Causation Is Not Everything: On Constitution and Trans-Actional View of Social Science Methodology

Selg, Peeter

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-26380-5_2

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Second, trans-actional relations are processual and trans-actional processes are relational (Emirbayer, 1997; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Selg & Ventsel, 2020). Third, a trans-actional view is committed to emergence, understood as the unanticipated generation and development of novelty (Simpson, 2016), where trans-actions have constitutive and creative potential (Selg, 2020). 2 Trans-actional relations knit together – constitute and potentially transform – actors and situations in the processual unfolding of organizing.…”

Section: Process Power and Performativity: Community Is [A] Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 4. In social sciences what is meant by ‘relational’ and ‘processual’ varies. I follow scholars in relational sociology that use ‘processual’ to acknowledge the primacy of process and ‘relational’ to acknowledge the primacy of relations in different approaches, with overlap in the case of ‘relational all the way down’ approaches (see Emirbayer & Mische, 1998 and Selg, 2018, 2020 for further discussion). Follett’s ontology is both processual and relational, hence I use ‘relational process ontology’ to make this ontological distinction. …”

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confidence: 99%

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The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism

Morlacchi

2021

Organization Studies

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This article seeks to open up new possibilities for process organization studies to reimagine power and performativity by exploring the potential of Mary Parker Follett’s pragmatism as process philosophy. I revisit her body of work to show how she translated her process ontology into theoretical resources and practical insights that allow for new ways of understanding power and performativity together and explore them as mutually constituting processes of organizing. In particular, I mobilize Follett’s view of conflicts as emerging differences in the world and frictions as constructive conflicts with the potential to generate something new in order to introduce and conceptualize ‘performative power’, that is, the power emerging from relating and integrating differences in organizational situations that are experienced as frictions by people involved. Drawing on my ethnographic study of an entrepreneurship accelerator – a training programme for innovators and start-up projects – I discuss and illustrate empirically how performative power is generated from frictions that arise in ordinary lived experiences. This conceptualization of performative power is an attempt to develop a processual and performative understanding of power, and a useful lens to conduct process research. Making a connection between performative power and the experience of frictions provides a new way to see, talk and study processually power in contemporary organizations.

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Section: Process Power and Performativity: Community Is [A] Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism

Morlacchi

2021

Organization Studies

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“…Dépelteau, 2018) stress the need to move away from approaches based on separate entities to a more relational way of understanding. The key move is seeing relations and not things as constitutive of the social world (Selg, 2020). As Donati (2015) contends, there is a need to move away from seeing the world as having relations among entities and instead see the world as relations.…”

Section: An Explanatory Gap and Empirical Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher education leadership and context: a study of university vice-chancellors and presidents

Heffernan

Eacott

Bosetti

2021

IJEM

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PurposeUniversities claim to provide many benefits to their context. What remains less clear is what is meant by context. Whatever it is, context is fundamental to decision-making. Understanding what context means is crucial to understanding leadership in higher education.Design/methodology/approachTheoretically informed by Eacott's relational approach, this study is based on interview data from a purposive sample of ten English vice-chancellors and nine Canadian university presidents. Transcripts were analysed for the assumptions participants held regarding the work of universities and how that played out in practice.FindingsContext is not an external variable engaged with or acted upon. It is not separate to leadership and the work of universities but is constitutive of and emergent from activities. There is no single definition of context, and this has major implications for university activities.Research limitations/implicationsContext(s) is based on assumptions. Making explicit the assumptions of participants, without pre-defining them, is a key task of research on leadership in higher education.Practical implicationsLeaders need to explicitly articulate their assumptions regarding the work of universities. Assessment should be based on the coherence between the espoused position and activities undertaken.Originality/valueThrough the emerging resources of relational scholarship, this paper demonstrates how context is constitutive of and emergent from the activities of universities. More than novel vocabulary, the paper makes a fundamental point about the generative nature of context. De-centring entities (e.g. university, leader, context) and focusing on relations our approach provide a path forward by encouraging the articulation of intended purpose(s) and perspective on the work of universities.

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“…The work of relational scholarship here is to describe temporary -even if patterned and durable -activities (e.g., conferences, publications, scholarly discourse) and relate those to other unfolding activities without necessarily granting ontological security to 'the community'. Peeter Selg (2020) argues that constitution and causality is what relational sociologists aspire to in committing to relations in social research. By relating unfolding activity to other unfolding activity without granting ontological status to a community, the relational approach meets the requirement of constitution and causality (emergence).…”

Section: The Constitution and Emergence Of A Relational Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

François Dépelteau and the generation of a relational intellectual community

Eacott

2020

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François Dépelteau is a major figure in the contemporary rise of relational scholarship. His untimely passing casts a shadow over the relational research community, particularly those with close ties to the Canadian sociological association research cluster. This paper seeks to honour the contribution and legacy of François through a relational analysis of a relational research community. Mobilising Eacott’s relational approach, this paper turns relational scholarship upon itself to argue that the relational research community is organised around two fundamental questions – the explanatory and the empirical. François was not only embedded in, but embodied, this relationality. His approach to scholarship serves as an invitation, an invitation to think with, through and where necessary against relations in the pursuit of offering generative insights. François generated the conditions for many previously disparate researchers to come together and the challenge has now shifted to us – the relational research community – to honour him and continue this research agenda.

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Causation Is Not Everything: On Constitution and Trans-Actional View of Social Science Methodology

Cited by 16 publications

References 34 publications

The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism

The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism

Higher education leadership and context: a study of university vice-chancellors and presidents

François Dépelteau and the generation of a relational intellectual community

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