Process philosophy: Organizing mentalities for glimpsing pharmacy practice ‘in flight’

Summary There are increasing calls for the development of innovative research methods in pharmacy practice.1,2 This commentary seeks to illuminate pathways for ‘thinking differently’ about research approaches for pharmacy practice and social pharmacy by leaning on theoretical advances made in Organization and Management Science (OMS). In particular, the perspective of ‘practical rationality’,3 derived from a process philosophical world-view, is highlighted as a truly alternative framework for designing and enacting productive social research. To deliver practically rational findings, it is suggested “prior organization of mentalities and modes of thought”4 is required. Process philosophy, which has pre-Socratic beginnings,5 provides a comprehensive and unified perspective of reality, its character, and how we might understand ourselves in that reality. Process philosophy permits scope for exploring a variety of phenomena of the lived experience.6 Congruent methodologies can enable development of research processes and outcomes that capture a logic of pharmacy practice that more closely reflects practitioners’ experience of that practice, thus narrowing the gap between theory and practice. Outcomes can provide a different and more complex ‘system of picturing’ phenomena and objects of study than more normative rationalistic, reductionist, quantitative approaches.7 Findings can reveal how patterned unfolding processes and practices interrelate and come together to produce some aspect of human life or work, providing new opportunities for intervention. The perspective also invites the re-focusing of qualitative approaches that eschew reductionism, toward concepts and processes that precede and indeed constitute the individualized person/agent/organization.8 The process philosophical perspective does not seek to compete with other paradigmatic approaches. Rather, it can deliver a radically different and complementary perspective, giving rise to new streams of inquiry that potentially deliver novel and insightful explanatory forms.4,9 It provides the opportunity for pharmacy practice research that may be able “to catch reality in flight”.10