Process approaches to organization studies focus on flow, activities, and evolution, understanding organizations and organizing as processes in the making. They stand in contrast to positivist approaches that see organizations and phenomena as fixed, static, and measurable. Process approaches draw on a range of ideas and philosophies. The Handbook examines 34 philosophers and social theorists, both those commonly linked to process thinking, such as Whitehead, Bergson and James, and those that are not as often addressed from a process perspective such as Dilthey and Tarde. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work (with a focus on the processual elements), and the potential contribution to organization and management research. For students and scholars in the field of Organization Studies this book is an entry point into the work of philosophical thinkers and social theorists for whom the world is far from being a solid place.

The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies (Oxford Handbooks)

Business & Money

Hernes, Tor

Holt, Robin

Helin, Jenny

Hjorth, Daniel

Management & Leadership

Oxford University Press

This book argues strategy is the process by which an organization understands and declares itself. To bring this about exponents of strategic inquiry attempt to gather knowledge about the conditions in which any organization is being organized: emerging markets, restless geo-political environments, networks of technological ordering, populations and skill sets, and the like. The upshot of such inquiry is a succession of images by which an organization attains distinction as a unity, or 'self'. Using work from literature, art and philosophy Robin Holt explores what it means to know and declare a 'self'. In assuming this to be a project of knowledge, Holt argues strategic inquiry has become a powerful but limiting organizational force whose exponents attempt to procure more accurate, timely, and more complex information to build better impressions of the world and their place within it. Where this fails, they either compensate by advocating and instilling some form of visionary image of the organization, or they resort to assertions of competitive brute will. Either way there are risks. With vision comes the risk of collective thoughtlessness, and with brute will and kind of Hobbesian state of nature. The book argues judgment offers another way of responding to the failures of knowledge. One that takes the skeptical challenge seriously, but which does not concede to dogmatic vision or to self-interested assertions of will. Tracing a narrative through the ideas of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, William Shakespeare, William Hazlitt, Hannah Arendt, Stanley Cavell, Harold Pinter, Virginia Woolf, and others, Holt suggests much might be gained from associating strategic inquiry with a form of critical or poetic spectating. It is by having this un-homely sense of 'being besides' oneself that an organization can best appreciate what it is to understand and declare what it is and might become.

Judgment and Strategy

Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights

Do human rights make sense? They have been central to post-war political life, and our picture of moral self. But this is being eroded, Holt argues, and with it the viability of human rights discourse. The pre-social individual and its mental armoury is being challenged by an increasing awareness of genealogical forces in which the self is less a lone claimant than an exponent or rebel.Using Wittgenstein's philosophy, this book considers the liberal position on human rights, along with the communitarian and pragmatic attacks, and challenges the intelligibility of each from the perspective of what it is to be a language user. Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights argues that moral relations are not dead; but that their life resides with the on-going relations of selves governed by universal principles.

Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights (LSE/Routledge)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Routledge

Strategy exhibits a pervasive commitment to the belief that the best approach to adopt in dealing with affairs of the world is to confront, overcome and subjugate things to conform to our will, control and eventual mastery. Performance is about sustaining distinctiveness. This direct and deliberate approach draws inspiration from ancient Greek roots and has become orthodoxy. Yet there are downsides. This book shows why. Using examples from the world of business, economics, military strategy, politics and philosophy, it argues that success may inadvertently emerge from the everyday coping actions of a multitude of individuals, none of whom intended to contribute to any preconceived design. A consequence of this claim is that a paradox exists in strategic interventions, one that no strategist can afford to ignore. The more single-mindedly a strategic goal is sought, the more likely such calculated instrumental action eventually works to undermine its own initial success.

Strategy without Design: The Silent Efficacy of Indirect Action

Chia, Robert C. H.

Cambridge University Press

Strategy exhibits a pervasive commitment to the belief that the best approach to adopt in dealing with affairs of the world is to confront, overcome and subjugate things to conform to our will, control and eventual mastery. Performance is about sustaining distinctiveness. This direct and deliberate approach draws inspiration from ancient Greek roots and has become orthodoxy. Yet there are downsides. This book shows why. Using examples from the world of business, economics, military strategy, politics and philosophy, it argues that success may inadvertently emerge from the everyday coping actions of a multitude of individuals, none of whom intended to contribute to any preconceived design. A consequence of this claim is that a paradox exists in strategic interventions, one that no strategist can afford to ignore. The more single-mindedly a strategic goal is sought, the more likely such calculated instrumental action eventually works to undermine its own initial success.

Entrepreneurship and the Creation of Organization (Routledge Studies in Entrepreneurship)

Business Development & Entrepreneurship

The Poverty of Strategy: Organization in the Shadows of Technology

Zundel, Mike

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Books by Holt, Robin