Organizational Paths: History, Process and Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority

Taking issue with the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organizational theorizing, and following calls for ‘building path-oriented organization research on a rigorous path theory’ (Sydow, Schreyögg and Koch, 2005: 2), I argue for knowing the organizational as an ongoing process. Through the contributions of path dependence theory, and with Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) as empirical focus, this paper will also seek to address: the historicity and evolution of the organizational; the role of initial, external conditions on the emergence and subsequent development of the organizational; the dynamics of path building and the development of path dependency; and processes and process patterns that are likely to vary historical persistencies or unlock path dependencies, e.g., path-breaking events.