The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies

Process approaches to organization studies focus on flow, activities, and evolution, understanding organizations and organizing as processes in the making. They stand in contrast to positivist approaches that see organizations and phenomena as fixed, static, and measurable.

Process approaches draw on a range of ideas and philosophies. The Handbook examines 34 philosophers and social theorists, both those commonly linked to process thinking, such as Whitehead, Bergson and James, and those that are not as often addressed from a process perspective such as Dilthey and Tarde. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work (with a focus on the processual elements), and the potential contribution to organization and management research. For students and scholars in the field of Organization Studies this book is an entry point into the work of philosophical thinkers and social theorists for whom the world is far from being a solid place.

Jenny Helin, Post Doctoral Researcher, Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University,Tor Hernes, Professor, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School,Daniel Hjorth, Professor, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School,Robin Holt, Professor, University of Liverpool Management School

Jenny Helin has a post doctoral position at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests lie at the intersection of process philosophy and dialogue. She explores collaborative research practices mainly in the field of family owned businesses.

Tor Hernes is a professor of organization theory at Copenhagen Business School and Vestfold University College, Norway, where he teaches and carries out research on process thinking and organization. He has published about a dozen books as well as process related articles in top tier European and American journals. Among his latest books is A Process Theory of Organization, also published by Oxford University Press, in which a temporality based theoretical framework is developed for organizing "a world on the move."

Daniel Hjorth is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organisation at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is Academic Director for the across CBS Entrepreneurship Business in Society Platform. His latest books include The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship (2009), edited with Chris Steyaert, and the Handbook of Organisational Entrepreneurship (2012) .


Robin Holt is Professor at the University of Liverpool Management School. He is also Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He has previously worked in departments of politics and philosophy, as well as business and management, at a number of UK universities such as Southampton, Bath, Manchester Met, and Leeds. He is editor of Organization Studies.

1. Process is how process does, Robin Holt, Tor Hernes, Jenny Helin, and Daniel Hjorth
2. Laozi's Daodejing (6th century BC), Jack Barbalet
3. Heraclitus (540-480 BC), Ajit Nayak
4. Confucius (551-479 BC), Yuan Li and Wen Haiming
5. Zhuang Zi, Yuan Li and Wen Haiming
6. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Daniel Hjorth and Robin Holt
7. Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), Elke Weik
8. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Sverre Raffnsoe, Matias Mol Dalsgaard, and Marius Gudmand-Hoyer
9. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Andrus Tool
10. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), Philippe Lorino
11. William James (1842- 1910), Thomas C. Powell
12. Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), Christian Borch
13. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Robin Holt and Daniel Hjorth
14. Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Steven Linstead
15. John Dewey (1859-1952), Linh-Chi Vo and Mihaela Kelemen
16. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Tor Hernes
17. George Herbert Mead (1863-1931), Barbara Simpson
18. Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Robert Chia
19. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1952), Robert Richardson, Matt Statler, and Saku Mantere
20. Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976), Bogdan Costea and Kostas Amiridis
21. Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Ann L Cunliffe, Jenny Helin, and John T Luhman
22. Jacques-Marie-Emile Lacan (1901-1981), Nancy Harding
23. Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), Mike Zundel
24. Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), Richard Nielsen
25. Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Melissa Tyler
26. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961), Wendelin Kuepers
27. Arne Naess (1912 2009), Carien de Jonge and Gail Whiteman
28. Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), Henrika Franck
29. Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011), Nick Llewellyn
30. George Spencer Brown (1923b), Tore Bakken
31. Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Anders R. Kristensen, Bent M. Sorensen and Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth
32. Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Richard Weiskopf and Hugh Willlmott
33. Luce Irigaray (1930b), Heather Hopfl
34. Michel Serres (1930b), Chris Steyaert
35. Peter Sloterdijk (1947b), Timon Beyes
36. Process and Reality, Robert Cooper