"The Melting of All that's Solid: Dialogue, Process Theory and Practice"

Abstract

This symposium explores the intersection of social constructionism, dialogue, and process theory. The field of organization studies has been dominated by modernist view of knowledge that assumes an underlying permanence, prefers positivist research that seeks to verify stable unities as valid forms of knowledge. We will explore movements that have challenged these assumptions and propose a paradigm of impermanence and continual process. We will explore the emergence of process philosophy and social constructionism as moves within the linguistic turn in philosophy and the social sciences. We propose a discursive vocabulary that is relational and challenges the vocabulary of organizational structures. Intuitive practices in a streaming world: the role of a dialogical hermeneutics Presenter: John Shotter; Leeds U. Business School Cooperation as Process: a Call for a Discourse of Aesthetics Presenter: Frank J. Barrett; Naval Postgraduate School Taking Process Seriously: Purity and Danger Presenter: Kenneth Gergen; Swarthmore College