This book presents a novel and comprehensive process theory of organization applicable to 'a world on the move', where connectedness prevails over size, flow prevails over stability, and temporality prevails over spatiality.The framework developed in the book draws upon process thinking in a number of areas, including process philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology, and science and technology studies. Salient ideas from these schools are carefully woven into a process theory of organization, which makes the book not only a thought provoking theoretical contribution, but also a much-needed glimpse into the challenges of organizing in a complex and moving world. Taking a distinctly temporal view of organizational life the author shows how actors continually carve out their temporal existence from being in the flow of time. This on-going work, in which technologies, concepts, and social actors take part, is crucial for the making of any type of organizational formation. A key construct of the book is that of events, which provide force, movement, and historicity to organizational life. The book is suitable for scholars and advanced level students in organization studies, management studies, technology studies, and sociology. It contains a number of practical examples to illustrate the theoretical framework.

About the Author
Tor Hernes is Professor of Organization Theory at the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School and Adjunct Professor at Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Norway. He has published a dozen books as well as articles in top tier European and American journals over the last decade addressing various processual aspects of organizing and organizations. He is a leading figure in the emerging field of process thinking in organization studies and is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies.

Reviews
The remarkable insights offered in this book provide a language and a style of analysis that help us move from process and reality to process as reality. Tor Hernes has captured the elusiveness of organizing in motion in a way that is unmatched. This book is a major accomplishment that enables all of us to be more observant and more skillful analysts who can now ask better questions about fleeting structures in an on-going present. * Karl Weick, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan *
The time of structures is gone, but much of organization theory - and practice - holds compulsively to it. Tor Hernes' book will help theoreticians and practitioners to let go - and enter the world where fluid processes cross through the global economy. * Barbara Czarniawska, GRI, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg. *
This book is a refreshingly bold attempt to provide a genuinely alternative approach to the study and analysis of organization as precarious and temporary accomplishments; time and temporality feature significantly in its theoretical agenda. Hernes takes a step back and attempts to theorize organization on the basis that process itself is constitutive of reality. Hernes is to be complemented for undertaking such an ambitious endeavour in making us aware of the consequences of taking process and becoming seriously. * Robert Chia, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow *
A world on the move and how to catch it without making it static; this is the big challenge that the book addresses. The author offers a great introduction to a process theory of organization since it makes evident how temporality is at the heart of organizational life, and how it should be studied. * Silvia Gherardi, Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Trento University *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the George R. Terry Book Award (2015).



Book Information
ISBN 9780199695072
Author Tor Hernes
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 532g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 164mm * 20mm