Markus A. Höllerer - Böcker

This edited volume brings together two largely separate fields – organization studies and multimodal social semiotics – to develop an integrated research agenda for the novel interdisciplinary field of ‘organizational semiotics’. Organizations, whether for profit, non-profit, or governmental, dominate much of everyday life, and multimodal communication is not only an output of organizations, but is also constitutive of them. This volume argues in particular for the importance of organization studies for social semioticians – not just as a site of application, but also as a critical contemporary context that requires novel and expanded methods of analysis and critique, and new practices of partnership. The volume addresses a range of institutions and sectors, from civil to retail to medical, from corporations to universities, and reveals how a deep engagement with their meaning-making practices produces insights not just about communication but also about the broader contemporary cultural context in which organizations play such a significant role. Fundamentally, it reveals that the rich analytical and theoretical resources of multimodal perspectives on organizations studies can – and should – make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of organizations in social life.This volume is relevant to social semioticians and organizational researchers as well as to practitioners and decision-makers in organizations.

Global Themes and Local Variations in Organization and Management: Perspectives on Glocalization offers a broad exposition of the relations between the global and the local with regard to organizational and managerial ideas, practices, and forms. This edited volume forges ahead to capture the complexity of modern management and organization that results from the processes of glocalization. Universality is among the core underlying principles of the management of organizations, as well as of organization and management science itself. Yet, reality reveals enormous variation across social and cultural contexts. For instance, multinational corporations must adjust their management practices to adhere to national regulation and local standards; manufacturers and service providers routinely tailor their products to suit the local preferences of consumers; and non-profit organizations amend their advocacy agenda to appeal to local sentiments. The work assembled here goes beyond merely describing such patterns of variation and adaptation in organization and management; research and commentary engage directly with the tensions between homogeneity and heterogeneity, convergence and divergence, global and local. With contributions from leading scholars in the field of comparative organization studies, this collection offers a substantive contribution to the investigation of organization and management, as well as providing a valuable resource for students of organization studies, international business, and sociology.

Global Themes and Local Variations in Organization and Management: Perspectives on Glocalization offers a broad exposition of the relations between the global and the local with regard to organizational and managerial ideas, practices, and forms. This edited volume forges ahead to capture the complexity of modern management and organization that results from the processes of glocalization. Universality is among the core underlying principles of the management of organizations, as well as of organization and management science itself. Yet, reality reveals enormous variation across social and cultural contexts. For instance, multinational corporations must adjust their management practices to adhere to national regulation and local standards; manufacturers and service providers routinely tailor their products to suit the local preferences of consumers; and non-profit organizations amend their advocacy agenda to appeal to local sentiments. The work assembled here goes beyond merely describing such patterns of variation and adaptation in organization and management; research and commentary engage directly with the tensions between homogeneity and heterogeneity, convergence and divergence, global and local. With contributions from leading scholars in the field of comparative organization studies, this collection offers a substantive contribution to the investigation of organization and management, as well as providing a valuable resource for students of organization studies, international business, and sociology.

This edited volume brings together two largely separate fields – organization studies and multimodal social semiotics – to develop an integrated research agenda for the novel interdisciplinary field of ‘organizational semiotics’. Organizations, whether for profit, non-profit, or governmental, dominate much of everyday life, and multimodal communication is not only an output of organizations, but is also constitutive of them. This volume argues in particular for the importance of organization studies for social semioticians – not just as a site of application, but also as a critical contemporary context that requires novel and expanded methods of analysis and critique, and new practices of partnership. The volume addresses a range of institutions and sectors, from civil to retail to medical, from corporations to universities, and reveals how a deep engagement with their meaning-making practices produces insights not just about communication but also about the broader contemporary cultural context in which organizations play such a significant role. Fundamentally, it reveals that the rich analytical and theoretical resources of multimodal perspectives on organizations studies can – and should – make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of organizations in social life.This volume is relevant to social semioticians and organizational researchers as well as to practitioners and decision-makers in organizations.

The insight that institutions, and the communicative practices that create, sustain, and challenge them, are multimodal accomplishments has garnered increasing attention from scholars in organization and management research over the last decade. Traditional understanding of social knowledge and meaning as being constituted primarily through verbal discourse has been challenged and extended by work that has promoted the centrality of visual, material, and other sign systems (e.g., audio, gestures, layout) for constructing social reality. While some discursive approaches to organizations and institutions have acknowledged the existence and relevance of modes other than the verbal for some time, systematic research on multimodality has remained rather sparse. In particular, the interaction and orchestration of multiple modes remains terra incognita with considerable empirical, methodological, and theoretical stakes. Together, 54A and 54B of Research in the Sociology of Organizations investigate these issues with innovative research that focuses on the relationship between different modes in the emergence, diffusion, maintenance, and challenge of social meanings and institutions. Individual contributions demonstrate the potential of multimodal approaches to rejuvenate and extend the study of institutions, they revisit research on classic phenomena in organization theory through a multimodal lens, and advance the design of relevant and rigorous methods of analysis for the study of multimodal communicative practices.