Embedded Organizational Events: The Units of Process in Organization Science

Author(s): Mark F. Peterson

Source: Organization Science, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1998), pp. 16-33
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 Embedded OrganizationalEvents: The Units of
Process in Organization Science

Mark F. Peterson
Department of Management, College of Business, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida 33431

T his paper contributes to the methodological discourse in organization studies. Its focus is the analysis
of events as they are used in the discussions of situations or processes in organization theory. The
paper seeks to clarify the concept of "event" in analyzing organization processes; classify different
contexts within which events can be embedded; and contribute to a taxonomy of events. The paper will
serve to inform the discussions involving interpretation of the social construction of events and the
classification of events to explain configurational or contingency outcomes.
Arie Y.Lewin

Abstract sense out of events. This literature draws from an other-

Analyses of the events that occur in the context of organization
process are rapidly advancing. Scholars holding otherwise dis-
parate views share the sense that social actors, including orga-
nizations, attend to, interpret, and act upon events. Analyses of
events are converging from two theoretical and methodological
startingpoints. Analyses that emphasize human subjectivity and
contextual specificity are seeking increased cross-situational
learning. Nomothetic analyses are building on their strength in
cross-situational learning by striving to represent the way sub-
jects themselves construct events in relation to context. Rather
than continuing to analyze classic organizational and environ-
mental dimensions like formalization, general uncertainty, mu-
nificence, and stability, scholars are increasingly analyzing the
qualities of events and the meanings they are given. They are
treating events as elements that social actors abstractfrom social
processes, and social actors as parties who interact to give
events meaning. The present paper defines event analyzes its
origins and current uses, and indicates how using and going
beyond lessons from physics can promote organization studies.
These lessons come from the analysis of physical events as
particles in relation to waves, fields, and perspectives. The
uniquely social element of potential takes us beyond the ex-
perience of physical science.
(Events; Sensemnaking;Meaning; Organization)
A growing management literature indicates that manag-
ers' work is to participate in a social process of making
wise diverse realm of scholarship. It struggles to maintain
its value base of guiding management practice without
falling prey to the mechanical tone of rational contin-
gency models (Scott 1992, ch. 2, 5). Such disparateareas
as organizational learning, transaction cost economics,
and organizational change offer analyses of events. These
analyses emanate from two earlier kinds of situational
research epitomized by two recent articles that have won
Best Paper awards in the Academy of Management Jour-
nal (AMJ).
One of these awarded articles is Isabella's (1990) anal-
ysis of how managers interpret events surroundingorga-
nizational changes. It falls within what Burrell and
Morgan call the "subjectivist boundary of the function-
alist paradigm" (1979, p. 189). Such situational ap-
proaches reflect the "action frame of reference" (e.g.,
Goffman 1959) and pluralism (e.g., Gouldner 1959,
Selznick 1949). The action frame of reference highlights
the proactive way social actors manipulate the meanings
of events by using institutional structuresto achieve their
personal ends. Pluralist approaches contribute by analyz-
ing how multiple social actors play out their varying in-
terests to give events meaning (Donaldson and Preston
1995). Even postmodern work at the subjectivist extreme
of pluralism (Burrell and Morgan 1979) that questions a
management value base (e.g., Aktouf 1992) has contrib-
uted to management theory. Such work challenges man-
agement scholars to explicate their pro-management val-
ues and examine whether or not they are excessively
separating events from context.

1047-7039/98/0901/0016/$05.00
Copyright(C 1998, Institutefor OperationsResearch
16 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 9, No. 1, January-February 1998 and the ManagementSciences

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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
The second awarded article illustrates the way events
are treated in state of the art contingency theory. The
configurational study by Doty et al. (1993) follows
Mintzberg (1979) to treat an organization's environment
as uniformly more or less complex and as uniformly more
or less stable. Also following Miles and Snow (1978), the
study treats an organization's strategy as uniformly show-
ing greater or lesser correspondence to some ideal type
(prospector, analyzer, defender, or reactor). This study
typifies the approach taken to analyzing organizational
events in cutting edge middle range, nomothetic research.
The language of contingency and, recently, configuration
is used to seek consistent links between prevailing situ-
ational characteristics and relatively stable organizational
structures. Implicitly, the many discrete events to which
organizations must respond are represented by general-
ized characterizationsof things like environment, and the
many discrete actions organizations take are represented
by generalized structuresand strategies.
The institutional recognition given to both traditionsby
a major organization studies journal indicates that the
field is seeking to promote mutual learning between the
two. Promoting such learning rather than allowing one
tradition to triumph over the other is proving no small
task for organization studies. However, it is not unprec-
edented in the social sciences. A commensurate unit of
analysis with pragmaticvalue within both traditionscould
offer a base for mutual learning. Commons (1924/1957,
p. 7-8), for example, applies a dynamic physics analogy
"not an atom but an electron, always in motion" to pro-
pose that transaction be used as a basic unit of analysis
for social science. An appeal to prerationalized experi-
ence as a point of contact offers a second basis for mutual
learning. Polanyi (1958/1962) uses this approach when
struggling with a similar problem for social research in
general. He outlines the rudiments of a "post-critical"ex-
planation for the way one's personal knowledge of the
world develops. He describes the movement back and
forth between knowledge that is abstracted from context
or rationalized and fully processual, contextual, or tacit
knowledge. Pepper (1942/1966) also describes how four
basic kinds of theory-formism, mechanism, contextual-
ism, and organicism-can provide useful scientific
frames for analysis rooted ultimately in basic experience
or common sense. Organization studies is building from
both bases: treating events as a unit of analysis for process
and seeking to understandthe way social actors separate
events from context in ordinary experience.
A reconsideration of its unit of analysis for studying
process has the potential to open the field of organization
studies to several kinds of advances. In the Doty et al.
ORGANIZATIONSCIENCE/VOl. 9, No. 1, January-February 1998
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(1993) example, an environment that is moderately un-
stable during some periods of time becomes difficult to
distinguish from an environment that is very stable during
some periods and very unstable during others. Similarly,
an organization that consistently takes a prospector ap-
proach toward some markets and an analyzer approach
toward others is difficult to distinguish from an organi-
zation that takes a reactor approach. A potential advance
of an event-focused study would be to analyze how an
organization deals differently with the more and less sta-
ble events in its environment or how it handles clients in
varying market contexts. Episodes of uncertaintyproduce
confusion even in ordinarily certain situations. Instances
of utter ambiguity confound staff specialists in situations
where most events are easily analyzed. To the extent that
situations studied in contingency research combine
highly varied kinds of events, researchers need to rethink
received wisdom built on traditional middle range theo-
ries. Organizational survey research to date has had
limited success in representing the varied events that
comprise a larger situation. Hence, Mintzberg (1979, pp.
223-226) enumerates many limitations of even the best
survey research like the Doty et al. (1993) study for test-
ing his "structuringof organizations" model.
In one sense, the difference between analyzing events
embedded within context and traditional contingency re-
search is a difference in aggregation. However, it is not
a difference in structurallevel of analysis. It is a differ-
ence in the extent to which an analysis collapses across
distinguishable segments of process. Events can be more
or less complex or comprehensive, but not more struc-
turally macro or micro. The label social actor can be used
to designate an individual, group, organization, country,
society, or other social entity. When so designated, a so-
cial actor can be treated as a subject that interpretsevents
treated as objects. Unlike events, social actors are focal
points around which the processes of taking action and
giving meanings occur. Their continuity allows them to
be appropriately distinguished according to structural
level of analysis.
Table 1 gives examples of studies, models, and re-
search areas selected to distinguish degree of process ag-
gregation from level of analysis. Research at any level of
analysis can focus upon discrete events or longer term
characteristics of situations. Some scholars have used the
label issue to designate sets of events that social actors
have formulated into problems to solve (e.g., Cohen et al.
1972). The concept of issue falls at an intermediatepoint
on a continuum between noticing something (an event)
and treating an aspect of process as stable (a situation).
I have outlined why analyzing events is central to
understanding situations and processes in organization
17
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events

Table 1 Levels and Units of Analysis: Representative Studies and Models

Event Issue Situation

Ecological Organization economics: Organization economics: Organization economics:

transactions efficiency markets
Population ecology: Population ecology: Population ecology:
upheavals. Romanelli adaptation. Aldrich et al. industry structure.
and Tushman 1986 1984 Hannan and Freeman
1977
Organizational Change stimuli: Isabella Issues and problems: Organization
1990 Dutton and Dukerich contingency theory as
Uncertain events: 1991 tested, e.g., Doty et al.
Galbraith 1973 Strategic priorities 1993
Political issues e.g., Uncertain situations:
Selznick 1949 Galbraith 1973
Group Group process research, Group goals and Group survey research
e.g., bank wiring room. purposes Groupthink situations
Roethlisberger and
Dickson 1939
Lewinian field theory
Group laboratory research
Events: Rentsch 1990
Individual Expectancy theory as Individual goals Between-person tests of
stated: within-person Career issues expectancy theory
tests Individual-level survey
Individual laboratory research
research
Gestalt cognitive
psychology

theory and illustratedhow high-quality, influential studies
within the contingency/configuration tradition like the
Doty et al. (1993) study might yield even more if they
were to analyze how meanings are assigned to events.
Some, but not all, of the motives underlying subjectivist
approaches to organization also might be promoted by
refining the concepts and methods used within the no-
mothetic tradition.These considerations, and the frequent
use of labels like event, issue, and situation, only point
to the need to systematically analyze units of process.
Clearly, organization scholars do recognize the need for
such units, and that these units differ somehow in their
complexity or scope. The following discussion is in-
tended to do more than point to a need. It seeks to
(1) clarify the concept of event as a unit for analyzing
organization process, (2) work from the experience of
physics and beyond it to classify contexts within which
events can be embedded, (3) systematize the progress that
organization studies has made toward creating event tax-
onomies, and (4) suggest directions for research and the-
ory in major categories of organization studies.
The Concept of Event: Particle, Wave,
Field, Perspective, and Potential
A major task in developing a systematic approach to
studying process is to clearly conceptualize an appropri-
ate unit of analysis. Such a unit is needed to answer the
question of what it is that social actors separate from con-
text, objectify, jointly interpret, and seek to learn from.
Daft and Weick (1984) were among the first to highlight
the utility of using the concept of event to analyze orga-
nization process. Weick (1995, pp. 25, 48, 86, 100) con-
tinues to use the concept in discussing sensemaking.
Event is an appropriate label, traditional for studying
elements of process in process philosophy (Whitehead
1929/1969, pp. 90, 98), Peirce's and Dewey's classic
pragmatism (Commons 1924/1957, pp. 28-30), and phys-
ics (Einstein 1961, p. 140). It also appears in philosophies
of epistemology that recognize both the human tendency
to objectify and differentiate things from a larger tacit
context and the amenability of the world to be at least
partially objectifiable (e.g., Polanyi 1966, Russell 1961).
Pepper (1942/1966, p. 232) identifies the concept of event

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MARK F. PtTERSON Embedded Organizational Events

as the defining element in contextualist theories. Events
continue to be the focal unit of process in ongoing phil-
osophical discussions of the relationship between the
physical, the perceptual, the individually interpreted,and
the socially constructed (Davidson 1985, LePore 1985,
Quine 1985, Rorty 1991, p. 51).
Context is integral to event (Pettigrew 1990). The psy-
chological study of perception has noted the relationship
between these concepts. Wundtian (1897) attempts to
study the psychological experience of isolated, decontex-
tualized physical objects basically failed (Watson 1971).
The Gestaltists recognized that a perceived figure was
always intimately linked to a particular kind of ground.
Phenomenology reached similar conclusions (e.g.,
Merleau-Ponty 1964). Modem perception theory builds
on these lessons (Banks and Krajicek 1991).
In this century, physical scientists have struggled to
reconstruct their unit of analysis. Organization science
can benefit from reconsidering what can and cannot be
learned from them. Organization scholars concerned
about interpretation, social construction, and embedded-
ness will be uncomfortable with a unit of analysis that
reflects atomism or a Newtonian materialism. Given the
leading role physics has had in developing our idea of
what is genuinely scientific, this very discomfort should
prompt a new look at the way things have come to be
understood in physics.
Social things do not reduce to entirely discrete parti-
cles. But neither, it seems, do physical things (Pepper
1942/1966, p. 63). Even the most prototypically scientific
of the natural sciences has abandoned the static, materi-
alist approach to units of analysis. The Newtonian ap-
proach assigned "things"three stable dimensions: length,
width, and height. Now that time has entered the analysis
of physical objects, the concept of physical "event" has
replaced the idea of unchanging thing. Natural scientists
now view physical processes as simultaneously having
discrete thing qualities and continuous flow qualities.
Physics, like social science, has had to define a unit
of analysis for studying regularities inferred from pro-
cesses.
To resolve the unit of analysis problem, physicists of-
ten treat a physical event as particle, wave, and field and
recognize the influence of an observer's perspective. Pike
(1967) analyzes language to provide an example of how
at least some aspects of social events can be treated sim-
ilarly.' Like other analysts of social process (e.g., Rorty
1979, p. 26), Pike began by recognizing that the mean-
ing of an abstracted event depends on its place in a con-
text.
Elaborating on Pike's basic argument, we can view
events as particles and as elements in four sorts of con-
texts-wave, field, observer position, and potential. Table
2 illustrates these viewpoints. With these five ways of

Table 2 Viewpoints for Analyzing Events

Viewpoint: Particle Wave Field Pluralism Potential

Key concept: Thing Time Context Perspective Values, Norms
Unit of analysis: Incident EventType Situations Political Situations Issues, Problems

EXAMPLES:
Conflict episode Expressed Latent conflict Organization Parties' Parties' political
conflict Conflict situation and information and goals
aftermath history situation Conflict-relevant
Conflict histories Industry, society values,
Other conflicts situation and purposes, and
history viewpoints
Personal situations
and histories

Annual budget Budget Prior budget Organization Parties' Parties'financial

process proposals experiences situation and information and goals
history situation Relevant values
Current negotiating Industry, society and purposes
situation situation and
Budgeting histories history
Other budget Personal situations
processes and histories

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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
viewing and contextualizing events, we can also consider
the idea of simultaneity-the possibility that event anal-
yses can take any one of these viewpoints or all of these
viewpoints at the same time.
Process as Particle: Discrete Event
Viewed as particle, a social event is a bit of social reality
abstractedby an observer. When treated as a particle, an
event becomes a discrete unit of information, interpreta-
tion, or meaning that can be rationally linked to an inter-
pretation process. Several techniques taking an extreme
particle view of process analyze the antecedents and con-
sequences of concrete, hard-edged events (e.g., Heise
1991). By using concepts like conflict episode or trans-
action, we treat events as particles, while also recognizing
that they remain dynamic. By noticing a particularsocial
interaction and identifying it as a conflict event-particle,
social actors are recognizing that a particularexperience
fits within a class which they have witnessed many times
before. Despite importantvariation, social actors abstract
event-particles from these approximate regularities.
Nonaka (1994) applies this insight from Polanyi (1966)
to analyze the interplay between tacit and explicit knowl-
edge as part of the social learning occurring within or-
ganizations.
Process as Wave: Events Within Time
Waves are flows in process with focal point "crests" of
high energy surrounded by a detectable pattern of pre-
ceding and following processes (see also Weick 1995,
p. 110). Developing the insights from Gestalt psychology,
ecological theories of perception describe the way ob-
servers abstract physical objects (particle-events) from
context (Banks and Krajicek 1991). Perception includes
noticing repeating wavelike regularities in process. By
recognizing patterns, social actors experience timeless
"ideals" within time. Polanyi (1958/1962) describes the
way in which such patterns help tacit experience to be-
come rationalized and explicable.
Time enters the conception of waveforms. One cer-
tainly recognizes the unique sequence of all events in
time. Every event is unique and time bound. But one also
experiences a mundane "dejavu" in the repetition of simi-
lar sequences. In recognizing repetition, social actors
place events into timeless categories. The timeless op-
portunityfor learning arises from noticing repeatedwave-
like patterns in process and from abstracting particlelike
bits occupying analogous locations in repeated waves.
Viewed as a recurring segment of a wave, a particle-
event belongs to a class of events occupying similar po-
sitions within wavelike regularities in social process. For
example, a person's ordinary work day consists of a fa-
miliar class of events that in many work settings have
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predictable shapes. The work day can bring predictable
sets of people together to become involved in conflicts or
transactions. The meaning of an event-particle (e.g., a
morning greeting, computer log-on) is affected by its
place within the ordinary work day.
From a wave perspective, each event in a class occurs
in relation to others that precede and follow. Preceding
and following events on a wave are only relatively dis-
tinguishable from a focal event. When focusing on these
qualities of a single wave, social actors cannot easily ob-
jectify an event. The difficulty of identifying events
within waves generates the potential for multiple social
constructions and gives event-particles an inherent fuzz-
iness. Pike (1967) notes that it also contributes to impre-
cision in translating from one language to another where
each language uses a noun to bracket a slightly different
segment of a typical wave form.
The wave perspective highlights the temporal context
that shapes the specifics of a focal event. Temporal con-
text means that the events we place into a particularclass
may be similar, but are never precisely identical. The con-
flict that occurs today is not precisely the same as the one
that occurred yesterday, even though both fit into the class
of "conflict." Thinking about "the work day" and poli-
ticking in advance about "the annual budget process"
serve to blend these particle-events into a wavelike pat-
tern.
The wave-embeddedness of particle-events accounts
for some of the inherent limitations of contingency re-
search that seeks to give a discrete, measurable particle
quality (like degree of stability) to very complex social
situations. Smaller waves can be embedded within larger
ones. For many managers, an annual budget process is a
larger wave form within which individual work days are
embedded (Peterson et al. 1996). The point at which an
ordinarywork day occurs within patternsin the budgeting
process can shape the antecedents and consequences of
particularevents within that day.
Historical organization analysis can focus on the ab-
solutely unique time line and event sequence of a partic-
ular organization (e.g., Meyer 1982). However, historical
analysis that seeks to promote cross-situational learning
will treat a unique time line as a variation upon wavelike
themes also experienced in other organizations (Peterson
and Hunt 1997). An even more complete historical anal-
ysis would place both the unique and the well precedented
wave forms that characterize a particular organization
within a larger temporal and social context.
Events Within Fields
We often characterize organization analyses as narrow or
tight if they place events within the sharply focused, ra-
tionally explicated wavelike frame offered by a single
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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
theory. Field-oriented analysis tends to be broader. The
meaning of a particle-event in a field context extends be-
yond a focused wave form. A configurationof waves hav-
ing different durations and qualities shapes each particle-
event. Lewin (1951) used field diagrams to illustrate the
many social processes surrounding those events that he
treated as focal. Whether threatening events produce
"blindness," inaction, faulty action, crisis, organization
dissolution, or some more constructive response depends
on a field context of hope or despair (Weitzel and Jonsson
1989). Ethnographiestend to have a broader "field"qual-
ity to them than do, say, laboratory studies that sharply
focus attention on regularities in participants' responses
to stimulus events.
Multiple Perspectives
Roberts (1970) evokes a classic story to suggest that the
problem of cross-cultural research is like the problem of
a group of blind people struggling to describe an elephant.
If they are touching different parts of the elephant, they
are unlikely to agree on its characteristics. Mintzberg
(1990) uses the same analogy to describe alternative per-
spectives on strategy. Both illustrate problems of multiple
perspectives.
Multiple viewpoints are apparent in the alternative
frameworks that various middle range organization the-
ories provide (Morgan 1986, ch. 1). Frameworks used in
conflict theory and transaction-cost theory, for example,
can be linked. Conflict events have transaction aspects
and vice versa.
Multiple viewpoints and the relativity of experience to
viewpoint are not as unique to social situations as orga-
nization scholars might intuit. A simple kind of plurality
and relativism is even implicit in the concept of physical
event. In explaining Einstein's analysis of relativity,
Bertrand Russell (1969) puts "the skilled physicist" in
several unusual positions-on a train approaching the
speed of light and on a platform that the train passes.
From the standpoint of the physicist on a train, the train
event measured in space at a point in time is longer than
it is from the standpoint of the physicist on the platform.
Similarly, the mass of the train from the standpoint of the
physicist on the platform is greater than the mass of the
train at rest. In effect, how large the train is depends on
the observer's location when measuring it. Physical mea-
surements are affected by the standpoint of the observer
and by the comovement of the observer and an event in
space-time. Similarly, a social situation can receive dif-
ferent interpretationson the basis of accurate information
about its different parts from different vantage points.
Helpful as it is to illustrate the parallel, the method of
handling multiple perspectives in physics does not cross
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over to social science. For physics, the "Lorentz trans-
formation" (Russell 1969, pp. 57-60) provides an un-
ambiguous means of expressing a space-time event as
observed by one party in terms that can be used by an-
other party. However, social situations have complexity
beyond the four dimensions of space-time, and we have
no social "Lorentz transformation"to make the conver-
sion from one standpoint to another. Social situations are
also far more complex than the proverbial elephant. A
given individual, group, or organization will likely pos-
sess a proportion of relevant information even more re-
stricted than that of the blind person.
Potential: Purposes, Meanings, and Passions Beyond
Physics Analogies
The metaphor of blind people describing an elephant
makes a second point besides calling attention to equally
accurate, conflicting representations of a single object.
Social events carry a potential for disagreements because
social actors can imagine them impinging on future pur-
poses, goals, or emotions in different ways. Particle,
wave, field, and perspective viewpoints give events
meaning by placing them in actual contexts of the past
and present. Social actors can also give events meaning
by linking them to potential futures.
For example, organization studies using learning and
thinking metaphors do not stop by suggesting that orga-
nizations learn through improving the accuracy or com-
prehensiveness with which they represent the past and
present. The recognition of multiple perspectives repre-
sented by the "hologram" metaphor (Morgan 1986,
ch. 4) is incomplete. Learning implies that complex social
actors, like organizations, can embed events within alter-
native potential futures (e.g., Huber 1991, Nonaka 1994,
Smith and Peterson 1988). When an organization learns,
its expectations about the future potentials of a present
event-field can change. The analogy between individual
and organizational learning is reasonable at this point. A
person can give an event new meanings by recognizing
new potential implications (Mitchell and Thompson
1994).
Social actors can envision multiple possible futures.
The quality of multiple potential futures separates social
analysis from physical analysis. Of course, physical
events hold future potential. However, social actors do
not simply place one event into the context of past se-
quences or fields and project a probable future. Social
actors have both explicit and tacit purposes. By using the
qualities of particle, wave, field, and perspective, modern
physics leaves Newtonian objectivism behind. The qual-
ity of perspective advances our way of conceiving events
to the point of paralleling modern physics; the idea of
multiple potentials takes it beyond physics analogies.
21
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
Simultaneity
A central element in modem physics is the language of
simultaneity: light is in some sense both a wave and a
particle. The precise meaning of simultaneity is debated.
Frank (1957), for example, suggests that "simultaneity"
is a clumsy label for resolving a basic communication
difficulty. He argues that even scientific communication
ultimately rests upon ordinary, tacit experience. How-
ever, some phenomena do not correspond closely to even
carefully refined ordinary language. Light, he argues, is
one such phenomenon. To describe the properties of light,
we still refer to things and waves-the same analogies
that Newton' s generation used-although we now under-
stand light quite differently. Hence, Frank argues, an in-
herent imprecision underlies the language used to de-
scribe the basic elements of physics. Similar limitations
appear when we describe social process. Social science
can learn from physics because both analyze process.
However, the basic units for analyzing physical and social
processes differ fundamentally. As we draw from the ex-
periences of physicists to reconstruct our units of analy-
sis, we should mark those differences carefully.
Nevertheless, the concept of simultaneity can help or-
ganization scholars communicate about our units of pro-
cess. When we analyze an event, we are placing brackets
around a process in motion. The brackets separate what
we wish to focus on from its context. We position our
brackets in a way that will trigger recognition in an au-
dience. We can draw attention to a figure in contrast to a
ground, or a note within a melody. In so doing, we create
"nouns" from processes just as, physicists tell us, we do
in the physical world when we treat things as stable. Once
brackets are placed around a unit, we can choose to treat
it as a "wave" by drawing attention to its dynamism and
complexity. Thus, we create nouns that add suffixes to
verbs (e.g., organization from organizing).
Referring back to our starting point in Table 1, terms
like event and incident place the brackets closer together
than do terms like issue or situation. How we construct
our brackets and how explicitly we recognize the dyna-
mism remaining within the objects we have bracketed
determines whether we are emphasizing particle, wave,
field, perspective, or potential. The physics concept of
simultaneity reminds us that the factuality of what we
analyze is not affected by how we analyze it. In them-
selves, events have qualities of particle, wave, field, per-
spective, and potential. As well as containing these qual-
ities, any event chosen for analysis can be framed within
larger contexts that also have these qualities.
Unrealized Potential in OrganizationTheory
The dynamic in organization studies noted at the outset
between two established approaches to situations-
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subjectivist/pluralist theories and middle range theories
(like contingency theories)-is itself an event with un-
realized potential. By reconsidering the field where this
event is occurring, organization science could move in
useful directions. Middle range theories of structure,
function, and contingency have not fully incorporatedthe
rapidly growing literature on managing the process of
giving events meaning. Concepts like event are common-
place in subjectivist theory, however. The potential for
integration is evident in that the concept of event connects
quite well into one of the major general theory predeces-
sors of many current middle-range organization theories:
Parsons' theory of action (Parsons 1967, Parsons and
Shils 1951).
The basic unit of analysis in Parsons' "action system"
is given different labels in different writings, sometimes
being called a social object and elsewhere a unit act. One
particularly complete definition helps link his basic unit
of analysis to the concept of event. Parsons defines this
building block as follows: "The unit act involves the re-
lationship of an actor to a situation composed of objects,
and it is conceived as a choice (imputed by the theorist
to the actor) among alternative ways of defining the sit-
uation." (Parsons 1960, p. 467) Pepper (1942/1966,
p. 232-233) notes that this act or process-like quality is
given to objects in any theory constructed around events.
Parsons' general theory has lost scholars' interest partly
because he represented too much of social theory with
too narrow a set of concepts. The emphasis on structure
ratherthan on the social process of working out the mean-
ing of unit acts has also limited its utility. However, the
centrality of an eventlike construct to Parsons' theory
suggests that its successors-systems theory, contingency
theories, and many other middle range theories-can also
include analyses of events.
Subjectivist theory and middle range theories are not
fundamentally at odds in their opportunities to use event
as a unit of analysis. This point of compatibility provides
a starting point for integrating the two kinds of theory.
As they integrate, four premises are surfacing in process
analysis that offer a working agreement for organization
studies. These premises combine contingency theory in-
terests in learning from empirical regularities with inter-
ests in dynamic contexts, subjectivity, and pluralism. The
first of the four premises is that social actors use flexible
interpretive structures to objectify events by identifying
regularities in dynamic social processes. A second prem-
ise is that meanings do not emerge from isolated social
actors. Social actors interact to identify and give meaning
to events. A third is that events are not independent or
entirely discrete. They are interconnected and embedded
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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
within a more comprehensive situation. Fourth, social ac-
tors struggle to learn. They use knowledge gained in one
setting to introduce possibilities, but rarely certainties, for
understanding other situations. While no two situations
are identical, social actors seek to learn from rough sim-
ilarities. Learning requires that events be somehow
grouped into types so that implications of how a particular
event unfolds can be anticipated for other similar events.
Formulating event taxonomies to classify event types,
then, becomes a central concern for organization science.
Taxonomies of Events
What should one do as an organization scientist if the
preceding view of events is accepted? Because the con-
cept of event is basically a unit of analysis, the first an-
swer to this question is to take care when constructing
one' s taxonomy of units to study and be sure that one's
conceptual unit is compatible with the indicators one
uses.
The units of study have evolved in the various spe-
cialties and approaches taken within organization studies.
Middle range organization theories have gone beyond
general theory themes like Parsons' to develop analytic
units appropriate for relatively stable structures, func-
tions, and patterns of action. In a complementary way,
idiographic analyses of process are tacitly developing
general theory's rudimentary analysis of discontinuous
processes centered around social events. Both middle
range theories and idiographic analyses rely on taxono-
mies of events or event qualities to facilitate learning
from research results. Middle range theories have had
limited success at finding stable antecedents and conse-
quences of organizational phenomena such as, for ex-
ample, task characteristics (e.g., Doty et al. 1993). Still,
they have categorized such phenomena in useful ways
(e.g., variety, autonomy, identity, etc.; Hackman and
Oldham 1975). Similarly, even when idiographic analy-
ses struggle to find links to prior taxonomies, they often
end by providing useful new taxonomies (e.g., Isabella
1990).
Table 3 identifies selected major categories of event
taxonomies and gives examples of specific lines of re-
search in each category. I have given priority to ongoing
organizational theory work that identifies a unit of process
and earlier work from which this work draws most
heavily. Secondarily, I have also chosen examples of
work that clearly classifies units of analysis for studying
process. Importantstudies that focus on structuresor pat-
terns of action and interpretation that result from inter-
preting events are de-emphasized. Some such lines of
work (like analyses of conflict phases) appear in Tables
1 and 2, and are used in examples above.
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Table 3 and the preceding examples of event taxono-
mies indicate the broad relevance of an event-based view-
point for organization studies. From these, I have selected
two complementary sets of taxonomies to illustrate how
an emphasis on particle, wave, field, or perspective af-
fects particular kinds of analyses. These examples are
structural-functionaldecision-making taxonomies and so-
cial interpretationdecision-making taxonomies. (Similar
discussions of the other sets of taxonomies are available
from the author.) The historical sequence followed in de-
scribing these lines of work indicates the kind of sequence
we as organization scholars are likely to need to move
through as we disaggregate the processes to which we
refer in our research. The present status of each can also
be extrapolated to point to the next steps we need to take.
By providing examples of particle, wave, field, perspec-
tive, and potential, these lines of work can be used as
models of how we can make progress in other areas of
organization studies.
Taxonomiesof Structural-functional
Decision-making
The concept of decision treats process as a particle-event.
It highlights a particular, discrete resolution of an inter-
pretation process: announcing a choice. The earliest or-
ganizational decision theories (Taylor 1911) focused on
wavelike sequences of events by analyzing repeating
work cycles. The choices-both those that take the form
of work habits an employee should learn and those that
engineers make about what employees should be
taught-are specifiable. Subsequently, bounded ration-
ality (March and Simon 1958) recognized that events in-
terpretedthrough decision making processes vary in their
degree of specifiability. Bounded rationality only begins
to elaborate on the ambiguities that surround events.
However, it opens decision analysis to the ambiguity that
contexts of all sorts-wave, field, perspective, and poten-
tial-give to the specifiability of a focal event. In both
Taylorist and bounded rationality views, events are given
meaning through a decision process that is resolved by
the subsequent event of publicly pronouncing a choice.
A choice event represents a commitment of resources,
provides a potential context for subsequent decision mak-
ing, and drives a future program of action.
A substantial survey research literature also has ad-
dressed categories of "decisions" (e.g., Tannenbaum
1968). Some classify decisions according to the structural
context where they are typically made. For example,
some taxonomies point to a particular department (e.g.,
personnel decisions) or salient resource (e.g., budget or
equipment decisions). Labels for some classes of
events-like "employee selection decisions"-reflect
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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events

Table 3 Taxonomies of Events

Functional, problem-linked, and anti-functional taxonomies

* Adaptation, goal achievement, integration, latent pattern maintenance Parsons 1960
* Adaptation, resource allocation, coordination, maintenance, integration, strain and tension management Georgopoulos 1972
* "Traditional"functions versus "humanistic"functions Aktouf 1992;
Alvesson and Willmot 1992
Structural-functional decision-making taxonomies
* e.g., work force size, promotions, new products, delivery dates Pugh et al. 1968,1969
* Work, personnel, coordination activities Tannenbaum 1968
* Operational, tactical, strategic Heller et al. 1988
Social interpretation/informationprocessing taxonomies
* Problems, solutions Cohen et al. 1972
* Performance success, failure Ilgen et al. 1981, Singh 1986
* Certain, uncertain Burns and Stalker 1961
* Certain, uncertain; unequivocal, equivocal Daft and Lengel 1986
* Ordinary, unusual Peterson et al. 1990
* Important, unimportant Peterson, 1985
* Problem, opportunity, crisis Nutt 1984, 1993
Power, dependency and legitimacy taxonomies
* Certain, uncertain Pfeffer 1981
* Opportunities, threats Jackson and Dutton 1988
* Legitimate, illegitimate Elsbach and Sutton 1992
* Resources, dependence indicators Pfeffer and Salancik 1978
Institutionaleconomics taxonomies
* Transaction frequency (one-time, occasional, recurrent), assets (nonspecific, mixed, idiosyncratic), Williamson 1979,1992
uncertainty, ease of measurement
* Events within contracts (action observability, outcome measurability) Eisenhardt, 1989
Diagnostic taxonomies
* Urgency, individual/group, etc. Vroom and Yetton 1982
Inductive, ad hoc, technology-specif ic taxonomies
* Financial services events Isabella 1990
* Encounters with homelessness Dutton and Dukerich 1991
* Radiology events Barley 1990

highly regular wave characteristics viewed as connected
only in discrete, specified ways to larger fields of social
process (like legislated requirements or applicant pools).
A researcher who labels decisions according to depart-
ment type is using a field context to classify the social
process and suggesting that there is something consistent
about that class of decisions.
Some ways of conceiving structure reflect an interest
in a wave form of decisions that includes a larger orga-
nizational context than just department. The Aston stud-
ies definedformalization as the use of explicit procedures
for handling decisions, and centralization as the level in
a structuralhierarchy at which decisions are made (Pugh
et al. 1968, 1969). A similar kind of survey decision lit-
erature addressed influence by different structurallevels
(e.g., Cammann et al. 1983, Tannenbaum 1968). In both
instances, the wave form of a social actor's interpretation
process is as follows: notice a stimulating event
classify according to uncertainty -> process through pro-
cedures or hierarchy -> announce a choice. The specific
functional or resource content of decisions is not impor-
tant in this wave-based classification. Researchers focus
instead on the way social actors and written procedures
structurethe interpretationprocess.
These studies of overall formalization, centralization,
or distribution of control aggregate events. Some studies,
for example, test whether generally formalized organi-
zations are effective in stable environments (Keats and
Hitt 1988). As noted in the introduction and in Table 1,
hypotheses that disaggregate events are tested less often.
By the end of the 1970s, scholars began to see the lim-
itations of using a structuralbase for classifying decision
types. Specific decisions in any one category, say, per-
sonnel selection, can be quite heterogenous in such cru-
cial respects as their uncertainty or importance for the
- overall organization. Selecting a new chief executive is

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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
not the same as selecting a new mail clerk. Some recent
studies appear to have discounted, but not resolved, these
limitations (e.g., Doty et al. 1993, Keats and Hitt 1988).
They require further research attention.
Other recent research has sought to overcome the lim-
itations of the earlier decision taxonomies by reframing
wave and field contexts. Heller et al. (1988) report a lon-
gitudinal study of Decisions in Organizations (DIO) in
seven organizations in the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and
Britain. Their focus tends to be on decisions viewed as
processes and actions taken in response to other stimulus
events. Event, decision, and issue are used more or less
interchangablyin the DIO study. The taxonomy identifies
three main decision types-"(1) short-termfairly routine
operational issues; (2) medium term tactical; and
(3) long-term strategic decisions"-and various specific
decisions in each category. Crossed with these categories
are further classifications according to duration, fre-
quency, organizational level at which decisions are made,
simplicity, and orientation toward task or people. Strate-
gic decisions are "not simple" and combine substantial
task and people elements. When studies like this classify
events according to whether they share theoretically use-
ful wave characteristicslike uncertainty,they improve the
taxonomy of decision making.
How does the preceding "physics and beyond" discus-
sion advance structural-functionaldecision theory? Such
theory already highlights the wave quality of events by
placing them in a clear sequence of interpretive(decision-
making) processes. It systematizes a common sense lan-
guage full of structuraland military metaphors (e.g., "per-
sonnel" or "strategic" decisions). Physics analogies may
offer more yet to this literature.From a wave perspective,
decision uncertainty is lack of information about what
events ordinarily precede and follow an event of interest.
Ambiguity is unclarity about the way an event can be
abstracted from process. When scholars view decision
processes as linearly rational, they will de-emphasize the
beyond-physics characteristics of "field" qualities, mul-
tiple perspectives, and multiple purposes. Some analyses
may provide legitimate reasons to de-emphasize these
qualities.
However, in order for us to develop structural-
functional decision theory further, we need to reconsider
our initial concept-the idea of choice. This line of theory
takes a very active, almost behavioral stance by assuming
that interpretation culminates in a "choice," a commit-
ment to act. This assumption limits the range of purposes
and meaning frameworks that it can model. Actually, the
most importantresolution of a decision process may be-
not the announcement of a choice-but the reshaping of
the wave, field, perspective, or potential contexts for
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framing understandings. Some recent literature like the
DIO study is beginning to overcome the limitations of
concepts like decision and choice. Otherways of avoiding
these limitations appear in work describing the larger so-
cial interpretationcontext for interpreting events.
Taxonomies of Social Interpretation
and InformationProcessing
Information processing taxonomies show how to use ab-
stract wave qualities other than function to classify
events. Researchers select qualities of events thought to
influence the interpretation process. Although they fre-
quently refer to "informationprocessing," they construct
models that address a broad range of interpretive pro-
cesses that end in making sense rather than necessarily
making decisions.
Many middle-range organization theories have taken
an interpretationperspective by treating environments as
homogenous sets of events that have larger or smaller
overall degrees of uncertainty. Burns and Stalker (1961)
distinguished between organizational environments con-
sisting of many uncertain events and environments con-
sisting of few uncertain events. They and many organi-
zation theorists since them (e.g., Keats and Hitt 1988)
implicitly average across the events that an organization
experiences. This traditionof classical theory has become
increasingly specific about domains of environmental un-
certainty and the organizational structures and mecha-
nisms used to handle them. The movement extended
Bums and Stalker's overall analysis of how frequently
uncertain events occur. Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) an-
alyzed how frequently particular types of departments
face uncertain events. Thompson (1967) analyzed how
organizations use buffering and bridging mechanisms to
handle uncertain events. Galbraith(1973) and Mintzberg
(1979) explained how internal information processing
structures and mechanisms operate. Most of these, how-
ever, emphasize regularities typical of a class of processes
ratherthan sequences in a particularprocess. This line of
conceptual development illustrates a path of continually
disaggregating processes, a path of disaggregation that
may be useful in other areas of organization scholarship.
It moves from a look at an overall organization environ-
ment to an analysis of how particularcategories of events
might be managed.
Two other lines of social interpretationresearch high-
light the wave qualities of events. A micro organizational
literature has developed of how supervisors interpret in-
stances when a subordinate "fails" at some task (Ilgen et
al. 1981). A macro literaturehas also dealt with more or
less centralized or risk averse managerial information
processing triggered by instances when an organization
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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
succeeds or fails (Singh 1986). Advancing beyond earlier
interpretative approaches, these lines of work add a
"field" element by modeling the impact of waves sur-
rounding other events. One cannot capture the meaning
of a single subordinate's success or failure only by wave-
like regularities in antecedent and consequent events.
Rather, events having no causal link at all to the subor-
dinates' actions affect their meaning. Failures by other
subordinates (Ilgen et al. 1981) and organizational cir-
cumstances (Singh 1986) influence the meaning of a sub-
ordinate's success or failure. Success or failure events are
always embedded in a larger field of action. Both the
Ilgen et al. (1981) and the Singh (1986) models extend
contingency theory by explaining: (1) how field context
gives otherwise ambiguous events a meaning of "good"
or "bad,"(2) how social actors determine which of several
alternative wave forms should be used to interpret "suc-
cess" or "failure" events, and (3) how the chosen wave
forms affect subsequent interpretationand action.
These two models provide good examples of how or-
ganization scholars can apply the field aspect of context.
Social actors attend to and learn from aspects of their
context that they witness but do not directly act in. Insti-
tution theory develops a similar idea: an organization
learns not only from recalling the consequences of its own
actions, but also through observing the experience of
other organizations.
Another line of social interpretationresearch considers
perspective and potential. The event taxonomy of the
"garbage can model" of decision making (Cohen et al.
1972) distinguishes events that carry an associated risk or
difficulty (problems) from events that carry an opportu-
nity for removing a risk or reducing a difficulty (solu-
tions). Choice occurs when problem events and solution
events are conjoined. Ideas like problem and opportunity
tacitly reflect field, perspective, and potential. These ideas
recognize that a particle-event which an observer initially
views as part of one wave sequence can be reframed. A
solution can transform a problem into an opportunity by
reframing it in a different wave form. Resources that have
little significance in one wave sequence-an underuti-
lized employee (a problem), for example-can take on
opportunity qualities if viewed in a larger field that pro-
vides alternative potentials for the employee's skills. In-
teraction can help solve such problems as the interacting
parties use different perspectives to place the event of an
underutilized employee in different wave forms or dif-
ferent sections of a field. Interaction also provides an op-
portunity for problems to be solved by framing them as
potentials.
Social interpretationtheories have moved toward ana-
lyzing events as information processing and organization
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learning models have confronted the limitation of aver-
aging uncertainty across events. Attention has moved to-
ward disagreggating events and classifying them accord-
ing to their informational properties. Theorists have
subdivided the general concept of uncertainty into two
components. Elaborating upon Weick (1979), Daft and
Lengel (1986) categorize events according to their un-
certainty and equivocality. From the perspective of phys-
ics analogies, the distinction between uncertainty and
equivocality is based on different sorts of contexts. That
is, uncertainty describes a well-precedented, discrete
particle-event that either has a somewhat indeterminate
wave position, or occurs as part of a wave form that ap-
pears with indeterminate frequency within a particular
field. Finding additional information about the structure
of antecedent and consequent events typical of similar
wave forms or encountering a number of analogous wave
forms in a field can reduce uncertainty. Equivocality is a
more difficult concept. It is usually defined as an event
with continuing ambiguity. Its multiple, conflicting inter-
pretations will not be resolved by adding information. An
equivocal event may be unprecedented and unique, or it
may lack and determinatefit into a larger meaning frame-
work of fields, perspectives, or potentials. The alternative
viewpoints of particle, wave, field, perspective and po-
tential suggest that the distinction between uncertainty
and equivocality is only a first step toward analyzing a
broader domain of interpretationambiguities.
Although uncertainty is the usual key, some theorists
have used other information-linked taxonomies. Some
have categorized events according to frequency as ordi-
nary or unusual (Peterson et al. 1990, Peterson et al.
1996), and according to breadth or scope of their impli-
cations as important or unimportant (Peterson 1985,
Peterson et al. 1996). These event taxonomies predict
how various parties and impersonal "sources of meaning"
like organizational cultural and national norms affect in-
terpretationand its consequences (Smith et al. 1994). Fo-
cusing on sources of meaning recognizes the way in
which perspective affects events and the possibility of
multiple viewpoints and multiple potential implications.
As a set, recent information processing theories rec-
ognize that events occur in the context of fields containing
varying wave patterns. These theories begin by classify-
ing events according to information processing require-
ments. In effect, this classification tries to indicate which
wave form is most consequential for interpreting a par-
ticular configuration of particle-events. Theorists have
then indicated how information requirements affect the
handling of either specific events or larger configurations
of events like generalized environments. They have ap-
plied social interpretation and information processing
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MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
models usually to highly visible, complex events inter-
preted by entire organizations. However, some of the
work noted above seems either to have individuals in
view or to question the meaningfulness of ideas like or-
ganization structure and level of analysis (e.g., Hutchins
1991). The process of giving meaning to a range of events
varying in characteristicslike uncertaintyand importance
needs more analysis. So do the effects that particularman-
agement interventions, like quality programs and down-
sizing, have on the process of giving events meaning.
Limitationsof Taxonomies
Attempts to construct event taxonomies have proven use-
ful, but they have inherent limitations. The events that we
experience fall into clusters that give structure to our
thoughts and our communication. Taxonomies can cap-
ture some of the clusters that we experience. Still, the
unique time line ultimately surrounding all social events
means that event-particles are also unique. Taxonomies
cannot capture the wholly unique.
Social situations will never be reduced to a set of pre-
cisely defined events and their interrelations. In order to
be realistic, social analysis needs a complexity of multiple
perspectives and meaning frameworks that would bewil-
der a physicist. Hence, consistent, generalizable social
laws will cover a much smaller proportion of the phe-
nomena that concern us than the laws of physics do. Still,
the extreme position that developing event taxonomies or
seeking regularities in patterns of events has no value is
equally unnecessary. Taxonomies make an extraordinar-
ily complex world more comprehensible by indicating
some of the implications of some aspects of events. Tax-
onomies promote cross-situational learning without pre-
suming too much cross-situational equivalence. The fun-
damental event taxonomy proposed here (i.e., particle,
etc.) should be taken in the same spirit.
Implications for Organization Studies
The two examples of taxonomies illustrate at some length
the implications that physics and beyond-physics analo-
gies have for organization studies. Next we must develop
more briefly implications for major traditions within or-
ganization studies.
Mohr (1982) when he distinguishes between process
theories and variance theories, highlights a major divide
in the field that affects how theorists apply physics and
beyond-physics analogies. Process research, like the
Isabella (1990) study, considers sequences and links,
while variance research, like the Doty et al. (1993) study,
considers covariances between variables. Mohr argues
that combining the two kinds of theory is likely to be
extremely cumbersome. The view of events advocated
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here is certainly consistent with the value of process the-
ories, as Mohr describes them. However, it is also con-
sistent with careful thinking through of the implicit way
in which social processes are part of variance theories.
Process and variance theories are inherently interwoven
when things are viewed as chunks of process.
I have argued here that variance theories are built on
concepts that bracket segments of process. Consequently,
variance theories, including those tested using question-
naire surveys or aggregated economic and social indica-
tors, cannot be blind to process. Similarly, scholars inter-
ested in process should not avoid variance research. Some
of the taxonomies noted previously show how variance
theories carefully informed by process considerations can
have advantages. Some of the studies noted above (e.g.,
Barley 1990) illustrate ways in which we can incorporate
process considerations into variance research. Variance
research requires the researcher to select categories of
process to study and to seek covariances between quali-
ties of these selected things. An event perspective chal-
lenges the variance researcher to pick the most appropri-
ate categories and qualities to study. Hence, were Doty
and colleagues (1993) to analyze not organizations in
general but organizations when engaged in handling un-
certain situations, they might uncover additional effects
of the uncertainty-managingactivities like strategic plan-
ning that they were studying.
Many scholars implicitly recognize that as we increase
our analysis of the implications of events, we will ad-
vance the field of organization studies. As Table 1 indi-
cates, various units are already being used to draw atten-
tion to process. Different research areas already use labels
like incidents, events, situations, issues, and problems.
Such labels all allow information, meaning, and action to
flow freely among social actors that vary in complexity
and composition, be they societies, individuals, organi-
zations, or groups. Attempts to point to the importance of
process without clearly conceptualizing a unit of analysis
have produced an aura of mysticism, an aura that the pre-
ceding analysis is designed to remove.
Scholars studying organizations have become increas-
ingly aware of the need to carefully represent units of
process. The units being studied range from complex
events with far-reaching strategic implications (e.g.,
Meyer 1982) to the cheerful (or not) smile of a salesper-
son (Sutton and Rafaeli 1988). Many of our debates ask
what kinds of things we are studying and in what kinds
of contexts should we frame them. Critical theory has led
the way to abandoning functional classifications that bind
an event to a single, function-based purpose. Middle-
range theories, including contingency theories, that ag-
gregate across events have begun to be supplemented by
27
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
interpretationprocess models, power theories, and eco-
nomics theories that disaggregate process. Inductive tax-
onomies provide a base for new ways of categorizing
events. Scholars are disaggregating complex contexts and
situations into more discrete, carefully defined chunks,
and then reintegratingthese bits with explicit analyses of
context.
However, the present paper does not advocate one way
of defining or framing units of process over another. We
need to be aware of and explicit about what we are doing.
The physics analogies of particle, wave, field, and per-
spective supplemented by the uniquely social context of
potential can help us to understand and systematically
think through the unit of analysis we choose for any
particular study. The way we bracket process to choose
theoretical units must correspond reasonably well with
the way we bracket process in empirical study and ex-
plain what we have done to managers. This need for con-
sistency between theory and methods has implications
for macro and micro, objectivist and subjectivist, re-
search.
Implications for Macro Structural Contingency,
Models
Middle-range macro research, like contingency theory,
needs to use measures that represent how organization
and industry structuresrespond to events. The DIO study
(Heller et al. 1988) moves in the right direction. Re-
searchers need to define structuralconcepts and treatthem
operationally so as to capture how structuresrespond to
various events (Van de Ven and Poole 1990). Too often,
we treat organizations as formalized or nonformalized.
In reality, organizations show formalization to different
degrees or in different ways depending on whether they
become engaged in managing events that fit particular
taxonomic categories. In effect, organizations can pi-
geonhole events varying in importance, uncertainty, or
resources into sensemaking processes suited to handling
them. Structuresare created in a manner that permits cen-
tralized response to some events and decentralized re-
sponse to others (Singh 1986). Similarly, researchers
sometimes treat interorganizational networks as main-
taining stable relationships among their members and be-
ing connected in stable ways to prevailing environment
contingencies (Oliver 1990). However, networks actually
respond quite dynamically (Larson 1992, Ring and Van
de Ven 1994) to varied events.
Implications for Micro Behavioral Contingency
Models
Micro contingency theorists also need to avoid assuming
a high level of homogeneity in the events that individuals
and groups face. Path-goal leadership theory (House
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1971), for example, has been tested in a misleading way.
The theory itself represents wave forms in a subordinate's
work situation. That is, when a subordinate has little ex-
perience with the wave form or field context surrounding
a particularkind of work event-an unstructuredtask-
the person will be unable to make sense of the situation.
In such situations, the theory says that the subordinate's
motivation and task ability will be facilitated if someone
explains what to do. Tests of path-goal theory, however,
assume that some subordinates generally have structured
tasks while others have less structured tasks, that some
leaders provide more structurein general to a subordinate
while others provide less structure in general and that
subordinates have generalized rather than transient and
only moderately stable levels of motivation and satisfac-
tion. Theory and tests show a process aggregation fallacy
analogous to the kinds of structurallevel misspecification
we have learned to avoid. One possible solution is to
study the dynamics of supervisor and subordinate over
time. Another is to design surveys that ask respondents
what their superior does under different specified circum-
stances (Peterson 1985).
More generally, when we do organizational behavior
survey research, we often relegate the dynamism in social
constructions and interpretations to error variance. The
performance-contingent leadership theorists noted in Ta-
ble 3 take a step in the right direction. They treat formal
leaders not as adopting a punishment-oriented style or a
considerate style, but as varying their actions in response
to instances of strong or weak subordinate performance
(Podsakoff et al. 1982). (The same undoubtedly holds
true for charismatic and transformationalleadership, but
measures of these aspects of leadership have not been
designed to identify instances or situations in which lead-
ers show charisma.) Still, other contingencies and lead-
ership substitutes are modeled in overly stable, homog-
enous terms in studies of performance-contingent
leadership. If we combine event-sensitive measures of
leadership with overgeneralized measures of contingen-
cies, we may bias our results toward finding that more
appropriately event-sensitive performance-contingent
leadership measures are the more predictive. Many static
concepts in middle-range organization behavior theories
would benefit from similar reframing.
Micro organization studies based on laboratory re-
search paradigms (e.g., goal setting research) face a dif-
ferent struggle. Context counts. The history within which
a social process occurs counts. Generalization is not a
simple matter of moving from artificial laboratory set-
tings to natural field settings (Tsoukas 1989). We must
watch how wave, field, perspective, and potential shape
how laboratory subjects interpret an event. ExDerimental
ORGANIZATIONSCIENCE/VOl. 9, No. 1, January-February 1998
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
research needs to describe the way a context has been
artificially created to parallel conceptually importantele-
ments that occur in natural contexts.
Implicationsfor Extremes of Process Objectivism
Some sociological and economics models have avoided
the tendency to assume situational homogeneity. Some
economics models represent changes in process, be it ag-
gregated into corporate profit or total global production.
Some sociological models at an objectivist extreme also
represent process change. Population ecology (Hannan
and Freeman 1977), for example, places particular im-
portance on cataclysmic events that can wipe out an entire
niche.
Heise (1991) describes a computer programthat can be
used to record and summarize similarities in the sequence
of events (e.g., the elements in a research program) once
a sufficient number of such sequences is accumulated.
With this "event history analysis," one can statistically
explore the causes of time lags between clearly defined
particle-events like gaining and leaving a job. The mean-
ing of particle-events in this kind of analysis is quite fo-
cused. Meaning lies in the objective wave-like transition
between events that are viewed as clearly identifiable and
unambiguous. However, focusing too much on events as
particles poses a risk for both theory and appropriategen-
eralization. Meaning depends on context. For example,
even the simple distinction between voluntary and invol-
untary turnover makes an event history analysis of turn-
over problematic. Event history methods need to take care
to ensure that the events analyzed are similar in ways that
take into account importantaspects of the wave, field, and
larger meaning forms in which they occur.
More generally, the meaning context of fields, per-
spectives, and potentials needs to be added to extreme
objectivism. Introductions and discussion sections of pa-
pers focusing on particle-events sometimes provide bits
of this context. Although not all quantification produces
extreme objectivism, models that largely abstract events
from their contexts can do so. This abstracting underlies
the difficulty in linking models of sociology and econom-
ics at the objectivist extreme to managers' concerns. The
current, simultaneous elaboration of these models along-
side interpretive process research is producing useful de-
bates and interminglings of theory and method. Such
controversies, particularly in organizational economics
(Barney 1990, Donaldson 1990) and agency theory
(Eisenhart 1989) encourage organization theorists to ap-
preciate both the value of focusing on categories of events
to promote cross-situational learning and the value of de-
scribing context to promote understandingmeanings.
ORGANIZATIONSCIENCE/VOl. 9, No. 1998
1, January-February
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Implications for Idiographic and Semi-idiographic
Ethnographic Research
Each of the five viewpoints, as particle, wave, field, per-
spective, and potential, assumes a potential correspon-
dence between something observed and an observer.
Tsoukas (1989) describes the overobjectification that can
result from radically separating objects from context.
Tsoukas' discussion of scientific realism shows a pref-
erence for idiographic over large-sample research. This
preference is reasonable given the inadequate attention
to event context in many publications of large-sample re-
search. The preference does not necessarily reflect a fun-
damental ontological incompatibility between idi-
ographic and large sample methods. Instead, it reflects the
need of large-sample research to specify events and con-
texts precisely.
Idiographic research indicates that situations are not as
stable as middle-range theories tend to assume. Reducing
important elements of meaning to error variance is prob-
lematic. Managers use training and consultancy that is
based on middle-range theories. They are aware of the
dynamics in their situations and the lack of correspon-
dence between this reality and models that assume ho-
mogenous situations.
Methodologically, ethnography has pointed the way in
recent years to the need to analyze events. Nevertheless,
other methods also should be adaptedto an event-oriented
perspective. Organization studies needs to honor its his-
torical debt to idiographic methods for identifying a
wrong turn in most general and middle-range theory. Eth-
nographic research that overemphasizes uniqueness,
however, risks being reduced to a methodology providing
no real potential for learning. Researchers have effec-
tively incorporated events into measurement instruments
in various contexts (e.g., Barley 1990, Heller et al. 1988,
Peterson et al. 1996, Podsakoff, et al. 1982, Smith et al.
1994). Certainly, ethnography must retain its unique role
in detailed description of organizational process. No
event repeats itself in entirely the same way. Ethnography
also remains the method of choice for analyzing situa-
tions where many research participantscannot or will not
participate in laboratory studies or complete question-
naires. It remains, as well, the method of choice for doc-
umenting rare and consequential events. Yet the unique
role of ethnography in making tacit knowledge explicit
does not prevent researchers from incorporating a prior,
explicit event taxonomy into structuredresearch designs.
Toward a Group Awareness: Beyond Sociological
and Psychological Reductionism
As separate groups of scholars recognize the potential for
a new alignment of interests, the study of organizational
29
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
process will improve. Scholars using various methods are
already finding that the pragmatics of doing research
overcome "insurmountable"ideological incompatibilities
(Heath 1992; Hunt 1991, 1994). Still, many scholars
moving toward a fundamentally compatible viewpoint
raise walls of presumed ontological incompatibility
(Tsoukas 1989).2
Efforts to analyze events expose a need to integrate
macro and micro organization studies. As Table 1 indi-
cates, real, concrete events resist reduction to either a
strictly psychological or a strictly sociological viewpoint
(Van de Ven and Poole 1990). Some organizational anal-
yses already reflect an acceptance of the theoretical value
of arrangingsocial structuresby level (e.g., Isabella 1988,
1990). These analyses treatevents as cross-level phenom-
ena (Rousseau 1985, Glick 1985, Roberts et al. 1978).
Conclusion. OrganizationalAnalysis
of Embedded Events
Managers, quite fairly, sometimes accuse organization
theory and management training as being unrealistic. It is
difficult for theory to mirror the social objects subjec-
tively created by managers. Managers do not face situa-
tions that are enduringly stable or unstable, certain or un-
certain, munificent or hostile. Instead, managers interpret
events and shape others' interpretationsof events in con-
tinually changing situations. As outlined above, each of
the theoretical/methodological traditions in organization
scholarship can sharpenits approachto better reflect man-
agers' experience.
Organization science is working through a dynamic be-
tween different lines of thought. The force underlying the
dynamic is the experienced inadequacy of organization
theory and methods. Much of traditional organization
studies has used concepts and methods intended to pro-
mote generalized application. However, generalized rep-
resentations of situations that gloss over too many mean-
ingful specifics of situations can hardly be applied at all.
Work that points to situational idiosyncracies has some-
times overreacted to such overgeneralization and has not
always provided the help needed to understandwhen one
particularidiosyncratic situation may be relevant again.
Two potential problems result. One is that while situ-
ations may be unique, processes such as particular sorts
of interpretationpatterns, organizational change patterns,
or innovation patterns may come to be treated as exces-
sively universal. The second is that contextual uniqueness
may be emphasized to the point that no finding can be
applied.
A third possibility has more to offer. We need an in-
termediate degree of generalization focused around ex-
plicated taxonomies of events. Organization scholars
30
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
have long eschewed the structural aggregation fallacies
attending conclusions drawn about individuals based on
relationships among variables found for organizations
and vice versa (e.g., Glick 1985). Yet process aggregation
fallacies abound in organization studies. These fallacies
occur when we draw conclusions about individual events
based on relationships found among variables that aggre-
gate varied events into presumably homogenous, stable
situations.
Some of the abstractions represented in traditional or-
ganization studies show sound intuition about important
aspects of situations. Uncertainty, importance, environ-
mental hostility, and amenability to structureare all use-
ful aspects of situations to analyze. However, it is not the
typical or aggregate level of these concepts alone that
requires analysis, it is their occurrence in relation to tran-
sient, embedded events.
Acknowledgments
Previousversionsof this paperhave been presentedat The Executive
LeadershipConferenceas partof the ArmyResearchInstituteproject,
"Impactof Organizational Policies and OperatingPracticeson Orga-
nizationalPerformanceand LeaderDevelopment,"Carlisle,Pennsyl-
vania,February1991,the International Congressof Psychology,Brus-
sels, July 1992, and at seminars at the University of Sheffield
(England),the FreeUniversityof Amsterdam(Netherlands), Tampere
University(Finland),ISCTE (Portugal),Drexel University,Temple
University,andCornellUniversity.Preparation was supportedin part
by a grantfromtheArmyResearchInstitute,JamesG. HuntandRobert
Phillips,PrincipalInvestigors.Commentsby KimBoal, RobinGropp,
JerryHunt,Shelby Hunt,Etty Jehn,JorgeJesuino,KennethL. Pike,
ArjaRopo,andGrantSavage,five reviewers,andthe editoraregrate-
fully acknowledged.
Endnotes
'Many lay interpretations of quantum physics following Einstein are
available (e.g., Bamett 1957, Einstein 1961, Russell 1969). The anal-
ogy between events in quantum physics and social events is evident in
Whitehead (1929/1969, pp. 90, 98, taken together with p. 269) and
Russell (1961). The analogy between physical events and the tagmeme
as a unit of social behavior is developed by Pike (1967). Wheatley
(1992) develops some of the implications of quantumphysics and other
fields of post-Newtonian science. Wheatley's emphasis is upon the re-
spects in which modem science recognizes indeterminacy, fuzziness,
and unspecifiability. The present discussion places a complementary
emphasis on how organizational concepts can be constructively recast
on the basis of insights from modem physics.
The concepts of particle, wave, and field are roughly analogous (re-
spectively) to the tagmemic concepts of class, slot, and cohesion (Pike
1982). Pike's fourth concept, role, combines what are here labeled per-
spective and potential. Pike's explanation of the way these four con-
cepts relate to referential tagmemes (Pike and Pike 1983, pp. 35-36)
has been drawn upon here. The author would like to thank Ken and
Evelyn Pike for helping to clarify this critical aspect of the present
paper.
ORGANIZATIONSCIENCE/Vol. 9, No. 1, January-February 1998
MARK F. PETERSON Embedded Organizational Events
2Hunt (1991, 1994) clarifies substantial differences between various
sorts of positivism and scientific realism. He points out the murkiness
in using labels for schools of thought to frame modem metamethodo-
logical and metatheoretical discussions in social science. Within Hunt's
framework, studies analyzing events reflect a form of scientific realism.
Given current usage, scholars studying events may tend to identify
themselves, somewhat imprecisely, as varyingly "positivistic" or "non-
positivistic" depending on their beliefs about the extent to which the
social world is amenable to precise fragmentation, definition, and quan-
tification. For a related discussion of ontological, epistemological, and
methodological issues, see Heath (1992). Some critical theory themes,
such as moral and ethical issues in doing research and teaching on
behalf of a managerial elite, are reacted to, but may be fundamentally
incommensurate with, the motives of organization studies as practiced
by most management faculty.
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