selection’ (Whitehead, 1929, p. 20). True insight and understanding are only
achieved not by avoiding contrary or vastly alien viewpoints, but by
confronting them through careful scrutiny for internal paradigmatic
coherence and exploring their consequent implications for the world of
practical affairs. This is the true task of philosophical inquiry and a task that
sets the parameters for this volume.
The need for creating a deeper awareness of the ‘unconscious metaphysics’
underpinning our theorizing efforts is particularly acute in OT. Our awareness
that such philosophical presuppositions invariably underpin OT was
irreversibly heightened more than 30 years ago by the seminal contribution
of Burrell and Morgan (1979), in their influential Sociological Paradigms and
Organizational Analysis. Burrell and Morgan undertook a significant effort at
uncovering the underlying theoretical underpinnings of various competing
perspectives on the nature of organizational functioning. According to them,
all theories of organization are based on an underlying philosophy and an
implicit theory of society so that, as social scientists, organization theorists
inevitably make implicit ontological assumptions regarding the nature of
reality they are investigating, epistemological assumptions about how we can
know with some degree of certainty about that reality and assumptions about

whether the social world being investigated is ultimately orderly/regulated or
conflictful/changeful in nature.
From the resultant set of competing assumptions, Burrell and Morgan
developed their typology, consisting of four alternative paradigms for
organizational analysis: functionalism, interpretivism, radical structuralism
and radical humanism. Burrell and Morgan’s efforts have led the way
towards meta-theorizing in OT and to the crucial realization that theories of
organization are themselves legitimate objects of analysis in our efforts to
understand the phenomenon of organization. As Tsoukas and Knudsen
(2003) remarked, when we raise meta-theoretical questions, we begin our
journey towards greater reflexive awareness. We begin to realize that our
culture, our race, our ideology, our gender, our class, our language and our
authority structures (and we might add, our epoch) dramatically affect the
validity of our knowledge claims. Exposure to alternative accounts of
organizational functioning forces us to reflect on the partiality and
inevitable incompleteness of our knowledge claims. They sensitize us to


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

7

the possibility of a realm of tacit knowing and practical understanding that
resists logic, linguistic formulation and theoretical explication.
If philosophy helps make us self-aware of critical assumptions we tacitly
incorporate in our organizational theorizing, how does it happen? What
types of philosophical inquiry are conducive to our refining our research
practice as organization theorists? There are three ways in which
philosophical reflection may find its way to organizational research:
ontological, epistemological and praxeological (Tsoukas, 2005, p. 5;

Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2005, p. 363). We examine each one as follows:
1. Ontology: Every scientific discipline takes for granted certain key
categories, which define the nature of its subject matter and frame its
inquiries. The critical questions here are: ‘What are the phenomena we
investigate made of? What are their salient properties?’ Or to put it more
philosophically, ‘What is the Being of the entities that constitute the object
of inquiry?’ (Guignon, 1983, p. 64). Without a tacit understanding of
foundational categories that are thought to be constitutive of the salient
properties of the object of study, the practice of conducting scientific
research cannot even begin. The theoretical frameworks organization
theorists develop reflect deep ontological commitments about the nature of
reality. By ontologically carving up the world in particular ways,
researchers bring out the constitutive elements of the phenomena they
explore. Important advances in the social sciences at large, and in OT in
particular, come from making fresh ontological distinctions that enable
social scientists to approach a particular phenomenon in a new light and,
accordingly, design new research programmes. There are numerous such
examples in OT. We examine a few below.
One of the most important ontological distinctions made in OT is Weick’s
(1979, 1995) redirecting of attention from organizations to organizing.
Focusing on organizing, Weick has argued that organizations are not readymade entities with predefined properties waiting to be discovered by the
researcher, as, for example, the famous Aston studies had assumed (Pugh,
1981), but systems of interaction that become organized. What we label and
experience as ‘organizations’ (notice the quotes) are products of human
action. Researchers’ task, therefore, is to explain how organization (notice the
singular) emerges, to investigate the processes through which collections of
individuals are transformed into organized entities and ascribed a singular
identity. Accordingly, if ‘organization’ is an emergent phenomenon, so is,

8

HARIDIMOS TSOUKAS AND ROBERT CHIA

partially at least, the ‘environment’ with which organizations are deemed to
interact with. The environment is partly an organizational creation insofar as
it is enacted through the actions organizations undertake: organizations help
bring forth the environment they deal with (Weick, 1995).
Weick’s ontological move from organizations to organizing has revealed a
hitherto almost invisible (in theoretical terms) world: a world of constrained
yet evolving interactions, feedback loops, relationships and double interacts.
He has brought to our attention the circularity that characterizes much of
human action: individuals and organizations partly grapple with problems
of their own making. Rejecting the entitarian image underlying the ontology
of traditional OT, Weick has enabled scholars and practitioners alike to pay
closer attention to questions of novelty, process and agency.
The importance of ontological commitments is also highlighted in the
ongoing controversy surrounding the nature of strategy. For defenders of
rationalist accounts, strategy is an essentially analytical exercise that takes the
form of systematic scanning of the environment and the organization,
planning for the future and executing the plan. Such a view of strategy
assumes a Cartesian split between conception and execution (thinking vs.
acting) and an identification of strategy with senior managerial intentionality
(Mintzberg, 1994). For those who take a process view of strategy, thinking
and acting are closely intertwined, and strategy making is much more
intuitive, context-dependent, process-sensitive and emergent than analytical,
intended and planned (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 1998). Scholars who
take a practice perspective on strategy go further by first bringing
intentionality under scrutiny and showing how it is constructed through
practitioners drawing on particular sociomaterial practices (Jarzabkowski,

Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whittington, 2007;
Whittington, 2006), and second by exploring the taken-for-granted background on which organizations tacitly (i.e. non-deliberately) draw, in order to
generate the consistencies in action that, looked at ex post facto by scholars,
are labelled as realized strategies (Chia & Holt, 2009; Chia & MacKay, 2007).
In other words, what strategy is taken to be depends crucially on how
intentionality, action and rationality are viewed – all these are metatheoretical issues, susceptible to different philosophical treatments (Tsoukas,
2010). For rationalists, strategy is largely what is intended; it is a plan. For
process theorists, strategy is largely contextual and improvisational; it is a
pattern. For practice theorists, strategy is what practitioners do, intended or
not, planned or improvisational; it is praxis. Clearly, the kind of ontological
commitments made concerning the status of intentionality, action and
rationality will help define the phenomenon at hand and how it ought to be


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

9

studied. So, for some practice theorists, the idea that a coherent and
consistent strategy might emerge non-deliberately rather than through
deliberate intention is more plausible than might appear to be the case (Chia
& Holt, 2009).
Several other examples, illustrating the significance of ontological redefinitions – the change in the ‘system of picturing’ – for the conceptualization of
organizational phenomena, can be mentioned. The shift from seeing change as
a fait accompli, thus approaching it as a succession of states, to seeing
change as immanent in organizations, stemming from actors’ reflexivity as
well as their having to accommodate new experiences, has led several
researchers to talk about ‘organizational becoming’ (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002)
and continuous improvisation (Orlikowski, 1996; Weick, 1998): the move
from approaching routines as stable entities to seeing routines as ‘emergent

accomplishments’ (Feldman, 2000, p. 613), thus incorporating both stability
and change; the redefinition of organizational mind as ‘a propensity to act in a
certain manner or style’ (Weick & Roberts, 1993, p. 361), actualized in
patterns of behaviour, rather than as a mental entity engaged in information
processing; and the reconception of professional competence as constituted by
specific ways of being in the world, namely by distinctive ways of engaging in
a sociomaterial practice, rather than defined by a set of specific attributes,
such as knowledge, skills, attitudes and personal characteristics (Sandberg &
Pinnington, 2009), all of them are examples of ontological redescriptions of
the relevant phenomenon at hand.
What these examples have in common is an underlying performative
imagery: organizational change, routines, mind and competence are not
viewed as entities or accomplished events (as has traditionally been the case),
but as enactments. Insofar as this is the case, we are invited to think the
processes through which such enactments are carried out. By changing the
underlying ontological imagery, what was previously thought to be already
accomplished and stable is now revealed to be context- and processdependent, and unstable. While change and novelty were thought to be
properties of the organization, now the organization itself is an emergent
property of change. Such an ontological reversal enables fresh questions to be
asked and new empirical patterns to be noticed.
2. Epistemology: If ontology is concerned with, to use Aristotle’s phrase,
carving up reality at the joints, epistemology is concerned with how we
know what we claim to know. If ontological redefinitions lead to positing
new imageries, thus enabling new conceptual distinctions to be made,
epistemological considerations lead to exploring how our claims to


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knowledge are couched and justified. Typical questions include the
following: Should organizational research be aiming at explaining
organizational phenomena, predicting them or both? Or understanding
them? Are organizational phenomena akin to those studied by the natural
sciences? Should we be concerned with explaining the variability of
outcomes in terms of the variability of antecedent conditions leading to
outcomes or should we be aiming at showing the processes or mechanisms
that lead to particular outcomes? If theories are meant to be generalizable,
what is meant by this term and how may generalizability be achieved? Are
actors’ beliefs and desires needed in order to explain an organizational
phenomenon or can they be dispensed with?
For the sake of illustration, consider the latter question. The task of
organizational researchers has traditionally been assumed to be the discovery
of empirical regularities and their subsequent explanation through contingency models (CMs) of explanation of the type ‘If A, then B, in
circumstances Z’ (Donaldson, 2001). In a more elaborate form, CMs take the
following form: ‘Given any organization X, if X wants to maximize its
performance A and X believes that B is a means to attain A, under the
circumstances, then X does B’ (cf. Rosenberg, 1988, p. 25). Notice that this
general statement connects beliefs and desires to actions. For a CM to be
used, both the account of the situation (‘under the circumstances’) and the
rational disposition of the actor (‘if X wants to maximize its performance A’)
must be governed by objective criteria of application.
For contingency theorists, such objective criteria are possible if large
populations of organizations are examined, in which, like in a market,
actors’ rationality is assumed as a general tendency. Accordingly, there is no
need to examine particular actors’ beliefs and desires. Ansoff (1991, p. 459),
for example, argued some time ago that ‘the levels of success in organizations
which are aligned with the environment were [found to be] substantially
higher than in organizations which were out of alignment’. In other words,

under norms of rationality, the more aligned an organization is with its
turbulent environment, the more successful the organization will be (for
similar claims, see Hrebiniak & Joyce, 2001). What particular actors believe
and desire is of no consequence in CMs of explanation.
For other researchers, however, CMs do not do justice to the contextuality
of organizational phenomena, since research findings refer to aggregates,
while our research subjects – namely, practitioners – act within specific
organizations (Mintzberg, 1991, p. 465). The difference in the levels
of reference is crucial. In aggregating, ‘researchers construct homogeneity


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

11

in heterogeneous phenomena’ (Starbuck, 2006, p. 143), whereas practitioners
experience the particularity of their own situations. To do justice to the
inherent contextuality of organizational phenomena, contextualist forms
of inquiry must be pursued, interpretivists argue. CM models require objective
criteria of application concerning the situation and actors’ rationality, which,
however, are not possible, since an account of the situation and of an actor’s
beliefs and desires is actor-dependent, that is to say subjective (Rosenberg,
1988; Bohman, 1991; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2005, p. 368).
An actor’s beliefs and desires cannot be merely read from his/her
actions, for the actor may hold quite different second-order or contextdependent beliefs and desires. For example, destroying their farm produce
may violate criteria of utility maximization, but doing so may be rational
for farmers as a form of protest. Even if a full description of an actor’s
beliefs and desires is given, his/her course of action cannot be predicted,
since to do so would require an objective description of the situation, which,
however, cannot be done independently of attributions of beliefs and

desires. As Bohman (1991, p. 27) aptly observes, ‘to say that ‘‘A is in a
situation of type C’’ is already to give an interpretation of A’s beliefs and
desires, to locate the action in a set of practices and in the larger context of
the agent’s other beliefs and desires’. To return to Ansoff’s example, for a
contextualist, to what extent an environment is ‘turbulent’ cannot be
decided irrespectively of managers’ web of beliefs and desires – it is, at least
to some extent, a matter of interpretation. What constitutes ‘turbulent’ to
one manager may be perceived as quite ‘passive’ by another. Organizations
do not respond to pre-given environments but to environments as perceived
and enacted by the organization (Weick, 1995; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2005,
pp. 366–368).
In other words, from a contextualist (or interpretive or constructivist)
epistemology, what an environment is inevitably depends on socially
acquired attitudes, habits of attention and the language chosen to describe
it. The language of description, in turn, depends on the interpreter’s
historically shaped web of beliefs, desires and predispositions. What actors
believe in and desire cannot be reduced to an objective description for,
as Rosenberg (1988, p. 44) noted, doing so would risk changing the truth
value of the statements involved. Put differently, we cannot substitute
synonymous descriptions for intentional states without changing their
truth value. Statements that attribute beliefs and desires are irreducibly
interpretive (Bohman, 1991, p. 28). Interpretive forms of inquiry tend to be
sensitive to process explanations, whereas CM models follow variance
models (Van de Ven & Poole, 2005; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2005; Langley &


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Tsoukas, 2010). Practice theorists go further in showing that social
and organizational processes may generate unintended outcomes, both
positive and negative, through the everyday actions and interactions of practitioners (de Certeau, 1984; Bourdieu, 1990; Chia & Holt, 2009). Intentionality is not the final word in understanding individual and collective
behaviour.
3. Praxeology: If ontology is concerned with the general structure of reality
and epistemology is concerned with how scholars formulate and justify
their knowledge claims, praxeology deals with how knowledge is related to
action and, more specifically, how theory is related to practice. Praxeology
is particularly important for the policy sciences, since the latter are, by
design, concerned with generating actionable knowledge (Tsoukas &
Knudsen, 2003, Part IV). Typical praxeological questions include: What is
actionable knowledge? What makes knowledge practical? How is theory
related to practice? What types of knowledge are related to what types of
practice? What is the structure of practical reason? How can theory inform
practice, yet do justice to the novelty the latter may bring about? What is
the role of free will (or choice) in explanations of organizational
behaviour? How is ethics related to knowledge?
Endorsing Lewin’s (1945) classic statement that ‘nothing is more practical
than a good theory’, Van de Ven (1989, p. 486) noted that a good theory is one
that ‘enlightens the profession of management’. How does it happen? The
mainstream view has been that OT, being an applied field, is similar to
engineering and, thus, on the one hand, it relates to the social sciences as
engineering does to physics, while, on the other hand, it relates to the profession
of management much like the engineering sciences relate to the profession of
engineers (Zald, 1996, p. 251; Van de Ven, 2007). This was, by and large,
Thompson’s (1956/1957), Simon’s (1976) and Barnard’s (1968) view of
administrative science; they urged organization scientists to conceive of formal
organizations as ‘abstract systems’ (Barnard, 1968, p. 74) – as sets of formal
rules operative under norms of procedural rationality – in order to reveal ‘the
principles of general organization’ (Barnard, 1976, p. xlvi). The formally

validated knowledge organization scientists generate, typically formulated as
CM propositional statements, is thought to be turned into similarly structured
propositional rules of action to be followed by practitioners. Indeed, as
MacIntyre (1985, p. 107) noted, it is the allegedly scientific character of
managerial knowledge that legitimates managerial action.
On this account, OT is broadly modelled on the natural sciences
(McKelvey, 1997). Prediction is symmetrically related to explanation. Time,


Introduction: Why Philosophy Matters to Organization Theory

13

temporality and emergence are not taken seriously into account. Individual
and collective histories and the ways by which they can subtly shape
tendencies and predispositions play little or no part in the explanatory
schemata. Lay knowledge is thought biased and, ideally, ought to be
jettisoned in favour of scientifically validated knowledge. Propositional
statements are derived from the study of past behaviour, which they are taken
to explain; action will be reliably guided (i.e. its consequences predicted) by
applying the same propositional statements in the future. Human action is,
thus, thought to relate to theory in a technical, instrumental manner. In this
context, enlightened action means evidence-based, scientifically validated,
instrumental action. Scientific knowledge is seen as leading to particular
techniques used to obtain particular results, devoid of any intrinsic ethical
commitments. Ethics becomes relevant only in the way knowledge is used, not
in how it is constituted (Simon, 1976).
By contrast, a poetic (as opposed to instrumental) praxeology (Shotter,
1993; Tsoukas, 2005, p. 5) places emphasis on the internal (rather than
external/instrumental) relationship between theory and practice and the

transformative character of theories. On this view, individuals and organizations are situated into, and draw on, broader sociomaterial practices, which
are constituted by self-interpretations (Taylor, 1985a). Human beings are
socially dependent ‘self-interpreting animals’ (Taylor, 1985a, p. 45), not in the
weak sense of being able to engage in reflection and interpretation, but in the
strong sense of being constituted by social relations and self-interpretation.
Notions such as ‘trust’, ‘loyalty’, ‘authority’, etc., are inextricably bound up
with the social life of a subject of experience. The language we use to describe
our goals, beliefs and desires, worked out in particular sociomaterial
practices, defines also the meanings these terms have for us (Taylor, 1985a,
p. 71, 1985b, p. 23; Winch, 1958, p. 15). Different vocabularies constitute
differently carved up semantic spaces, within which particular notions are
located and from which they derive their meanings. Sociomaterial practices
are mutually constituted with the vocabularies that describe them: without
being enacted in a particular practice, a vocabulary would be incomprehensible; we would be unable to see what it is referring to (an experience we often
have with foreign languages). And vice versa: a practice could not exist
without the use of a particular vocabulary.
Thus, there is an internal relationship between theories and the practices
they refer to. As the case of modern finance has shown, the adoption of a
theory alters the self-understandings constitutive of a practice and, therefore,
it changes the practice (MacKenzie, 2006). If theory is seen as a vocabulary
through which important distinctions may be enacted in a sociomaterial


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practice, it is not ‘applied’ by practitioners in the same way a mathematical
formula is applied by an engineer; the theory modifies to some extent the
distinctions incorporated in a practice, thus altering both the practice and

the practitioner. A poetic praxeology, therefore, brings out the doubly
transformative character of theories. The latter not only helps alter some
self-understandings in a practice but also helps alter actors’ experience of
the practice.
Moreover, a poetic praxeology sees actors are as being inevitably shaped
by the practices they are part of; they oftentimes unreflectively acquire and
unconsciously internalize a cultural habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) that subsequently serves to shape their modus operandi in their everyday dealings with
the world. Insofar as actors regularly draw on the linguistic resources and
traditions of their practice, they often act in a relatively unreflective manner,
but nevertheless possess the innate capacity for self-observation and
reflexivity, thereby potentially altering their practices to suit particular
circumstances. Theories provide further vocabularies to practitioners to
articulate in different ways what is only tacitly understood in their practices.
The internal relationship of theories and practices indicates that
normative questions are already implicated when evaluating theories. As
perhaps the fallout from the economic crisis at the end of the first decade of
the 21st century, precipitated by the collapse or near-collapse of large
financial institutions, has made clear, theories are validated through
practice. As Taylor (1985a, p. 111) remarks, ‘[y] because theories which
are about practices are self-definitions, and hence alter the practices, the
proof of the validity of a theory can come in the changed quality of the
practice it enables. Let me introduce terms of art for this shift of quality and
say that good theory enables practice to become less stumbling and more
clairvoyant’. Conceptions of ethics, effective action and the common good
are inevitably joined up and mutually implicated in evaluating theories.
Unlike instrumental action, praxis (and, by implication, poetic praxeology)
is always already ethically oriented.
In conclusion, ontological, epistemological and praxeological questions, and
the ways in which they impact organizational theorizing, indicate that
philosophical questions are higher-order meta-questions to OT as a scientific

discipline concerned with studying empirical organizational phenomena.
Philosophical questions are generated from outside the scientific frameworks
within which scientists carry out their research practices. They are questions
that focus on the frameworks themselves. Of course, scientific practices can
normally carry on successfully without ever dealing with such meta-questions.