The Organizational Structuring of Novelty

Abstract

This paper sets out to examine the contributions of A.N. Whitehead and H. Bergson to our understanding of organization, not as a `thing' or social entity, but as the ongoing creative process of structuring and stabilizing social reality. The paper attempts to theorize the emergence, individuation and sustenance of natural and social phenomena from a truly processual perspective by articulating the underlying principles of the becoming, enduring and perishing of `event-clusters' in an almost inexorable creative advance towards ever more novel configurations of reality. We argue here that this process-inspired metaphysics is more adequate to the task of faithfully charting the intrinsically pre-carious and serendipitous nature of the creative evolution of social systems such as `individuals', `organizations' and `society'.