The Power of the Particular

This chapter elaborates on how singularities (unique, first-time/once-occurrent events) may be thought of in organization science, and how an organization science of singularities may be possible. Organizations are designed to generate regularities. Historically oriented towards capturing regularities, organization science has treated organizations as abstract systems, devoid of the idiosyncrasies of human agency. However, while organizations categorize and generalize, insofar as people in organizations act, they inevitably create and encounter differences. Difference indicates uniqueness implicit in the particularity of things, and the repetitiveness of regularities in organizations does not indicate the reproduction of sameness, since repetition is an occasion for generating difference. An organization science of singularities is concerned with bringing to attention the unique features of organizational life that create new possibilities. Such a science is performative, seeking to provide action-oriented accounts of organizational life from within.