nucleation

THEORY-1279: Organizational categories are radially structured, so applying them to nonprototypical cases extends and changes them; this is one source of continuous change in routine organizational action

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Properties5
StatusProposed
Tagssocial-science, social-ontology, philosophy-of-language
SourceLIT-1913 — On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change
Bears onQUESTION-259 — How do populations of heterogeneous processes generate, reproduce and transform organizational perspectives, and what further conditions let such a perspective become the object of its own effective governance?, QUESTION-334 — Outside NASA, does an organization's first acceptance of a deviation, traced prospectively, predict widening acceptance and later failure more often than in comparable organizations that eliminate deviations, and does an independent safety function interrupt the pattern?, QUESTION-364 — When an agent's own processes revise its will-organization, what makes the result the continuation of that agent's will rather than a replacement authored by something else, and how can a history of authorization count when the standards for reading authorization are themselves revised?
Cited as “grounds” byARG-044 — The MSF meeting reanalysed by Bencherki, Brummans and Vézy shows that an interaction can make available a way of relating its participants did not hold, and names the condition under which it lasts; it does not show that taking part comes before the reinterpretation, ARG-048 — Tsoukas and Chia's radial extension and institutionalization show how the exercise of a shared perspective can transform it with no agent governing the change, the agents and the institution kept distinct

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Source

Tsoukas & Chia (2002), LIT-1913, pp. 573–575; read in NOTE-1489.

What was actually shown

An argument from prototype theory. Categories have a stable core of prototypical members and an unstable periphery (Rosch, Lakoff, Johnson). Applying a category at the periphery is “an imaginative extension” that extends “the radius of application of the concept, thus transforming it” (p. 574). It is also a normative act. The illustrations:

  • Hart’s statute banning wheeled vehicles in parks;
  • Tsoukas and Vladimirou’s call-centre operators deciding what counts as good service;
  • Feldman’s move-in routine, extended to traffic, vendors and a football game.

The paper’s second source of change, human reflexivity, works independently of this one (p. 575).

What this does not say

  • That every application changes a category. Prototypical cases leave it stable, and modification can be “minimal” (p. 577).
  • That the extension is arbitrary. “The indeterminacy of extension does not indicate arbitrariness” (p. 574).
  • That an extension, once made, becomes organizational. That needs institutionalization, which may not happen (p. 579).

Connections to the record’s own argument

Added 2026-10-31 by a pass connecting the readings of Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy 2024 and the works it leans on to the record’s lines. Analogies are marked as such.

Distributed agency and individuation

  • CLAIM-418, part 3, and CLAIM-430, part 3: radial extension, and the condition of institutionalization (pp. 578–579).

Will-organization, organizational affect and authenticity

Nucleating argument and formal apparatus

  • CLAIM-419 and CASE-178. The record is its own case: a closed vocabulary turns radial extension into a decided amendment. CASE-178 is consistent with this theory but does not test it, since nothing was classified as prototypical in advance. Its 2026-10-31 note gives the test design.

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