The impasse of the machine metaphor in organization and management: Ontological and epistemological rejuvenation during interregnum

The modernist stream of thought, which is built on Newtonian Paradigm, embraces a mechanistic ontology that is linked with a mechanistic epistemology and an instrumental praxeology leading to the emergence of the assumption that organizations should be treated as machines. The inuential reection of this view had been palpable. During the theory development process starting from 19th century, dominant assumptions such as equilibrium-seeking as an ultimate rational behavior, predictability of the ends by the deterministic analysis of the means and the whole being a sum of its parts shaped the very essence of the managerial thought. However, given the current level of global interdependence and interconnectedness major events could be triggered by the ap of a buttery's wing. In an age of fluidity, where the amount of data being produced and shared has reached an unprecedented magnitude, the interaction among the agents pave the way to the emergence of qualitatively distinct phenomenon. This conceptual paper intends to diagnose the need to replace the prolonged assumptions that reigned throughout the history of organizational studies by the ones extracted from complexity thinking, which might serve as the kernel of the new organizational and managerial studies in the future.