Epistemic uncertainty: How preprints can reconfigure organizational theorizing

Due to the structural transformation of the scientific public sphere, organizational researchers now frequently come into contact with preprints—scholarly texts that are intended for peer review but have not yet been submitted for or completed this evaluation process. Although reflexive organizational research has long been interested in the relationships between scholarly media and practices of theorizing, preprints have thus far been dismissed as a media genre that is not relevant for these activities. We challenge this view by showing that preprints can be highly relevant for theorizing because they possess the unique property of epistemic uncertainty. When researchers encounter a preprint, they cannot infer from the media genre itself whether or not their peers would consider the content of this specific preprint to be a legitimate contribution to theoretical debates. Using three core activities of organizational researchers—conceptualizing, grant writing, and reviewing—as illustrative examples, we show that how preprints reconfigure these practices of theorizing depends on whether researchers consider epistemic uncertainty as a threat or a resource. Thus, being sensitive to the generative potential of incomplete scholarly media contributes to our understanding of how theorizing changes in digitally networked environments. Finally, we discuss new challenges for organizational researchers when their preprints are encountered not only by their peers but also by audiences outside of academia.