In organizational theories inspired by process ontologies of Spinoza, Bergson, or Deleuze, an organization only seems to be the effect of ontological forces and therefore exist only retroacti vely and derivatively. Simply put, process ontologies tend to overemphasize the virtual, active ontological forces of becoming in organizations. These assumptions cause the negative and reactive understanding of organizational processes: organizations oppress, restrict, adjust, and regulate becoming. In this perspective, organizations are defective, inadequate, and politically reactionary. They are the negative antitype of the positive, productive, and creative ontological forces. In this article, I situate the problem of organizations and becoming using the concept of “virtualization.” For Deleuze, actualization is the expression of the virtual, resulting in the actual state of affairs, but once the state of affairs is actualized, there is a modulation or reciprocal folding, which affects the virtual; I suggest calling this “virtualization.” Thus, each actualiza tion in the social dimension – each founding of an organization – modulates the ontological conditions of future organizational events. This means that Deleuze provides not only a theory of organizational becoming but also a theory of virtualization – or the modulation of becoming – of organizations. The concept of virtualization is illustrated by drawing on organizational case studies, which have implications for the understanding of virtualization. Virtualization is a process of patterning, a (de)potentialization, but also a de- and reterritorialization. Primarily understood as virtualization, organization is a meta-stable process.

The application of the rhizome to the study of organization is examined. A use of the rhizome which reflects its expansive and ephemeral nature, rather than one which forecloses its conceptual possibilities, is promoted. This nature is examined in relation to its development from Deleuzian concepts of desire and virtuality. Examples of the use of the rhizome in the study of organization are analyzed for the conceptual potential that they offer and critiqued where they close off this potential. It is suggested that an interplay – between the use and appropriation of the rhizome in the study of organization and the building of rhizomatic ontologies of flow – is desirable for maintaining the rhizome as an open and useful concept.

Recent theories of technology have argued that in order to take constructivism seriously we need to understand technologies as organizational texts, replacing the study of technological artefacts with an appreciation of the ways in which these ‘texts’ are read, or interpreted, in specific situations. Whilst such approaches offer an effective critique of determinism in explanations of technological change, they also raise some interesting questions around the nature of the human subject which have been given a less comprehensive treatment in the literature. This paper contributes to the development of a thoroughgoing antiessentialism in theories of technology and organization by considering Deleuze and Guattari’s radical constructionist critique of the subject. Placing the technocentric metaphor of ‘the machine’ at the heart of subjectivization, Deleuze and Guattari’s decentring of the human subject offers a fully symmetrical anti-essentialism, capable of accounting for the non-human forces at work in the constitution of human subjectivity.

The aim of this article is to propose a narrative (syntagmatic) theory of how a meeting between spirituality and organizing can occur. The theory is composed of fictive stories collected by me from various authors. It takes the form of another story, a kind of meta-story, authored by me. I look upon spirituality as awareness, and I associate it with smooth space in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1996) terminology. Organizing is to me an ongoing process, both based on and enabling communication, and I link it to more striated space. Authors were asked to think about a meeting between those spaces represented by minimal symbols and compose a story. I have organized the narratives according to their main plot and storyline into stories of clash, enclosure, merger, and experience. In the first the spaces conflict; in the second, one turns of to be part of the other; in the third they unite in another space; and in the last they co-construct a novel understanding. I then discuss the plots, the outcomes of the plots, and how the plots work to produce the outcome. Finally, I explore the symbolism of the encounter between spirituality and organizing, looking for possibilities of greater understanding and inspiration.

In this essay, I will look closer at the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who committed suicide in 1995. I will scrutinize his death in concordance with his philosophical thoughts, but frame my gaze within Albert Camus’ well-known openingquestion from The Myth of Sisyphus: “Judging whether life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy” (Camus, 2005:1).

Contemporary organizations feature absence of boundaries and are increasingly defined by loose couplings, pluri-vocality and network configurations. What Foucault (1995) addressed as a former society of discipline is transformed and replaced into what Deleuze (1995) refines as a society of control that incorporates its subjects into new and ever changing lines of subjectification. This transformation of dispositifs (Deleuze, 1992; Foucault, 1980) and authoritative discourses (Bakhtin, 1982) that compose (and is composed of) a contemporary way of living induces in other words new types of embodied organizational knowledge and ways of organizing, which have consequences for how subject positions are (re)configured in everyday corporate lives. Such identity work is rarely studied in local discursive practices of today’s modern and emergent corporations. The aspiration in the present article is to scrutinize local practices in a dialogue based leadership development forum in university settings. This provides insights into the lived lives and identity work in Aalborg University representing a temporary, polyphonic and cross-disciplinary research project in a modern corporation. The project was an example of a loose-coupled and temporary arrangement/organization that invited a diverse group of participants to engage in the co-production of knowledge in/on leadership communicative practices. The participants were professional leaders from diverse organizations in the North of Jutland together with researchers and candidate students from the study programs of communication and philosophy at Aalborg University.

This paper explores the concept of dominance in traditional rural and remote island communities in the Zadar island archipelago in Croatia. Like their EU counterparts, these communities struggle with geographical remoteness; island depopulation, irregular ferry connections, lack of entrepreneurship, unemployment and poverty. A previous study captured a complex web of communal relationships that play a part in minimising these negative effects on the island communities’ lives. This study focuses on studying one such behaviour - dominance and, thus, is concerned with two questions: How does dominance reveals itself, and what is its significance in practice? A conceptual and methodological approach consisting of living acts in Roman Ingarden’s spirit, ethnography, deconstruction and storytelling becomes a tool for observing the rural island communities’ experiences. In the process, the approach undergoes a qualitative metamorphosis – it co-exists and co evolves so to help us to better understand how island life unfolds. Findings show that dominance reveals itself as rada, signifying the approach of bonding the members into theisland community. Rada in this sense symbolizes Deleuze’s weapon against the governmental economisation. To engage and support the needs of the island communities, it is vital to understand how they make informal decisions, and studying local communal practices in this sense, has practical implications for the policy makers with the responsibility for small island development.

This paper proposes an alternative approach towards ethical leadership. Recent research tells us that socioeconomic and cultural differences affect moral intuition, making it difficult to locate a guiding organizational principle. Nevertheless, in this paper I attempt to open an alternative path towards an ethics that might serve as a guide for leaders – especially leaders who are leading a highly professionalized workforce. Using the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño and the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as points of reference, I develop an ethical form of leadership that is based on a continuous ‘poetic’ dialogue between creation and affirmation. The nature of this dialogue requires a leadership approach that plays both a courageous and imaginative role in liberating its workforce. Last, I develop a frame which provides the constituent principles of leading in the direction of an ethical organization.