Embedded Organizational Events: The Units of Process in Organization Science

Abstract

Analyses of the events that occur in the context of organization process are rapidly advancing. Scholars holding otherwise disparate views share the sense that social actors, including organizations, attend to, interpret, and act upon events. Analyses of events are converging from two theoretical and methodological starting points. Analyses that emphasize human subjectivity and contextual specificity are seeking increased cross-situational learning. Nomothetic analyses are building on their strength in cross-situational learning by striving to represent the way subjects themselves construct events in relation to context. Rather than continuing to analyze classic organizational and environmental dimensions like formalization, general uncertainty, munificence, and stability, scholars are increasingly analyzing the qualities of events and the meanings they are given. They are treating events as elements that social actors abstract from social processes, and social actors as parties who interact to give events meaning. The present paper defines event analyzes its origins and current uses, and indicates how using and going beyond lessons from physics can promote organization studies. These lessons come from the analysis of physical events as particles in relation to waves, fields, and perspectives. The uniquely social element of potential takes us beyond the experience of physical science.