An Interview with Robert Chia: Talking about Practice Theory and Social Change

Abstract

Studies of organisational change often treat stability as the norm and change as something that happens to otherwise settled entities. Robert Chia challenges this view, starting with the claim that change is continuous, pervasive, and prior to the temporary stabilisations we call organisations or structures. Drawing on Bergson, Whitehead, James, Bourdieu, and Dreyfus, Robert develops a processual account in which practices emerge through situated coping and responsiveness rather than through moments of deliberate intervention in otherwise stable systems. In discussing this approach, our interview with Robert ranges across questions of agency, purpose, environment, materiality, and the distinction between ‘owned’ and ‘unowned’ change. We consider what it means to understand structures as ossified practices, how practitioners respond to unfolding situations, and how an emphasis on process reframes familiar debates about intentionality, stability, and transformation.