Abstract
Although the edited volume titled Doing Process Research in Organizations: Noticing Differently does not aim for it, I see a promising and thought-provoking intersection between process research and critical inquiry, reflected in considerations of posthuman subjectivities, withness, and becoming. The edited volume sets out to no more, no less than encourage readers to engage in the study of contemporary organizing and its challenges dynamically and playfully. Translating process ontology into methods and methodologies, eleven chapters invite scholars to see, read, and write differently. Barbara Simpson and Line Revsbæk, the volume’s editors, articulate that “different noticings, as they arise in various circumstances, guide us in responding differently, engaging differently, and thus creating our world(s) differently” (p. v), appreciating just those criteria for critical inquiry, ethical discourse, and reflexive engagement with the phenomena we study. Such perspective brings us closer to engaging with the “movements and moments” of a changing world and appreciating the diverse experiences that arise from this dynamic reality.
The book opens with an intriguing and engaging introduction (chapter 1) that adheres to its aim of transcending research that is purely representational. It encourages scholars to immerse themselves in process ontology and think about what it means to become with the process. Throughout the introduction, the editors’ foundation in American pragmatism is evident. While their previous works have illustrated how pragmatist inquiry informs the study of organization and organizing, this edited volume provides methodological support, not in a “how to” type of way, but by offering inspiration for experimenting with our academic practices. Beyond American pragmatism, (post-)humanist theories, feminist studies, and contemporary philosophers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Walter Benjamin, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, and Annemarie Mol offer vital insights for the authors of the chapters to investigate new ways in which we, as researchers, can use our bodies, emotions, and all our senses to doing research. These approaches are often overlooked in more traditional qualitative research of organizations. Still, they are essential for deepening our understanding of organizations and our role in the world, helping us to notice what has previously gone unnoticed.
Working from a solid theoretical foundation yet grounded in different noticings in empirical research, each book chapter provides various accounts of how to notice differently as a “post qualitative inquiry” (St. Pierre, 2021). Noticing differently repositions the researcher’s “I” in relation to their engagement with the world, yet still makes the “I” who notices central. This challenge is elaborated in detail in chapter 11, featuring a dialog between the volume’s editors and Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei, who pursue process research in the field of education. They discuss that while critical inquiry can draw attention to dualities, process research shifts our focus to the becoming, responding to encounters as they occur, thus accounting for the power relations the “I” is part of. In other words, process research can direct us toward the forces and movements at play, as we are “always more than one” (Manning, 2013).
Some chapters do so by encouraging the reader to immerse themselves in the continuous flow of existence (Bergson, 1910), to be in time, and to note their subjective perceptions through different techniques of relating. These chapters highlight the role of the body in awakening our sensibility to the field to show how differences and new forms of thinking emerge in situations. In chapter 2, Silvia Gherardi and Michela Cozza invite the reader to produce knowledge through their bodies, involving a continuous process of being and becoming with the field and recognizing relational vulnerability as essential to ethical research practice. Their approach, which they describe as “affective attuning,” allows for sensing the agencements of human bodies, materialities, and knowledge, fostering a space for exploration, reflection, and imagining what might become. Applying Barad’s notion of “diffractive inquiring,” Anne Augustine shows how similar relational techniques helped the author understand the ethics of care while transforming caring into a line of inquiry that allows ethical considerations to be included in research practice (chapter 5). In chapter 8, Sideeq Mohammed takes the reader on an ethnographic journey through shopping centers, noticed through three different conceptual personae (e.g. disembodied, insomniac, or paramnesia). The author illustrates how such an approach includes (temporal) multiplicity, in which, as Bergson (1910) would say, “several conscious states [e.g. past and present states] are organized into a whole, permeate one another, [and] gradually gain a richer content” (p. 122).
Other chapters examine another facet of relationality and (temporal) multiplicity in process research, that is, connecting events differently to explain movement through time (Deleuze and Strauss, 1991). These chapters invite readers to follow these connections, folding and refolding them to shape their research trajectories. In chapter 4, Charlotte Wegener portrays this movement as “a simultaneity of living, reading, and writing” (St. Pierre, 2011: 621) by experimenting with the rhythm of different text segments and forming an assemblage of seemingly unrelated elements to create resonance with the reader (Mol, 2020). Such an approach allows us to escape conventional discourses by merging concepts with everyday experiences. In chapter 6, Stephen Linstead demonstrates how connecting disparate events from painting, poetry, and film to the phenomenon studied may enhance the researcher’s sensitivity to the phenomenon, foster their reflexivity, and encourage the reader to actively participate in making their own connections. Using Zoom meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic as an empirical example, Katie Beavan weaves together the visible (what is on screen) and the invisible, imagining the present, past, and future of people and things appearing on screen alongside her emotions as she experiences the situation (chapter 10).
Untangling the stream of images these relational techniques produce, other chapters bring matter to the forefront of process research. In this context, matter is not understood as something evolving but as something doing, for example, “doing time,” materializing, and enfolding multiple temporalities (Barad, 2013). Intra-acting with the forest as a living organism through art-based body-mind techniques, Ariana Amacker and Anna Rylander Eklund open up new possibilities in our research to help us overcome the duality between direct experience and abstract concepts (chapter 3). Like other approaches, as discussed in the volume influenced by Haraway and Barad, Timon Beyes shows how the study of color “invites an immanent and speculative critique attentive to mundane and ephemeral situations and its neglected details” (chapter 7, p. 148). The author connects color to social ordering and control, offering a way to unfold organizational forces and differences through “chromatic empiricism.” In chapter 9, Boris H. J. M. Brummans combines textual imagery and explanations as Buddhist “pith instructions,” emphasizing relationality over the individual “I” as a researcher. This approach also highlights the intricate ethical issues in organizational studies, which, as noted by Zanoni et al. (2023), we are deeply committed to yet often fail to live up to.
This volume offers provocative readings and bold approaches to organizational research for scholars and educators. Each chapter draws attention to the field’s attunement and sensing and provides examples of overcoming the difficulties of doing process research in writing without concern for beginnings and endings, centering on process as the outcome. I cannot help but notice that each chapter also addresses questions of temporality, considering deep pasts and imagining possible futures in the reflective present by relating personal accounts and revealing traces of the phenomenon. As I observe these, the multiple temporalities become interwoven and shape organizational life while hinting at how “the temporal operates as a form of social power and a type of social differences” (Sharma, 2014: 9), giving voice to specific temporalities over others. Often, I felt that the volume could have made its critical stance on the world more explicit. At times, I wished for more guidance on how to approach this kind of research, its implications for organizational studies, and the contexts in which it could be applied. Nevertheless, such guidance might contradict the book’s essence, as it challenges us “to experiment and create something new and different that might not be recognizable in existing structures of intelligibility” (St. Pierre, 2021: 6), revitalizing process research to explore organizational life rather than merely revisiting the question of existence.
