Chia, R. (1995). From modern to postmodern organizational analysis. Organization Studies, 16(4), 579–604. doi:10.1177/017084069501600406.
Key takeaways
From the abstract only.
- What distinguishes the postmodern from the modern is “a ‘style of thinking’ which eschews the uncritical use of common organizational terms such as ‘organizations’, ‘individuals’, ‘environment’, ‘structure’, and ‘culture’”.
- Modernist thought “relies on a ‘strong’ ontology … of being which privileges thinking in terms of discrete phenomenal ‘states’, static ‘attributes’ and sequential ‘events’”. Postmodern thought “privileges a ‘weak’ ontology of becoming”.
- The study of organization should examine “local assemblages of ‘organizings’ which collectively make up social reality”.
Why this is here
Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy 2024 (LIT-1902) take from it:
- that process perspectives reject the idea that “actions, interactions and the local orchestration of relationships are. . .the incidental epiphenomena of basic social entities such as ‘individuals,’ ‘actors/agents’ or ‘organizations’” (p. 581, quoted p. 1350);
- the “micro-practices of organizing” that “generate. . .effects of agency” (p. 596, quoted p. 1351), which frames the parent’s literature review;
- Cooper and Law’s “action is a happening … it simply happens” (1995, p. 4), as cited in Chia 1995, p. 599 (quoted p. 1352);
- with Hernes 2014 and Chia 1996, the claim that process research “has not theorized what goes on in the events that are propelled by agency” (p. 1363).
The abstract agrees with the first two uses: individuals and organizations are effects to be explained, and “organizings” are what is studied. Whether the paper speaks of “effects of agency” in the words quoted could not be checked. The abstract treats “sequential ‘events’” as a mark of the modernist ontology Chia rejects. The parent makes events the locus of agency. The two senses of “event” may differ (the parent takes its own from Deleuze and Massumi), but the parent does not note the contrast.