ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine what a relational ontology consists of, especially regarding questions of materiality, performativity and existence. In dialogue with Karl Weick’s notions of enactment, selection and retention, we show what this ontology has to tell us about this specific way of relating we call organizing and organization. Having defined the relational aspects of organizational processes, we also explore why disorganizing is always at stake when organizing takes place, creating tensions that constitute an intractable aspect of organizational processes. Studying dis/organization from a relational perspective indeed amounts to studying the communicative constitution of dis/organizing, that is, examining the ways things and persons get positioned or position themselves as organs or instruments by which others articulate themselves (in both senses of the word "articulate": assemble and speak), creating an agencement that can also disappear or be altered when contradictions or incompatibilities occur. It is the tensions inherent in these agencements that we especially focus on in the context of this chapter. This relational perspective is finally mobilized to analyze a meeting excerpt during which two managers and two human resource advisors speak about a workforce diversity program in a large Canadian organization.
