Theorizing and the Study of Organizations: Four Early Exemplars

Abstract The main goal of this review-essay is to provide information on how to theorize in studies of organization. While there exists a small and growing literature on this topic since around 2010, no consensus has yet been reached on what rules to follow when you theorize. To assist in this process, this essay looks at some early works on theorizing that so far have been largely neglected in the current discussion. They are the works through which the topic of theorizing was first introduced in social science, and which also, as it so happens, were made by scholars who all made important contributions to the study of organizations. Two of these pioneered the sociology of organizations (Robert K. and Peter Blau), and two of them are among the central figures in organization studies (James G. March and Karl Weick). The difference between what constitutes a consensus on a topic in science, on the one hand, and individual contributions to a science, on the other, is relevant for the argument in this essay and discussed with the help of the two useful concepts introduced by Ludwik Fleck: vademecum or handbook science and journal science .