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Don't simplify, complexify : from disjunctive to conjunctive theorizing in organization and management studies
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Tsoukas, Haridimos (2017) Don't simplify, complexify : from disjunctive to conjunctive theorizing in organization and management studies. Journal of Management Studies, 54 (2). pp. 132-153. doi:10.1111/joms.12219 ISSN 0022-2380.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.12219
Abstract
In this paper I argue that, rather than theory development aim at simplifying complex organizational phenomena, it should aim at complexifying theories – theoretical complexity is needed to account for organizational complexity. Defining the latter as the capacity for ‘nontrivial’ action, I explore a complex ‘system of picturing’ organizations as objects of study that provides an alternative to the hitherto dominant disjunctive style of thinking. A complex ‘system of picturing’ consists of an open-world ontology, a performative epistemology, and a poetic praxeology. Complex theorizing is conjunctive: it seeks to make connections between diverse elements of human experience through making those analytical distinctions that will enable the joining up of concepts normally used in a compartmentalized manner. Insofar as conjunctive theorizing is driven by the need to preserve the ‘living-forward – understanding backward’ dialectic, it is better suited to grasping the logic of practice and, thus, to doing justice to organizational complexity. We come close to grasping complexity when we restore the past to its own present and make distinctions that overcome dualisms, preserving as much as possible relationality, temporality, situatedness and, interpretive open-endedness. I illustrate the argument with several examples from organizational and management research.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Organizational behavior, Ontology, Knowledge, Theory of, Praxeology | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Management Studies | ||||||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0022-2380 | ||||||||
Official Date: | March 2017 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 54 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 132-153 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1111/joms.12219 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 12 September 2016 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 11 July 2018 |
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