Process thinking...

Process research is an emerging methodological approach within Organization and Management studies which questions the role of time in the analysis if organisational processes. Key to process thinking is the idea that these processes not only unfold over time, but that there is an ‘immediate present’; that is, past and future are rolled together in the ongoing experiences of the present moment. This creates a range of specific questions for management studies, as this approach creates a specific temporal dynamic in which actors continuously engage in reconstructing their histories in order to understand the present, while at the same time projecting their understandings onto anticipated, possible futures. Because managerial action emerges out of the thrownness into existential pasts, the study of histories is of paramount importance, as it allows for agents and events to be situated in time; linked with particular meanings so that they can be understood ‘in their time’, rather than only as occurring ‘at a time’. In reconsidering time in the study of organisational phenomena, process and process-history studies promise alternative insights into how managers construct pasts and futures particular to their own organizations and in so doing provides novel explanations for the emergence of novelty, change and unexpected outcomes from their actions. In both process as well as history studies, emphasis is therefore usually placed on longitudinal studies investigating the emergence of patterns linked to outcomes, allowing researchers both an explanatory and evaluative frame in which to advance knowledge.