Routledge Studies in Communication, Organization, and Organizing – serie

This book explores the dynamics and challenges that underlie the ability of organizations to speak with one voice. Contributions by experienced and emerging scholars shed light on the nature and regulation of the communication processes whereby the many and diverse voices of a collective can unite, act, and speak as a distinct entity, thus contributing to its organizing. By focusing on communicational events, whether in the context of for-profit and non-profit organizations, political protests or social movements, chapters guide the reader through the diverse manifestations and concrete ways of dealing with the imperative for organizations of all kinds to speak with one voice. In doing so, the book creates bridges between different perspectives with regard to the notion of voice and its significance for the study of organizing; between fields of study; and between theory and empirical research aimed at investigating organizing beyond the boundaries of the formal organization. Offering a thorough and comprehensive investigation of the dynamics between multivocality and univocality in the organizing of various collectives, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of organizational communication, management studies, media studies and rhetorical studies.

Whistleblowing, Communication and Consequences offers the first in-depth analysis of the most publicized, and morally complex, case of whistleblowing in recent European history: the Norwegian national lottery, Norsk Tipping. With contributions from the whistleblower himself, as well as from key voices in the field, this book offers unique perspectives and insights into not only this fascinating case, but into whistleblowing and wrongdoing in organizations more broadly. An international team of scholars use fourteen different theoretical lenses to show the complex and multi-faceted nature of whistleblowing. The book begins with an ethnographic account by the whistleblower story and proceeds into an analysis of the literature and conceptual topics related to that whistleblowing incident to present the lessons that can be learnt from this extreme example of institutional failure.This fascinating, complex, and multi-theoretical book will be of great interest to scholars, students and industry leaders in the areas of public relations, corporate communication, leadership, corporate social responsibility, whistleblowing and organizational resistance.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This Handbook offers state of the art scholarship on the perspective known as the Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO). Offering a unique outlook on how communication accounts for the emergence, change, and continuity of organizations and organizing practices, this Handbook systematically exposes the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of CCO, displays its empirical diversity, and articulates its future trajectory.Placing communication firmly at the centre of the organizational equation, an international team of expert authors covers:The key theoretical inspirations and the main themes of the fieldThe debates that animate the CCO communityCCO’s methodological approachesHow CCO handles classic management themesPractical applicationsOffering a central statement of CCO’s contributions to the fields of organization studies, communication, and management, this Handbook will be of interest to organization studies and communication scholars, faculty, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students, as well as anyone associated with CCO theorizing seeking a comprehensive overview of the theoretical, methodological, and practical tenets of this growing area.Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003224914-7/communicative-constitution-worlda-luhmannian-view-communication-organizations-society-michael-grothe-hammer?context=ubx&refId=6fe411e1-fbed-41c9-8d95-03ca74450c1d

This Handbook offers state of the art scholarship on the perspective known as the Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO). Offering a unique outlook on how communication accounts for the emergence, change, and continuity of organizations and organizing practices, this Handbook systematically exposes the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of CCO, displays its empirical diversity, and articulates its future trajectory.Placing communication firmly at the centre of the organizational equation, an international team of expert authors covers:The key theoretical inspirations and the main themes of the fieldThe debates that animate the CCO communityCCO’s methodological approachesHow CCO handles classic management themesPractical applicationsOffering a central statement of CCO’s contributions to the fields of organization studies, communication, and management, this Handbook will be of interest to organization studies and communication scholars, faculty, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students, as well as anyone associated with CCO theorizing seeking a comprehensive overview of the theoretical, methodological, and practical tenets of this growing area.Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003224914-7/communicative-constitution-worlda-luhmannian-view-communication-organizations-society-michael-grothe-hammer?context=ubx&refId=6fe411e1-fbed-41c9-8d95-03ca74450c1d

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.

Whistleblowing, Communication and Consequences offers the first in-depth analysis of the most publicized, and morally complex, case of whistleblowing in recent European history: the Norwegian national lottery, Norsk Tipping. With contributions from the whistleblower himself, as well as from key voices in the field, this book offers unique perspectives and insights into not only this fascinating case, but into whistleblowing and wrongdoing in organizations more broadly. An international team of scholars use fourteen different theoretical lenses to show the complex and multi-faceted nature of whistleblowing. The book begins with an ethnographic account by the whistleblower story and proceeds into an analysis of the literature and conceptual topics related to that whistleblowing incident to present the lessons that can be learnt from this extreme example of institutional failure.This fascinating, complex, and multi-theoretical book will be of great interest to scholars, students and industry leaders in the areas of public relations, corporate communication, leadership, corporate social responsibility, whistleblowing and organizational resistance.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The book offers an in-depth analysis of the challenges of establishing authority within collaborative efforts. It introduces the concept of cumulative authority, arguing that communicating authority effectively is key to the creation and success of collaborations.Rice uses a communication-as-constitutive of organizations perspective to reconsider organizational authority, typically thought of in terms of leadership, as instead negotiated in communication among collaboration members as they attempt to influence the collaboration’s direction. Drawing from an extensive two-year case study of emergency management collaborations, the book traces potential influences on collaborative authority, including members’ knowledge and expertise, organizational structures and hierarchies, and the material world, including documents, technologies, and the natural environment.This book is a valuable empirical resource for organizational communication and management students and scholars. It will also appeal to community collaborators and organizers, and contains advice and reflection questions for practitioners.

The book offers an in-depth analysis of the challenges of establishing authority within collaborative efforts. It introduces the concept of cumulative authority, arguing that communicating authority effectively is key to the creation and success of collaborations.Rice uses a communication-as-constitutive of organizations perspective to reconsider organizational authority, typically thought of in terms of leadership, as instead negotiated in communication among collaboration members as they attempt to influence the collaboration’s direction. Drawing from an extensive two-year case study of emergency management collaborations, the book traces potential influences on collaborative authority, including members’ knowledge and expertise, organizational structures and hierarchies, and the material world, including documents, technologies, and the natural environment.This book is a valuable empirical resource for organizational communication and management students and scholars. It will also appeal to community collaborators and organizers, and contains advice and reflection questions for practitioners.

This book accounts for the transformation of organizations in a post-bureaucratic era by bringing a communicational lens to the ontological discussion on organization/disorganization, offering a conceptual and methodological toolbox for studying dis/organization as communication.Increasingly, scholars acknowledge that communication is constitutive of organization; because meaning is always indeterminate, communication also (and simultaneously) generates disorganization. The book synthesizes the major theoretical trends and empirical studies in communication that engage with dis/organization. Drawing on dialectics, relational ontologies, critical theory, systems theory, and affect thinking, the first part of the book offers communicational explanations of how dis/organization unfolds. The second part of the book grounds this theoretical reflection, providing empirical studies that mobilize diverse methodological and analytical frameworks (e.g., ethnography, situational, interactional and genre analysis) for studying the practices of dis/organization. Overall, the book exposes organizations (and organizing processes) as significantly messier, irrational (or a-rational), and paradoxical than scholars of organization typically think. It also offers readers the conceptual and methodological tools to understand these complex processes as communication.This book will be essential reading for scholars in organizational communication or management and organization studies, together with senior undergraduate and graduate students studying organizational communication, organizational discourse, discourse analysis (including rhetoric, semiotics, pragmatism, narratology) and courses in management studies. It will also be richly rewarding for organizational consultants, managers and executives.

Performing Organizational Paradoxes takes a constitutive, process approach to organizational paradoxes. It underscores the performative nature of paradox through underlying dialectical tensions, its sociomaterial foundations, and power features that bring paradoxes to life, sustain them, and enable their transformation. The book first situates a constitutive approach in the extant organizational paradox literature, by broadening the constitutive approach and addressing the many debates and inaccuracies around it. For the novice, several early chapters devote themselves to considering how paradoxical tensions present themselves, invite responses, and interrelate through their organizing outcomes. For the advanced, latter chapters consider the ubiquity of power and paradox, how bodies escape the quarantine of their paradox narratives, how inventive category work can resist power-imbued paradoxes, and an agenda for future research that challenges scholars to do more on the process side of paradox.Filling an important gap in the existing literature, this book will be a key resource for scholars and students in the fields of communication, management, educational administration, organizational psychology and any other fields that study organizations.

This book explores the dynamics and challenges that underlie the ability of organizations to speak with one voice. Contributions by experienced and emerging scholars shed light on the nature and regulation of the communication processes whereby the many and diverse voices of a collective can unite, act, and speak as a distinct entity, thus contributing to its organizing. By focusing on communicational events, whether in the context of for-profit and non-profit organizations, political protests or social movements, chapters guide the reader through the diverse manifestations and concrete ways of dealing with the imperative for organizations of all kinds to speak with one voice. In doing so, the book creates bridges between different perspectives with regard to the notion of voice and its significance for the study of organizing; between fields of study; and between theory and empirical research aimed at investigating organizing beyond the boundaries of the formal organization. Offering a thorough and comprehensive investigation of the dynamics between multivocality and univocality in the organizing of various collectives, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of organizational communication, management studies, media studies and rhetorical studies.

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.

This book presents the seven entrepreneurial activities (SEA) model of new organizational constitution, a prescriptive extension of the four flows model tradition of communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) theory.Organizational Constitution in Entrepreneurship explains the SEA model in detail, illustrating it with autobiographical accounts from Deanna Bisel’s years of experience as an entrepreneur. The volume explores how entrepreneurial efforts to create and maintain organizations involve interrelated activities. In doing so, it offers a vision of new organizational creation and maintenance as (a) communicative and material, (b) initiated by value propositions, (c) difficult to achieve, (d) having periods of partiality, (e) being the result of constitutive leadership distributed among members, and (f) dependent upon constitutive momentum generated in organizational learning.This unique volume will be a key reference for students and scholars of organizational communication, management, business studies, entrepreneurship, and communication studies.

This book presents the seven entrepreneurial activities (SEA) model of new organizational constitution, a prescriptive extension of the four flows model tradition of communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) theory.Organizational Constitution in Entrepreneurship explains the SEA model in detail, illustrating it with autobiographical accounts from Deanna Bisel’s years of experience as an entrepreneur. The volume explores how entrepreneurial efforts to create and maintain organizations involve interrelated activities. In doing so, it offers a vision of new organizational creation and maintenance as (a) communicative and material, (b) initiated by value propositions, (c) difficult to achieve, (d) having periods of partiality, (e) being the result of constitutive leadership distributed among members, and (f) dependent upon constitutive momentum generated in organizational learning.This unique volume will be a key reference for students and scholars of organizational communication, management, business studies, entrepreneurship, and communication studies.

Organizing Inclusion brings communication experts together to examine issues of inclusion and exclusion, which have emerged as a major challenge as both society and the workforce become more diverse. Connecting communication theories to diversity and inclusion, and clarifying that inclusion is about the communication processes of organizations, institutions, and communities, the book explores how communication as an organizing phenomenon underlies systemic and institutionalized biases and generates practices that privilege certain groups while excluding or marginalizing others. Bringing a global perspective that transcends particular problems faced by Western cultures, the contributors address issues across sub-disciplines of communication studies, ranging from social and environmental activism to problems of race, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability. With these various perspectives, the chapters go beyond demographic diversity by addressing interaction and structural processes that can be used to promote inclusion. Using these multiple theoretical frameworks, Organizing Inclusion is an intellectual resource for improving theoretical understanding and practical applications that come with ever more diverse people working, coordinating, and engaging one another.The book will be of great relevance to organizational stakeholders, human resource personnel and policy makers, as well as to scholars and students working in the fields of communication, management, and organization studies.

This Routledge Handbook takes a truly global and multidisciplinary approach to exploring all facets of employee communication.Beginning with two key disciplinary approaches—organizational communication and public relations—scholars capture and define employee communication from both perspectives, addressing commonalities and bridging disciplinary differences. This volume places importance on the everyday communicative behaviors by internal members such as leaders, managers, inter/generational cohorts, employees, and those working on behalf of organizations, such as social media influencers, and on expansive conceptualizations of employee communication such as chatbots, environment, and global supply chain members involved in organizing. With a focus on employees in situ, the authors respond to these key questions: in what ways is employee communication relevant today? What does employee communication entail? How, why, and to what extent does employee communication influence or become influenced by organizational processes?Investigating antecedents, organizational contexts and processes, and consequences of employee communication, and offering key theoretical information and empirically driven recommendations for practice, this handbook will be an essential resource for students, researchers, and industry practitioners in employee communication, organizational communication, business and management, leadership communication, and public relations more generally.

Performing Organizational Paradoxes takes a constitutive, process approach to organizational paradoxes. It underscores the performative nature of paradox through underlying dialectical tensions, its sociomaterial foundations, and power features that bring paradoxes to life, sustain them, and enable their transformation. The book first situates a constitutive approach in the extant organizational paradox literature, by broadening the constitutive approach and addressing the many debates and inaccuracies around it. For the novice, several early chapters devote themselves to considering how paradoxical tensions present themselves, invite responses, and interrelate through their organizing outcomes. For the advanced, latter chapters consider the ubiquity of power and paradox, how bodies escape the quarantine of their paradox narratives, how inventive category work can resist power-imbued paradoxes, and an agenda for future research that challenges scholars to do more on the process side of paradox.Filling an important gap in the existing literature, this book will be a key resource for scholars and students in the fields of communication, management, educational administration, organizational psychology and any other fields that study organizations.

With the parallel expansion of both leadership research and the use of ventriloquism within communication studies, this book addresses the lack of connection between the two, arguing that ventriloquial analyses can add significant insights to leadership research and that leadership research can be a fruitful avenue of inquiry.Focusing on the ventriloquial approach to organising originating from the Montreal School, which emphasizes the analyses of “actions through which someone or something makes someone or something else say or do things”, the book offers a new and exciting way of looking at the materiality of leadership. Drawing on ventriloquial analyses of naturally-occurring workplace interaction; interviews with key organisational players; and training sessions about leadership, the author posits that other-than-human actants affect many areas of leadership and organisational communication.Offering fresh insight into leadership practice, this book will be an essential read for scholars and students of organisational communication, leadership, and management.

With the parallel expansion of both leadership research and the use of ventriloquism within communication studies, this book addresses the lack of connection between the two, arguing that ventriloquial analyses can add significant insights to leadership research and that leadership research can be a fruitful avenue of inquiry.Focusing on the ventriloquial approach to organising originating from the Montreal School, which emphasizes the analyses of “actions through which someone or something makes someone or something else say or do things”, the book offers a new and exciting way of looking at the materiality of leadership. Drawing on ventriloquial analyses of naturally-occurring workplace interaction; interviews with key organisational players; and training sessions about leadership, the author posits that other-than-human actants affect many areas of leadership and organisational communication.Offering fresh insight into leadership practice, this book will be an essential read for scholars and students of organisational communication, leadership, and management.

Communicative Property explores the concept of property from a communicative, rather than economic and legal, perspective.As a point of departure, the book engages with both organizational studies and social theory to point out that economic and legal views of property have dominated conversations over the notion since Marx. The author argues that the role of property in shaping organizations and configuring work relationships is poorly understood, as property being traditionally defined exclusively through an economic and legal lens fails to account for the diversity of ways in which it is expressed every day within and around organizations. Revealing property’s organizing power, the author suggests, requires adopting a communicative lens to property, situating it in the daily interactions through which organizations are created, changed, and undone.Firmly positioning capitalism as a communication phenomenon, this book will be of relevance to scholars looking for an observable and actionable entry point to formulate a critique of capitalism, by offering them a communicative approach to one of its main mechanisms: property.

Communicating in the Face of Global Crises explores the complex ways organizations and their strategic practices are communicatively constituted in relation to the ethical expectations of global publics.Positioning organizational strategies as communicative accomplishments, an international team of authors redirect attention to the important role of communication in constituting responses to global crises and to the ways global crises are themselves contested and embedded in conflicting discourses about their nature and resolution. Bringing an important and much needed communicative orientation to the exploration of global crises, the book provides valuable guidance for understanding and addressing today’s most pressing issues facing our global communities.This cohesive volume uniquely bridges the theoretical traditions of strategic communication and the communicative constitution of organization. It will interest researchers and postgraduate students exploring the intersection of organizational communication and global crises.

Organizing Inclusion brings communication experts together to examine issues of inclusion and exclusion, which have emerged as a major challenge as both society and the workforce become more diverse. Connecting communication theories to diversity and inclusion, and clarifying that inclusion is about the communication processes of organizations, institutions, and communities, the book explores how communication as an organizing phenomenon underlies systemic and institutionalized biases and generates practices that privilege certain groups while excluding or marginalizing others. Bringing a global perspective that transcends particular problems faced by Western cultures, the contributors address issues across sub-disciplines of communication studies, ranging from social and environmental activism to problems of race, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability. With these various perspectives, the chapters go beyond demographic diversity by addressing interaction and structural processes that can be used to promote inclusion. Using these multiple theoretical frameworks, Organizing Inclusion is an intellectual resource for improving theoretical understanding and practical applications that come with ever more diverse people working, coordinating, and engaging one another.The book will be of great relevance to organizational stakeholders, human resource personnel and policy makers, as well as to scholars and students working in the fields of communication, management, and organization studies.

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.

This book accounts for the transformation of organizations in a post-bureaucratic era by bringing a communicational lens to the ontological discussion on organization/disorganization, offering a conceptual and methodological toolbox for studying dis/organization as communication.Increasingly, scholars acknowledge that communication is constitutive of organization; because meaning is always indeterminate, communication also (and simultaneously) generates disorganization. The book synthesizes the major theoretical trends and empirical studies in communication that engage with dis/organization. Drawing on dialectics, relational ontologies, critical theory, systems theory, and affect thinking, the first part of the book offers communicational explanations of how dis/organization unfolds. The second part of the book grounds this theoretical reflection, providing empirical studies that mobilize diverse methodological and analytical frameworks (e.g., ethnography, situational, interactional and genre analysis) for studying the practices of dis/organization. Overall, the book exposes organizations (and organizing processes) as significantly messier, irrational (or a-rational), and paradoxical than scholars of organization typically think. It also offers readers the conceptual and methodological tools to understand these complex processes as communication.This book will be essential reading for scholars in organizational communication or management and organization studies, together with senior undergraduate and graduate students studying organizational communication, organizational discourse, discourse analysis (including rhetoric, semiotics, pragmatism, narratology) and courses in management studies. It will also be richly rewarding for organizational consultants, managers and executives.