Bakken and Hernes’ article seek to extend Karl Weick’s conception of the relationship between verbs and nouns by drawing on the work of the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Weick is one of the most significant of those organization studies theorists who conceive of its enterprise as an enquiry into process.
Their approach is to contribute to understanding the linguistic bases of process thinking and theorizing. They begin by outlining Weick’s suggestion that while nouns (together with the language of variables, quantities and structures) obscure and render static, verbs are a means of emphasizing and accepting that we live in a world which is equivocal, transient, unfolding and emergent.
The authors then contrast this notion with Whitehead’s view that ‘ entitative’ thinking or using nouns (‘nounmaking’) is an essential aspect of sensemaking. This notion shows that we are incapable of thinking in terms of process and that problems arise when nouns become disconnected from the process that created them. The remainder of their article presents an intriguing analysis of the different understandings of these noun-verb relationships.
Reference:
Bakken, Tore og Tor Hernes (2006): Organizing is Both a Verb and a Noun: Weick Meets Whitehead. Organization Studies, 27(11):1599-1616. Selected for publication in SAGE Directions in Organization Studies (2009).
