Mind the Gap? A Processual Reconsideration of Organizational Knowledge

Abstract

On Henri Bergson's view, the flux of time is reality itself and the things we study are the things that flow. Unfortunately, popular literatures on organizational knowledge are accustomed to seeing the moving by means of the immobile. They perceive knowledge as an already organized state that can be transferred between spatially distinct points. Drawing on Bergson's theory of continual movement (Duration) and Deleuze's concept of transversal communication, I challenge the ontological concern for knowledge production and use between the discrete parts of an organized system. Instead of seeing knowledge as the integration of derived points or positions, I advocate a threefold method of creative involution in which production and use are considered as a living interpenetration of foldings and movements that connect all `things' at all places and times.