Abstract
This study examines the relationship among meanings, actions and identities in Karl Weick’s organizing theory based on empirical conversation analysis of dialysis treatment. The organizing theory suffers from the ambiguity in the role actions play; based largely on the assumed separation of subject and object and then leading to the separation of action and meaning, which is created only retrospectively. As a result, the theory imposes its own criteria in describing actions as enactment, selection and retention and ends up retaining the concept of organization as noun, which this theory set out to “stamp out.” The analysis first shows that the enactment that brackets “ecological change” is an accomplished matter through interactions in which categories are employed. Second, through the use of these categories, identities of patients and nurses are presented. Therefore, identity manifests itself in enactment rather than retrospectively in retention. Third, a meaning given to the enacted ecological change through selection is not retrospective construction but achieved within interactions themselves. The meaning is given to an action only through that very action in a reflexive manner. This renewed understanding of organizing helps clarifies the role of actions in organizing. Actions are not made possible by organizing that is done somewhere else; each action organizes itself reflexively. Through this reflexivity we can eliminate organization as noun and theorize organizing as verb.
