Action, Structure and Chaos

Raymond-Alain Thiétart and Bernard Forgues ()
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Raymond-Alain Thiétart: Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, ESSEC Business School
Bernard Forgues: Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, ESSEC Business School

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Abstract: In this article we conjecture that organizational actors, through their actions, create their own context. Once initiated, the context tends to develop a dynamic of its own, which escapes the control of the organizational actors. In con sequence, the context becomes the determining factor of the actors' initiatives. Voluntarism has created its own determinism which will eventually shape the organizational actors' futures. To illustrate our view, we study a crisis which we believe may exemplify a situation induced and perpetuated by the same organizational actors who tried to handle it. To support this thesis, we attempt to show that the observed crisis is chaotic. Our results reveal that deterministic chaos cannot be rejected as an explanation of the dynamics of the situation. The crisis exhibits an apparently random behaviour which, we believe, is deter ministically created through tightly coupled actions and dynamic interactions among actors. Once in the chaotic state, actors cannot control the process they have contributed to create. The context becomes all powerful and determining.

Keywords: Descriptors: chaos; complexity; determinism; voluntarism; crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-01-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in Organization Studies, 1997, 18 (1), 119-143 p. ⟨10.1177/017084069701800107⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02312805

DOI: 10.1177/017084069701800107

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