Organizational Black Hole Theory

Abstract

There are issues in organizations that require new theoretical formulation. Hence, metaphorical theorizing is used in the study of organizations to interpret them and understand their complexities. In this method, the organization is likened to an entity and one of the key features of that entity is generalized to the organization. It should be borne in mind that most organizational theories are based on a positivist paradigm that focuses on knowledge and data in an attempt to discover the nomothetic of social systems. This article is an attempt to build a theory based on interpretive paradigm that puts the organizational black hole theory forward in a metaphorical way. The black hole theory of the organization has been adopted from the cosmic black hole metaphor. In the first step, the key features of the organizational black hole were summarized in accordance with the researcher's interpretation, taking into account the one-on-one correspondence and adopting the cosmic black hole characteristics. In the second step, the definition of the organizational black hole was presented based on key features, and in the third step the overall framework of the theory was formulated. In addition, by analyzing the characteristics of the organizational black hole theory, it was found that this theory falls under the interpretative paradigm. Finally, how one can test the theory in terms of falsifiability or utility is discussed.

Keywords

• organizational black hole
• theory building
• metaphor
• positivist paradigm
• interpretive paradigm.