Toward a Flexible Onto-epistemology

Abstract

This article argues for the need to scrutinize meta-theoretical assumptions about creation in order to develop the analytical power of explorative social research on the emergence of new knowledge. At the example of a case study on innovation in e-business entrepreneurship, this article highlights limitations of the Hegelian dialectic logic when wanting to account for the emergence of creative and non-traditional ways of thinking and practicing. Social psychological accounts of the dynamics of knowledge creation have historically given greater importance to social meaning construction than to non-mediated dynamics, stressing contradictions and tensions in shared social themes as central tenets of the dynamics of change. The logic of dialectics focuses our attention on emergence in processes of social legitimisation and re-interpretation of the already-meaningful which produces and reproduces familiar meaningful patterns. The Deleuzian ontology of becoming is forwarded as a way to highlight the central role of non-dialectic, discontinually emergent dynamics. Specifically its logic of assemblages proved invaluable in surfacing creative patterns of new combinations.