Hernes, T. (2014). A Process Theory of Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695072.001.0001.
Key takeaways
Registered from metadata, not a reading. The table of contents shows:
- Part I on assumptions of organization theory that “do not work for explaining organizing in a world on the move”, and assumptions to replace them: becoming, ongoing temporality, endogeneity of process.
- A chapter on “Temporality and Process” (pp. 75–98), which holds the p. 93 passage the parent quotes.
- A chapter on articulatory modes and agency in Part II, with sections on intersubjective, practical, material, textual and tacit articulation.
Why this is here
Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy 2024 (LIT-1902) take from it:
- their epigraph and central question, “How can there be agency without agents?” (p. 93, quoted pp. 1349, 1358 and 1363);
- the claim that agency is not attributed to actors that appear “larger, more central, more important, or more resourceful” (p. 15, quoted p. 1350);
- agency as “the outcome of the encounter as it reaches closure and becomes an event, thereby giving meaning to other events, while defining the encounter as well” (p. 93, quoted p. 1353);
- agency as taking place when events are “articulated”, a form of communication (pp. 1350, 1363).
Whether they use it faithfully cannot be judged without the book. One thing can be seen from the parent alone. The epigraph quotes Hernes voicing a reader’s objection (“Some readers may object, ‘But where are the agents?’”). The parent then twice cites “without agents” as something “Hernes (2014, p. 93, emphasis added) pointed out” (pp. 1358, 1363). That turns a question Hernes anticipates into a thesis he asserts. It may be fair, if he goes on to answer the question that way, but it cannot be checked here. The parent says Hernes “hints at” the relation between agency and communication “yet does not theorize it” (p. 1353), which is its stated gap.