Rationale: What is Process Organization Studies?

Process Organization Studies (PROS) is a way of studying organizations that is grounded on process metaphysics – the worldview that sees processes, rather than substances, as the basic forms of the universe. A process view:

• Rests on a relational ontology, a performative epistemology, and a dynamic praxeology.
• Focuses on becoming, change, and flux, and pays particular attention to forms of agency  
• Prioritizes process over outcome, activity over product, change over persistence, novelty over stasis, open-endedness over determination.

Invites us to acknowledge, rather than reduce, the complexity of the world and, in that sense, it is animated by what philosopher Stephen Toulmin called an “ecological style” of thinking

Purpose, Venue, and Organization

PROS is an annual event organized in conjunction with the annual series Perspectives on Process Organization Studies, published by Oxford University Press, and it takes place in a Greek island, in June every year. Topics have included: “Language and communication @ work: Discourse, narrativity and organizing”, “The emergence of novelty in organizations”, and “Organization routines: How they are created, maintained and changed” (details of all Symposia so far can be seen here).

Conveners:

​Juliane Reinecke, King’s Business School, King’s College London, UK

Roy Suddaby, University of Victoria, Canada & Newcastle University, UK

Ann Langley, HEC Montreal, Canada 

Haridimos Tsoukas, University of Cyprus, Cyprus & University of Warwick, UK

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Keynote Speakers:

​William Blattner, Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University, USA, author of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”

Tor Hernes, Professor of Organization Theory, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, author of A Process Theory of Organization

Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, USA, author of Time Maps: Collective memory and the Social Shape of the Past

Pre-Symposium Workshop Panels (20/6/2018)

​I. Taking time seriously in organizational research: Theoretical and methodological challenges

Tima Bansal, Ivey Business School, Canada

Paula Jarzabkowski, Cass Business School, UK

Majken Schultz, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

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II. History matters: The value and challenges of historical approaches to organizational and management research

Matthias Kipping, Schulich School of Business, Canada

Michael Rowlinson, University of Exeter Business School, UK 

Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific, USA