François Cooren - Böcker

With the growing influence of discursive and narrative perspectives on organizing, organizational scholars are focusing increasing attention on the constitutive role that language and communication play in organizational processes. This view conceptualizes language and communication as bringing organization into being in every instant and is therefore inherently sympathetic to a process perspective. However, our understanding of the role of language in unfolding organizational processes and as a part of organizational action is still limited. This volume brings together empirical and/or conceptual contributions from leading scholars in organization and communication to develop understanding of language and communication as constitutive of work, and also analyze how language and communication actually work to achieve influence in the context of organizations.It aims to elucidate the role language, communication, and narrativity play as part of strategic and institutional work in and around organizational phenomena. In keeping with the preceding volumes in the Perspectives on Process Organization Studies series, this collection demonstrates why we need to start thinking processually and offers a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying these 'works in process' that we call organizations, companies, businesses, institutions, communities, associations, or NGOs.

With the growing influence of discursive and narrative perspectives on organizing, organizational scholars are focusing increasing attention on the constitutive role that language and communication play in organizational processes. This view conceptualizes language and communication as bringing organization into being in every instant and is therefore inherently sympathetic to a process perspective. However, our understanding of the role of language in unfolding organizational processes and as a part of organizational action is still limited. This volume brings together empirical and/or conceptual contributions from leading scholars in organization and communication to develop understanding of language and communication as constitutive of work, and also analyze how language and communication actually work to achieve influence in the context of organizations. It aims to elucidate the role language, communication, and narrativity play as part of strategic and institutional work in and around organizational phenomena. In keeping with the preceding volumes in the Perspectives on Process Organization Studies series, this collection demonstrates why we need to start thinking processually and offers a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying these 'works in process' that we call organizations, companies, businesses, institutions, communities, associations, or NGOs

The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism revolves around a two-part question: "What have work and organization become under contemporary capitalism—and how should organization studies approach them?" Changes in the texture of capitalism, heralded by social and organizational theorists alike, increasingly focus attention on communication as both vital to the conduct of work and as imperative to organizational performance. Yet most accounts of communication in organization studies fail to understand an alternate sense of the "work of communication" in the constitution of organizations, work practices, and economies. This book responds to that lack by portraying communicative practices—as opposed to individuals, interests, technologies, structures, organizations, or institutions—as the focal units of analysis in studies of the social and organizational problems occasioned by contemporary capitalism. Rather than suggesting that there exists a canonically "correct" route communicative analyses must follow, The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism explores the value of transcending longstanding divides between symbolic and material factors in studies of working and organizing. The recognition of dramatic shifts in technological, economic, and political forces, along with deep interconnections among the myriad of factors shaping working and organizing, sows doubts about whether organization studies is up to the vital task of addressing the social problems capitalism now creates. Kuhn, Ashcraft, and Cooren argue that novel insights into those social problems are possible if we tell different stories about working and organizing. To aid authors of those stories, they develop a set of conceptual resources that they capture under the mantle of communicative relationality. These resources allow analysts to profit from burgeoning interest in notions such as sociomateriality, posthumanism, performativity, and affect. It goes on to illustrate the benefits that investigations of work and organization can realize from communicative relationality by presenting case studies that analyze (a) the becoming of an idea, from its inception to solidification, (b) the emergence of what is taken to be the "the product" in high-tech startup entrepreneurship, and (c) the branding of work (in this case, academic writing and commercial aviation) through affective economies. Taken together, the book portrays "the work of communication" as simultaneously about how work in the "new economy" revolves around communicative practice and about how communication serves as a mode of explanation with the potential to cultivate novel stories about working and organizing. Aimed at academics, researchers, and policy makers, this book’s goal is to make tangible the contributions of communication for thinking about contemporary social and organizational problems.

In our daily experiences, we feel, perceive, designate, invoke or comment on a plurality of beings: people, artifacts, technologies, institutions, projects, animals, divinities, emotions, cultures, ideologies or opinions that are part of our world. While these beings are all part of our world, they present various forms of existence. Echoing recent developments in existential anthropology, Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) research, and Actor Network Theory, here scholars from a variety of disciplines discuss how they study the types of beings that have been at the core of their respective research. Reflecting on the specific mode of existence, presence and action of the being they follow, they reveal the methodological innovations they deploy in order to analyze excerpts of field notes, filmed interactions, conversations, pictures, newspapers, narratives, etc.

The field of organisational communication has been rapidly transforming in the wake of the linguistic and discursive turns that have been sweeping across the social sciences since the mid-eighties. These ‘turns’ have prompted organisational communication scholars to look more closely at how they think about communication and its relationship to the organisation and the process of organizing. What has emerged from these reflections is a perspective that proposes communication is not merely something that happens in organisations but is the heart of organizing and therefore actually constitutes the organisation. This perspective, which embraces several sub-threads, is now commonly referred to as the CCO (Communication as Constitutive of Organisation) perspective. This is itself evolving as scholars come to realize that organizing does not just occur at the discursive level. It is inextricably coupled to the material and relational aspects of work – the discourse mutually constitutes relationships between human and non-human bodies that combine to create what we encounter when we participate in organisational life. This book examines the way these three dimensions combine to create organisational outcomes. In doing so, it advances CCO and sociomateriality scholarship and contributes to new ways of thinking about strategy and practice. The series of empirical studies should interest the widely interdisciplinary audience that seeks to understand work, organizing and management. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Communication Research and Practice journal.

Recipient of the '2013 Top Edited Book Award', by the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association (USA) This timely collection addresses central issues in organizational communication theory on the nature of organizing and organization. The unique strength of this volume is its contribution to the conception of materiality, agency, and discourse in current theorizing and research on the constitution of organizations. It addresses such questions as: To what extent should the materiality of texts and artifacts be accounted for in a process view of organization? What part does materiality play in the process by which organizations achieve continuity in time and space? In what sense do artifacts perform a role in human communication and interaction and in the constitution of organization? What are the voices and entities participating in the emergence and stabilization of organizational reality? The work represents scholarship going on in various parts of the world, and features contributions that overcome traditional conceptions of the nature of organizing by addressing in specific ways the difficult issues of the performative character of agency; materiality as the basis of the iterability of communication and continuity of organizations; and discourse as both textuality and interaction. The contributions laid out in this book also pay tribute to the work of the organizational communication theorist James R. Taylor, who developed a view of organization as deeply rooted in communication and language. Contributors extend and challenge Taylor’s communicative view by tackling issues and assumptions left implicit in his work.

Recipient of the '2013 Top Edited Book Award', by the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association (USA) This timely collection addresses central issues in organizational communication theory on the nature of organizing and organization. The unique strength of this volume is its contribution to the conception of materiality, agency, and discourse in current theorizing and research on the constitution of organizations. It addresses such questions as: To what extent should the materiality of texts and artifacts be accounted for in a process view of organization? What part does materiality play in the process by which organizations achieve continuity in time and space? In what sense do artifacts perform a role in human communication and interaction and in the constitution of organization? What are the voices and entities participating in the emergence and stabilization of organizational reality? The work represents scholarship going on in various parts of the world, and features contributions that overcome traditional conceptions of the nature of organizing by addressing in specific ways the difficult issues of the performative character of agency; materiality as the basis of the iterability of communication and continuity of organizations; and discourse as both textuality and interaction. The contributions laid out in this book also pay tribute to the work of the organizational communication theorist James R. Taylor, who developed a view of organization as deeply rooted in communication and language. Contributors extend and challenge Taylor’s communicative view by tackling issues and assumptions left implicit in his work.

How can we study organizations from a discursive perspective? What are the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each perspective on organizational discourse? To what extent do discourse and communication constitute the organizational world? This accessible book addresses these questions by showing how classical organizational themes, objects and questions can be illuminated from various discursive perspectives.Six approaches are presented and explained: semiotics, rhetoric, speech act theory, conversation analysis/ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis. These six perspectives are then mobilized throughout the book to study coordination and organizing, organizational culture and identity, as well as negotiation, decision making and conflicts in the context of meetings.The unifying thread of this volume is the communicative constitutive approach (CCO) to organizations, as implicitly or explicitly advocated by the great majority of organizational discourse analysts and theorists today. Throughout Organizational Discourse, this theme will help readers distinguish between discursive perspectives and other approaches to organizational life, and to understand how discourse matters in organizations.

How can we study organizations from a discursive perspective? What are the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each perspective on organizational discourse? To what extent do discourse and communication constitute the organizational world? This accessible book addresses these questions by showing how classical organizational themes, objects and questions can be illuminated from various discursive perspectives.Six approaches are presented and explained: semiotics, rhetoric, speech act theory, conversation analysis/ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis. These six perspectives are then mobilized throughout the book to study coordination and organizing, organizational culture and identity, as well as negotiation, decision making and conflicts in the context of meetings.The unifying thread of this volume is the communicative constitutive approach (CCO) to organizations, as implicitly or explicitly advocated by the great majority of organizational discourse analysts and theorists today. Throughout Organizational Discourse, this theme will help readers distinguish between discursive perspectives and other approaches to organizational life, and to understand how discourse matters in organizations.

This work provides an exceptional case study, shedding light onto the functioning of an actual corporate board of directors. It presents analysis of a series of corporate management meetings shown in the 1974 documentary film, Corporation: After Mr. Sam. The film chronicles the discussion and communication processes as a company considers how to replace its president, and it serves as a unique opportunity for analysis of real-world organizational discourse. With an impressive list of prominent contributors, Interacting and Organizing: Analyses of a Management Meeting employs the dual perspectives of organizational communication and language and social interaction (LSI) to examine the film. It is arranged around specific topics, analyzed separately by organizational communication and LSI scholars. Editor François Cooren provides an introduction for each topic, and a comparison and synthesis conclude each part. Readers will appreciate the information presented, as it is an arena typically off-limits to outside eyes. The transcript of the film is included as an appendix to the volume.This volume is appropriate for use in advanced courses and seminars in organizational communication, LSI, management, and organizational behavior. With its distinctive approach to studying the film's content, it will be invaluable to scholars, researchers, and graduate students in organizational communication, LSI, and management.

This work provides an exceptional case study, shedding light onto the functioning of an actual corporate board of directors. It presents analysis of a series of corporate management meetings shown in the 1974 documentary film, Corporation: After Mr. Sam. The film chronicles the discussion and communication processes as a company considers how to replace its president, and it serves as a unique opportunity for analysis of real-world organizational discourse. With an impressive list of prominent contributors, Interacting and Organizing: Analyses of a Management Meeting employs the dual perspectives of organizational communication and language and social interaction (LSI) to examine the film. It is arranged around specific topics, analyzed separately by organizational communication and LSI scholars. Editor François Cooren provides an introduction for each topic, and a comparison and synthesis conclude each part. Readers will appreciate the information presented, as it is an arena typically off-limits to outside eyes. The transcript of the film is included as an appendix to the volume.This volume is appropriate for use in advanced courses and seminars in organizational communication, LSI, management, and organizational behavior. With its distinctive approach to studying the film's content, it will be invaluable to scholars, researchers, and graduate students in organizational communication, LSI, and management.

Communication as Organizing unites multiple reflections on the role of language under a single rubric: the organizing role of communication. Stemming from Jim Taylor's earlier work, The Emergent Organization: Communication as Its Site and Surface (LEA, 2000), the volume editors present a communicational answer to the question, "what is an organization?" through contributions from an international set of scholars and researchers. The chapter authors synthesize various lines of research on constituting organizations through communication, describing their explorations of the relation between language, human practice, and the constitution of organizational forms. Each chapter develops a dimension of the central theme, showing how such concepts as agency, identity, sensemaking, narrative and account may be put to work in discursive analysis to develop effective research into organizing processes. The contributions employ concrete examples to show how the theoretical concepts can be employed to develop effective research.This distinctive volume encourages readers to discover and develop a truly communicational means of addressing the question of organization, addressing how organization itself emerges in the course of communicational transactions. In presenting a single and entirely communicational perspective for exploring organizational phenomena, grounded in the discourse of communicational transactions and the establishment of relationships through language, it is required reading for scholars, researchers, and graduate students working in organizational communication, management, social psychology, pragmatics of language, and organizational studies.

Communication as Organizing unites multiple reflections on the role of language under a single rubric: the organizing role of communication. Stemming from Jim Taylor's earlier work, The Emergent Organization: Communication as Its Site and Surface (LEA, 2000), the volume editors present a communicational answer to the question, "what is an organization?" through contributions from an international set of scholars and researchers. The chapter authors synthesize various lines of research on constituting organizations through communication, describing their explorations of the relation between language, human practice, and the constitution of organizational forms. Each chapter develops a dimension of the central theme, showing how such concepts as agency, identity, sensemaking, narrative and account may be put to work in discursive analysis to develop effective research into organizing processes. The contributions employ concrete examples to show how the theoretical concepts can be employed to develop effective research.This distinctive volume encourages readers to discover and develop a truly communicational means of addressing the question of organization, addressing how organization itself emerges in the course of communicational transactions. In presenting a single and entirely communicational perspective for exploring organizational phenomena, grounded in the discourse of communicational transactions and the establishment of relationships through language, it is required reading for scholars, researchers, and graduate students working in organizational communication, management, social psychology, pragmatics of language, and organizational studies.

The field of organisational communication has been rapidly transforming in the wake of the linguistic and discursive turns that have been sweeping across the social sciences since the mid-eighties. These ‘turns’ have prompted organisational communication scholars to look more closely at how they think about communication and its relationship to the organisation and the process of organizing. What has emerged from these reflections is a perspective that proposes communication is not merely something that happens in organisations but is the heart of organizing and therefore actually constitutes the organisation. This perspective, which embraces several sub-threads, is now commonly referred to as the CCO (Communication as Constitutive of Organisation) perspective. This is itself evolving as scholars come to realize that organizing does not just occur at the discursive level. It is inextricably coupled to the material and relational aspects of work – the discourse mutually constitutes relationships between human and non-human bodies that combine to create what we encounter when we participate in organisational life. This book examines the way these three dimensions combine to create organisational outcomes. In doing so, it advances CCO and sociomateriality scholarship and contributes to new ways of thinking about strategy and practice. The series of empirical studies should interest the widely interdisciplinary audience that seeks to understand work, organizing and management. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Communication Research and Practice journal.

Authority and Power in Social Interaction explores methods of analyzing authority and power in the minutiae of interaction. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse international team of organizational communication and language and social interaction scholars, this book suggests reverting the perspective that notions of authority and power constrain human activity, to determine how people (re)create them through conversation and other joint action.Confronting several perspectives within each chapter, the book offers a broad range of approaches to each theme: how and when to bring "context" into the analysis, formal authority, institutions, bodies and materiality, immateriality, and third parties. A core belief of this volume is that authority and power are not looming over human activity; rather, we weave together the constraints that we mutually impose on each other. Observing the details of how this joint process takes place may at once better account for how authority and power emerge and impact our actions, and provide guidelines on how to resist them.This book will be an important reference for students and scholars in language and social interaction, organizational communication, as well as those interested in an alternative take on issues of authority and power. It will also find resonance among those interested in managements studies, public administration and other disciplines interested in situations where authority is a crucial issue.

Authority and Power in Social Interaction explores methods of analyzing authority and power in the minutiae of interaction. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse international team of organizational communication and language and social interaction scholars, this book suggests reverting the perspective that notions of authority and power constrain human activity, to determine how people (re)create them through conversation and other joint action.Confronting several perspectives within each chapter, the book offers a broad range of approaches to each theme: how and when to bring "context" into the analysis, formal authority, institutions, bodies and materiality, immateriality, and third parties. A core belief of this volume is that authority and power are not looming over human activity; rather, we weave together the constraints that we mutually impose on each other. Observing the details of how this joint process takes place may at once better account for how authority and power emerge and impact our actions, and provide guidelines on how to resist them.This book will be an important reference for students and scholars in language and social interaction, organizational communication, as well as those interested in an alternative take on issues of authority and power. It will also find resonance among those interested in managements studies, public administration and other disciplines interested in situations where authority is a crucial issue.

In our daily experiences, we feel, perceive, designate, invoke or comment on a plurality of beings: people, artifacts, technologies, institutions, projects, animals, divinities, emotions, cultures, ideologies or opinions that are part of our world. While these beings are all part of our world, they present various forms of existence. Echoing recent developments in existential anthropology, Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) research, and Actor Network Theory, here scholars from a variety of disciplines discuss how they study the types of beings that have been at the core of their respective research. Reflecting on the specific mode of existence, presence and action of the being they follow, they reveal the methodological innovations they deploy in order to analyze excerpts of field notes, filmed interactions, conversations, pictures, newspapers, narratives, etc.

The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism revolves around a two-part question: "What have work and organization become under contemporary capitalism—and how should organization studies approach them?" Changes in the texture of capitalism, heralded by social and organizational theorists alike, increasingly focus attention on communication as both vital to the conduct of work and as imperative to organizational performance. Yet most accounts of communication in organization studies fail to understand an alternate sense of the "work of communication" in the constitution of organizations, work practices, and economies. This book responds to that lack by portraying communicative practices—as opposed to individuals, interests, technologies, structures, organizations, or institutions—as the focal units of analysis in studies of the social and organizational problems occasioned by contemporary capitalism. Rather than suggesting that there exists a canonically "correct" route communicative analyses must follow, The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism explores the value of transcending longstanding divides between symbolic and material factors in studies of working and organizing. The recognition of dramatic shifts in technological, economic, and political forces, along with deep interconnections among the myriad of factors shaping working and organizing, sows doubts about whether organization studies is up to the vital task of addressing the social problems capitalism now creates. Kuhn, Ashcraft, and Cooren argue that novel insights into those social problems are possible if we tell different stories about working and organizing. To aid authors of those stories, they develop a set of conceptual resources that they capture under the mantle of communicative relationality. These resources allow analysts to profit from burgeoning interest in notions such as sociomateriality, posthumanism, performativity, and affect. It goes on to illustrate the benefits that investigations of work and organization can realize from communicative relationality by presenting case studies that analyze (a) the becoming of an idea, from its inception to solidification, (b) the emergence of what is taken to be the "the product" in high-tech startup entrepreneurship, and (c) the branding of work (in this case, academic writing and commercial aviation) through affective economies. Taken together, the book portrays "the work of communication" as simultaneously about how work in the "new economy" revolves around communicative practice and about how communication serves as a mode of explanation with the potential to cultivate novel stories about working and organizing. Aimed at academics, researchers, and policy makers, this book’s goal is to make tangible the contributions of communication for thinking about contemporary social and organizational problems.

Management communication encompasses a wide range of practices that define modern organizations. Those practices are, in many respects, constituted, formed and contextualized by the use of language. This handbook traces the theoretical modelling of these practices by contemporary research. It explores their linguistic features and performance in specific situations of value creation and in various modes. It is a companion for students and scholars of applied linguistics and organizational communication as well as management and strategy research.

Management communication encompasses a wide range of practices that define modern organizations. Those practices are, in many respects, constituted, formed and contextualized by the use of language. This handbook traces the theoretical modelling of these practices by contemporary research. It explores their linguistic features and performance in specific situations of value creation and in various modes. It is a companion for students and scholars of applied linguistics and organizational communication as well as management and strategy research.