Eventalizing the Kaali Meteorite: Socio-Organizational Reality as Dynamic Configuration of Event(s)

In this chapter, I problematize the idea of discrete events with unproblematic meaning and nature fixed in the linear chronological timeline. With that, I also problematize the idea of the closed past. Grounding my arguments in Whitehead’s metaphysics, I view events as ongoing processes, closed only provisionally, constituting social reality and time. Events, through their wave-like behavior, are evolving and transforming. Their meaning, which is always embedded in a particular socio-cultural context, is open for reinterpretation when the collective knowledge accumulates and supports the rise of a new adjusted understanding. However, past events are not only open for reinterpretation, but they carry potentiality that could become actualized far beyond the immediate occurrence of an event. Events carry potentiality regardless of humans’ ability to notice or date them. Therefore, events have agency, a performative power that extends beyond their immediate occurrence. Moreover, an agency can also be ascribed to non-events. In this chapter, I explain the behavior of events based on the behavior of waves in physics and illustrate with an example of an event from Estonian history known to have happened but whose exact occurrence is still the subject of academic debates. I conclude the chapter with the implications of an event-based view on organizations and management.