Process, Sensemaking, and Organizing

Abstract

In the paper we contend that a major reason behind the dissatisfaction with many organisational theories is that they have been developed within the framework of scientific rationality. It makes them unable to capture and highlight how organizational practice is constituted. This is because scientific rationality forces organizational scholars to impose a scientific logic on practice, which is fundamentally different from the logic underlying practice. The aim of the paper is to elaborate practical rationality as an alternative framework for theory development, and point out how such a framework enables us to develop theories that capture the logic of practice in a more adequate way and, thus, be more relevant to organizational practice.