(Meta)Theorizing in Organizational Sociology

The history of sciences has been marked by the intense debate between the cumulative evolution [“Natura non facit saltus” (Leibniz)] versus the political approaches to knowledge (e.g. Fleck; Kuhn), or yet in a nomothetic versus ideographic controversy (e.g. Popper; Harré). In organizational theories we adopted these debates in the 1960s and in the 1980s, post-modernist accounts have intensified the diversity of paradigms by calling for a more “flexible” understanding of science and its “rules”. As a consequence, we have gained in theoretical, methodological and epistemic diversity, and in doing so, stimulated a fundamental debate. At the same time, we might have generated the necessity to organize and synthesize in order to develop a substantial stock of knowledge grounded in works from diverse traditions in organizational sociology. Thus, this session tries to gather and foster the recent state in the debate on (meta-)theorization and substantial theories in organizational sociology, posing questions like: a) Is there a “state-of-the-art” or some shared references concerning theoretical models capturing organizations as a specific “core object” (DuGay; Lopdrup-Hjorth)? b) How can we overcome the infinite data-collection without any link to organization theory and generate synthesis (in an empirical or formal way of generalization [see Friedberg; Strauss])?; and c) How can we pragmatically deal with the multiplicity of paradigms in order to analytically handle the (dis-)order of contemporary (organizational) life? In order to foster this debate, the session welcomes theoretical papers addressing these (or similar) issues or illustrating a certain stance via an empirical study.