Bridging Paradigms? A Historical Organization Studies Approach to Project-Oriented Agency and Regeneration

This commentary examines Lenfle and Söderlund's exploration of how socio-technical transition unfolded in the complex context of numerical weather prediction, facilitating the transition to a more accurate means of forecasting the weather, utilising data from multiple satellites. Unusually in project management, the authors take an approach consistent with historical organisation studies, research that draws extensively on historical data, methods, and knowledge while developing theory to explain innovations within their sociohistorical context. In doing so, Lenfle and Söderlund deploy two theoretical constructs, ‘reverse salient’ and ‘landscape pressure’, to demonstrate how systemic change was impeded but never entirely blocked, making for a ‘quiet revolution’ in weather forecasting made possible by cooperation between multiple actors. In this, there are parallels to the contested development of historical organisation studies itself, which has experienced episodes of disciplinary ‘turf war’ between those who prefer not to change and those who appreciate the value of doing so.