TY - JOUR
T1 - The organization’s synaptic mode of existence
T2 - how a hospital merger is many things at once
AU - Bencherki, Nicolas
AU - Elmholdt, Kasper Trolle
PY - 2022/7
Y1 - 2022/7
N2 - Different perspectives on organizations have alternatively sorted them on the side of the social / human / linguistic or that of the material / non-human / technical, reducing the question of what an organization may be to attempts to (re)connect these two realms. Literature adopting a relational view, however, has offered a way out of this opposition, by embracing the multiplicity of beings that may make up organizations. We extend this approach by engaging with French philosopher Étienne Souriau’s discussion of modes of existence to suggest that organizations are “synaptic,” which means they exist in the passages between modes, as they articulate the actions of entities existing under different modalities. By analyzing the case of a hospital merger in Denmark, we show that this work of articulation amounts to organizing, and that viewing organizations as synaptic recognizes not only their ontic pluralism, but also their existential pluralism. By doing so, our study contributes to relational understandings of what organizing means and provides a sensitivity to the politics involved in deciding who or what may exist within organizations.
AB - Different perspectives on organizations have alternatively sorted them on the side of the social / human / linguistic or that of the material / non-human / technical, reducing the question of what an organization may be to attempts to (re)connect these two realms. Literature adopting a relational view, however, has offered a way out of this opposition, by embracing the multiplicity of beings that may make up organizations. We extend this approach by engaging with French philosopher Étienne Souriau’s discussion of modes of existence to suggest that organizations are “synaptic,” which means they exist in the passages between modes, as they articulate the actions of entities existing under different modalities. By analyzing the case of a hospital merger in Denmark, we show that this work of articulation amounts to organizing, and that viewing organizations as synaptic recognizes not only their ontic pluralism, but also their existential pluralism. By doing so, our study contributes to relational understandings of what organizing means and provides a sensitivity to the politics involved in deciding who or what may exist within organizations.
KW - merger
KW - modes of existence
KW - multiplicity
KW - organizational ontology
KW - Étienne Souriau
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85092274957&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1350508420962025
DO - 10.1177/1350508420962025
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1350-5084
VL - 29
SP - 521
EP - 543
JO - Organization
JF - Organization
IS - 4
ER -