p.173 This paper argues that engaging with reality as becoming implies departing from any claims of 'essence' in theories... mobility, movement and creativity are the primordial qualities of theory... This paper argues that a processual approach which is reposed on introspective reality and the method of intuition is better suited to revealing a becoming reality.

p.173 'categories and things may make it easier for us to grasp reality but they also hide its underlying complexities' (Cooper 2005: 1689)

p.174 intuition, in the Bergsonian sense, is a precise method to deepen and enhance our understanding of reality as movement.

p.174 Heraclitus offers a generalized way of thinking that engages with movement and becoming.
 In this paper I articulate an approach that emphasizes theory and theory-building as non-sequential, dynamic and creative... I argue for a processual approach that puts us 'on the way to theory' by drawing upon the recent turn to process, relationality and 'withness' thinking (Chia 1996; Cooper 2005; Shotter 2006). The aim of this philosophical way is to provoke a deeper and enhanced understanding of reality.

p.175 Weick (1979), drawing on Thorngate (1976), argues that it is useful to think about theory as involving a trade-off between accuracy, generalizability and simplicity. He argues that, at most, theories achieve two of the three dimensions... The three dimensions of a good theory, by definition, are incompatible. Hence, the trade-offs are not surprising.

p.176 rather than 'put into question what concepts can represent', it is possible to think about concepts as becoming (Deleuze 1990; Chia 1996; Linstead and Thanem 2007). This implies departing from any claims of 'essence' in theories. Instead, theories are a way of intuiting becoming and 'thinking beyond'.

p.178-179 The indivisibility of duration points toward reality as always becoming. Hence, reality is not only indivisible, it is a never-to-be-completed process... In order to understand the non-representational, hidden and latent nature of reality, Bergson argues for intuition, which he defines as 'the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible' (Bergson 1955: 23-24)... for James as for Bergson and Cooper, the nature of reality is beyond representation.

p.181 'To think intuitively is to think in duration... For intuition the essential is change...' (Bergson 2002: 34-35)

p.181 The method of intuition is aimed at knowing our continuous, imageless, heterogeneous and 'objective' reality... Although our normative understanding of intuition is one of vague feeling or incommunicable experience, the method of intuition in the Bergsonian sense is the only method for understanding reality... To think intuitively in the Bergsonian sense is to avoid thinking in terms of the immobile and think in duration.
 Intuition as a method involves three distinct acts (Deleuze 1991). First, intuition concerns the stating and creating of problems; second, the discovery of genuine differences in kind; third, the apprehension of duration.

p.182 The way intuition moves thought 'beyond' representations is through dualisms [JLJ - perhaps a gestalt]. Moreover, thought can only move 'beyond' dualisms in the activity of their construction. These dualisms are not the outcome but a method of division that articulates differences in kind. Hence, the second task is to construct dualisms that divide representations into tendencies or becomings that reveal differences in kind.

p.182 The final act of intuition is to reveal the experience of duration. Intuition presupposes duration. For Bergson and Deleuze there are no differences in kind, apart from duration. Hence, duration makes it possible to reveal differences in kind through the act of division.

p.183 I argue that understanding reality through intuition implies that theories enable us to 'think beyond', which gets us on the way to theorizing.

p.184 'withness-thinking' aims to relate to the world-at-hand and become aware of the 'action guiding calls' that we need to 'go on' and deal with the world.

p.184 As Cooper states:

'The work of process has no specific goal or end but is simply the regeneration of itself as pure action...' (Cooper 2007:)

p.184-185 Weick (1995) argues that 'products of the theorizing process seldom emerge as full-blown theories, which means that most of what passes for theory in organizational studies consists of approximations' (Weick 1995: 385)... These approximations represent 'interim struggles in which people intentionally inch towards stronger theories' (Weick 1995: 385). Weick argues that, given the interim approximations, we should think about theory as lying on a continuum from guesses to a strong theory

p.185 Weick argues that the selection criterion used by theorists to retain conjectures is one of 'plausibility'.

p.186 Interest, obviousness, connections, believability, beauty and reality underpinned by the power of negation ground the speculative flight of intuition... The notion of mobility, movement and change are the primordial qualities of processual theory... the method of intuition is precisely that which enables the development of processual theory. Without this method of intuition, it would not be possible to systematically engage in constructing such theories.

p.187 I have argued that philosophical intuition is the only method to gain access to a becoming reality, one that is continuous, imageless, heterogeneous and 'objective'... Processual theory does not synthesize something that has been or that is. Instead, it announces what will be and provokes our attention to what it is going to be.

p.188 A becoming approach to organizational change and strategy process has gained prominence in recent years... these contributions underline the importance of understanding change and process as continuous and recognizing that stable patterns, organization and identity are attempts to order, translate and author a becoming reality... These contributions draw on practice theories, ethnographic studies and 'thick descriptions' to show how 'practices mediate forms of cultural and historical determinations and display opportunities for agency and improvisation' (Carlsen 2006: 134). In other words, these contributions recast organizational change and strategy in terms of absorbed coping with practices and understanding stability and identity as intimations of tendencies towards becoming... In other words, practices not only display opportunities for agency and improvisation, they also have propensities and directionality and are always in the process of becoming.