A Relational Approach to Materiality and Organizing: The Case of a Creative Idea

Abstract

Part 4: Considering Communication and PerformanceInternational audienceIn this paper, we propose to go beyond the notion of entanglement that has been proposed in recent years to fill the so-called gap between “the social” and “the material”, especially in organizational studies. While this notion rightly invites us to reconsider the way we traditionally approach the question of materiality and organizing, we believe that its formulation tends to implicitly reproduce the gap it claims to fill. In contrast, we propose a view according to which sociality and materiality should, in fact, be considered aspects of everything that comes to be and exist. Throughout the analysis of an episode taken from fieldwork devoted to creative teams, we show that things as abstract as ideas, for instance, in order to emerge, exist, and continue to exist, have to materialize themselves in various identifiable beings. While the sociality of an idea is identified through the various relations that make it what it is, we show that its materiality comes from what precisely materializes these relations

The Constitution of Organization as Informational Individuation

“…Simondon's informational view is therefore resolutely relational, in the sense that the structure of information precedes any notion of an already constituted being that would initiate communication. In that sense, Simondon converges with current efforts to bring to the forefront the relational underpinnings of CCO scholarship (Cooren, 2015;Kuhn et al, 2017;Martine & Cooren, 2016) and to avoid thinking of communication as occurring between preexisting entities. Simondon contrasts the notion of information with that of form, which supposes that "the relation is posterior to the existence of the terms" and that can only "capture an impoverished reality, without potential, and consequently unable to individuate" (p. 35).…”

Past and Recent Conceptualisations of Sociomateriality and its Features: Review

“…Building on definitions of technology through years and many scholars' views, perspectives and thinking provided, have given birth to debates about technology-in-use (Orlikowski et al 1995), sociomateriality with its groundings , Orlikowski and Scott 2008a, sociomaterial approach and most recentthird view on the phenomenon (Martine and Cooren 2016). The paper is divided in four themes: technology as part of sociomateriality, metatheories, features and the third view on sociomateriality.…”

“…Discussions have as well been on philosophical grounds, moreover, ontological and epistemological assumptions, that still make scholars wonder whether sociomateriality posseses features of separability within the inseparable phenomenonsociomaterial imbrication (Leonardi 2011) or entities joining together with no pre-existing relata (Barad 2003(Barad , 2007 forming constitutive entanglement, assuming inherent inseparability (Orlikowski 2010), however, looking beyond that, still leaving space for separability of agencies (Kautz andJensen 2013, Martine andCooren 2016).…”

“…Given the latter, Barad (2007) has been working drawing upon agential realism, claiming that agencies emerge through intra-action -relations, but are quickly separated again within sociomaterial phenomenon, which she calls agential cuts that actually allows for separation of agencies for analysis of them. Assemblages are something that is again in contrast with inseparability, moreover, allowing for pre-existent relata and therefore a gap (Martine and Cooren 2016).…”

“…Wishing to ease off the tension and confusion about separability and inseparability of the agencies, new, the so called third perspective on sociomateriality emerges in a recent study (Martine and Cooren 2016) that underpins it with dividing already existent perspectives on weak (Leonardi 2011 and strong Scott 2015) sociomateriality and presenting every single thing as to have both material and social compartment (Martine and Cooren 2016).…”