Sites of Causation: A Pragmatist Approach to Stabilities and Change

The strong processual approach in organizational studies emphasize that the social world is a world of flux; this call for theorizing of how stabilities and change are established, maintained and dissolved. Research within this string of research has done a large amount of empirically and conceptually work around events and different forms of temporality, temporal structures and rhythms. However, less has been done in order to theorize the role of the co-existence of multiple temporalities in maintaining seemingly stabilities. From a pragmatist approach, this paper develops the concept of sites of causation and shows how reiterated inquiries through the collection and encoding of multiple temporalities are central mechanisms in maintaining seemingly social entities. The contributions of the paper are 1. A conceptual understanding of different forms of stabilities 2. Showing how reiterated inquiries are the mechanisms maintaining social entities 3. That the strength of reiterated inquiries is rooted in the co-existence of multiple temporalities.