WHAT IS A PROCESSUAL ANALYSIS.'?
Scand..L Mgmt, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 337-348, 1997
© 1997 published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain.
0956-5221/97 $17.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
PII: S0956-5221(97)00020-1
WHAT IS A PROCESSUAL
ANALYSIS. '?
Andrew M. Pettigrew
Warwick Business School, Warwick University, U.K.
(First received May 1997; accepted May 1997)
INTRODUCTION
This essay offers a personal and therefore partial view of the nature and conduct of process research in organisational settings. Issues of time, agency, structure, context, emergence and development are crucial in human conduct and have been widely debated by philosophers and social theorists. Over the last 20 years seminal articles and books on time and social analysis have been written by Martins (1974), Adam (1990), Nowotny (1992) and Sztompka (1991, 1993).
Meanwhile in the narrower fields of industrial sociology and organisational analysis important contributions have also been made by Clark (1985), Whipp (1994) and Hassard (1996). These writings epitomise the wide diversity of thinking about time, history and process but do not in themselves overturn the truism that in their theorising and empiricism most social scientists do not appear to have given much time to time. For many the social sciences are still an exercise in comparative statics.
It has been a personal ambition over 30 years to capture the dynamic quality of human conduct in organisational settings. For twenty years this was more of a solo journey (Pettigrew, 1973,
1979, 1985, 1987). Latterly I have had the benefit of some companions. (Pettigrew and Whipp,
1991; Pettigrew et al., 1992; Pettigrew and McNulty, 1995; Ferlie et al., 1996). Throughout this period a distinctive style of conducting longitudinal comparative case study research has emerged at Warwick University. Twice I have attempted to follow Donald Schon 's (1983) prerequisite for a learning professional and have reflected on that practice
© 1997 published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain.
0956-5221/97 $17.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
PII: S0956-5221(97)00020-1
WHAT IS A PROCESSUAL
ANALYSIS. '?
Andrew M. Pettigrew
Warwick Business School, Warwick University, U.K.
(First received May 1997; accepted May 1997)
INTRODUCTION
This essay offers a personal and therefore partial view of the nature and conduct of process research in organisational settings. Issues of time, agency, structure, context, emergence and development are crucial in human conduct and have been widely debated by philosophers and social theorists. Over the last 20 years seminal articles and books on time and social analysis have been written by Martins (1974), Adam (1990), Nowotny (1992) and Sztompka (1991, 1993).
Meanwhile in the narrower fields of industrial sociology and organisational analysis important contributions have also been made by Clark (1985), Whipp (1994) and Hassard (1996). These writings epitomise the wide diversity of thinking about time, history and process but do not in themselves overturn the truism that in their theorising and empiricism most social scientists do not appear to have given much time to time. For many the social sciences are still an exercise in comparative statics.
It has been a personal ambition over 30 years to capture the dynamic quality of human conduct in organisational settings. For twenty years this was more of a solo journey (Pettigrew, 1973,
1979, 1985, 1987). Latterly I have had the benefit of some companions. (Pettigrew and Whipp,
1991; Pettigrew et al., 1992; Pettigrew and McNulty, 1995; Ferlie et al., 1996). Throughout this period a distinctive style of conducting longitudinal comparative case study research has emerged at Warwick University. Twice I have attempted to follow Donald Schon 's (1983) prerequisite for a learning professional and have reflected on that practice
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