The Performativity of Theories

What is it about?

The purpose of this chapter is to explain how organization and management studies have built on and helped advance various streams of research dedicated to the performativity of theory – that is, how theory shapes the patterns of social interactions that constitute social reality. For that purpose, two ideal-type positions that form the poles of a continuum of scholarship about theory performativity are distinguished. These poles consist of approaching either performativity as a mindset – an onto-epistemic lens helpful to reconsider the nature or organizational phenomena and management concepts – or of analyzing performativity as a social mechanism involved in the production and transformation of social reality for actors. By relying on illustrations from recent research, the common core assumptions underlying both perspectives on performativity can be specified as well as these perspectives’ distinctive commitments to these assumptions, analytical foci, and contribution to organizational knowledge of performativity. Finally, the chapter discusses how the insights generated at each pole of this continuum complement each other and can advance organizational and management studies of theory performativity.

Featured Image