‘Not Too Good to be True’: A Proposal to Further Benefit from Emergence in Management Research

Abstract

Emergence is inherent to organizational life and design. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, emergence has been appraised as a conceptual avenue that surpassed the limitations of traditional thinking and epistemology. In this essay, I suggest that, despite its relevance and popularity among management scholars, emergence has remained underused. I rely on Kuhn’s view (1962) to better understand the reasons for this paradox and propose some practical avenues to improve our understanding and use of the concept. This essay has three objectives: (1) to demonstrate that emergence is relevant to better understanding organizations; (2) to explain why emergence remains underused in management and organization theory (MOT); and (3) to propose practical guidelines to further rely on the concept of emergence.