A Process Theory of Organization

The remarkable insights offered in this book provide a language and a style of analysis that help us move from process and reality to process as reality. Tor Hernes has captured the elusiveness of organizing in motion in a way that is unmatched. This book is a major accomplishment that enables all of us to be more observant and more skillful analysts who can now ask better questions about fleeting structures in an on-going present. * Karl Weick, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan *
The time of structures is gone, but much of organization theory - and practice - holds compulsively to it. Tor Hernes' book will help theoreticians and practitioners to let go - and enter the world where fluid processes cross through the global economy. * Barbara Czarniawska, GRI, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. *
This book is a refreshingly bold attempt to provide a genuinely alternative approach to the study and analysis of organization as precarious and temporary accomplishments; time and temporality feature significantly in its theoretical agenda. Hernes takes a step back and attempts to theorize organization on the basis that process itself is constitutive of reality. Hernes is to be complemented for undertaking such an ambitious endeavour in making us aware of the consequences of taking process and becoming seriously. * Robert Chia, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow *
A world on the move and how to catch it without making it static; this is the big challenge that the book addresses. The author offers a great introduction to a process theory of organization since it makes evident how temporality is at the heart of organizational life, and how it should be studied. * Silvia Gherardi, Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Trento University *