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1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing”Organizational Communication

Karen Lee Ashcraft , Timothy R. Kuhn & François Cooren

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1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication, The Academyof Management Annals, 3:1, 1-64, DOI: 10.1080/19416520903047186

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The Academy of Management Annals

Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, 1–64

1

ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online

© 2009 Academy of Management

DOI: 10.1080/19416520903047186

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1

Constitutional Amendments:

“Materializing” Organizational Communication

KAREN LEE ASHCRAFT

*

Department of Communication, University of Utah

TIMOTHY R. KUHN

University of Colorado at Boulder

FRANÇOIS COOREN

Département de Communication, Université de Montréal

Taylor and FrancisRAMA_A_404891.sgm10.1080/19416520903047186Academy of Management Annals1941-6520 (print)/1941-6067(online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis310000002009

Abstract

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses.

First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for

North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagementbecome common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major

contribution thus far: the communication-as-constitutive principle, which

highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational

life, such as culture, power, networks, and the structure–agency relation.

Second, we argue that this promising contribution cannot easily find traction

in management studies until it becomes “materialized” in another sense: that

*

Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

D o w n l o a d e d b y [ S t a t s b i b l i o t e k e t T i d s s k r i f t a f d e l i n g ] a t 1 0 : 5 2 2 6 F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 6



2

• The Academy of Management Annals

is, accountable to the materiality evident in organizational objects, sites, and

bodies. By synthesizing current moves in this direction, we establish the basis

for sustained exchange between management studies and the communication-

as-constitutive model. Third, we demonstrate how these conceptual develop-ments can “materialize” in empirical study, proposing three streams of

research designed to examine communication as a central organizing process

that manages the intersection of symbolic and material worlds.

Most people are practiced—if not always skilled—in communication, but few

see it as an explanatory lens on organizational life. Acknowledging the latter,

this essay is an effort to translate and facilitate interdisciplinary relations. We

seek, first, to enhance familiarity

: to decipher the field of organizational

communication studies such that it becomes recognizable to a North Ameri-can audience of management scholars. Second, we aim to assist interaction

: to

stimulate productive and sustainable exchange around common concerns. We

argue that the development of constitutive models of communication—based

on the premise that communication generates, not merely expresses, key

organizational realities—is among the most significant contributions of orga-

nizational communication studies. However, this development has had

limited impact in management studies, not only due to disciplinary isolation,

but also because constitutive models have thus far stressed symbolic overmaterial aspects of organization. This essay redresses both problems, bridging

the disciplinary divide and holding constitutive models accountable to the

materiality of organizing. We thus integrate current work to refashion consti-

tutive models in a way that invites management and communication scholars

to a common conversation.

These claims unfold in four steps: (1) we begin by introducing communi-

cation as an academic discipline and distinguishing organizational communi-

cation studies from similar-sounding enterprises; (2) next, we track the field’s

distinguishing principle—a constitutive view of communication—as it hasevolved across studies of phenomena in which management scholars share

interest: culture, power, networks, and the structure–agency relation; (3) we

then demonstrate how emerging work on organizational materiality—specifi-

cally, objects, sites, and bodies—enhances the significance of the constitutive

perspective for management studies; (4) finally, we propose three concrete

streams of research that exemplify fruitful collaboration between communica-

tion and management studies. The essay thus “materializes” organizational

communication in three ways: rendering it more accessible, more responsive

to the materiality of organizing, and more tangible for future investigation.

The Constitutive Principle in Organizational Communication Studies

Although communication has become a ubiquitous term of interest among

scholars and practitioners, the academic discipline devoted to its study




Constitutional Amendments •

3

remains relatively unknown. For many management scholars, the field of

communication studies and its shared concern with organizational life simply

fails to register. Because our first goal is to render communication studies

perceptible to this audience, we begin by sketching the basic contours of thediscipline.

Introduction to Communication Studies

Communication is a field of inquiry with strong North American roots. In

most US universities, communication departments are housed in Colleges of

Social Sciences or Humanities, although several Schools of Communication

have emerged in recent years. Arguably, the latter development reflects a

waning demarcation between “Mass Communication” (e.g., media studies,

journalism, broadcasting, public relations) and “Speech” or “HumanCommunication” (e.g., rhetorical, interpersonal, group, organizational, and

instructional) studies. Nevertheless, the demarcation persists in both disci-

plinary conversations and institutional configurations, such as separate

professional associations and Schools of Journalism and Mass Communica-

tion divided from Departments of Communication Studies.

Because organizational communication scholarship stems from the lat-

ter—that is, the “Speech” or “Human” tradition—our depiction admittedly

stresses that side of the discipline. For such scholars, the National Communi-cation Association (NCA) is the primary professional body, complemented by

several regional associations (e.g., Western States, Southern States) and affili-

ated with the International Communication Association (ICA). Top publica-

tion outlets include Communication Monographs, Communication Theory,

Communication Yearbook, Human Communication Research, Journal of

Applied Communication Research, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communica-

tion and Critical/Cultural Studies

, and Text & Performance Quarterly

. Organi-

zation studies appear across these journals, albeit more often in the first half

of the list, as well as in other international and interdisciplinary outlets to beidentified shortly.

By insiders and outsiders alike, the communication discipline is typically

characterized as an eclectic and interdisciplinary field. It reflects a fusion of

social scientific

and humanistic

perspectives. Conventional social scientific

approaches—and their customary emphasis on empirical validation through

quantitative methods—came to the field through interpersonal communica-

tion research and its strong ties to cognitive and social psychology. Humanistic

approaches—and their attendant concern with textual interpretation and crit-

icism—infused the discipline through the study of rhetoric, which grew out of

links to English and related hermeneutic traditions. No longer rivals or indif-

ferent neighbors, social scientific and humanistic approaches have merged

over the years, breeding fruitful hybrids of communication theory and

research. Organizational communication scholarship illustrates one such




4


fusion, as we elaborate momentarily. For now, we stress this point: Communi-

cation studies is an academic discipline that hosts dialogue among diverse

conceptions of communication as a social practice, toward the development of

communicational explanations

(a term we employ throughout the essay tosignify communication-based accounts of organizing) that provide useful

alternatives to other sorts of disciplinary (e.g., psychological, sociological)

accounts (Craig, 1999; Deetz, 1994).

Its North American roots notwithstanding, communication scholarship

reflects the strong influence of continental and critical philosophies as well.

The discipline is indelibly shaped by the so-called linguistic turn

in social the-

ory, which identified language as a basic ontological condition, in that it is

actively involved in the production

rather than mere reflection

of social reali-

ties (Rorty, 1967). Out of this intellectual movement grew an overarchingpremise that guides the discipline today: a “meta-model” of communication as

constitutive

(Craig, 1999, 2007; McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Taylor & Van Every,

2000). Put simply, the field as a whole—and organizational communication in

particular—proceeds upon the claim that communication does not merely

express

but also creates

social realities (Searle, 1995).

To make this guiding premise and its significance tangible, we invite read-

ers to consider first a popular way of understanding communication: a trans-

mission model

(Axley, 1984). From this view, a manager sends a message—say,a performance review—to an employee through some chosen channel or

medium (face-to-face, for example). The employee interprets that message in

a manner more or less in line with the manager’s intention, formulates a

response, and on it goes. Communication here is a linear transmission pro-

cess, from sender to receiver and back again in a cycle of message production,

dissemination, and reception. Communication appears as a conduit of sorts—

a neutral tool or vehicle by which we express already formed realities to one

another. Through this lens, communication is not the realities themselves, nor

does it play an active role in their creation. It has the capacity to share andinform or conceal and confuse. In a transmission model, the primary question

is thus one of effectiveness

: How can communication meet situated goals, like

clarity or display of authority?

A constitutive model

sees the same interaction quite differently. It observes,

for example, how available vocabulary (like “manager”, “performance

review”) defines key realities of the situation (like power relationships, or the

capacity to speak and be heard) before the interaction even begins. It consid-

ers how the exchange itself activates hierarchy, breathing life into organiza-

tional charts and policy manuals. And by putting abstract structures into live

motion, communication subjects them to real-time improvisation and negoti-

ation. As this suggests, the realities of the performance review are not fully

formed outside of communication and simply awaiting expression. They

are shaped by language and are “up for grabs”, at least to some extent, in the





5

communication process. They are not assumed to merely lie within

persons

but are, as suggested by Heritage (1984), communicated into being. As man-

ager and employee interact, the conversation does not so much represent each

party’s internal states, but rather jointly produces

reality by co-creating mean-ings that establish “what is” and coordinate and control activity accordingly.

Simply put, outcomes are determined in communication; thus, the stakes are

far higher than a transmission model allows. Communication acts on the

world; it is a social practice alive with potential. Not “mere” talk or transmis-

sion, it (re)produces and alters current realities. In a constitutive model, then,

the primary question is one of influence

and possibility

: How does communi-

cation constitute the realities of organizational life?

This is not to say that a transmission model is wrong, only that it is a partial

truth—one way of understanding communication. It is in this sense that theconstitutive premise provides a “meta-model” for the discipline: Of necessity,

theories of communication comprehend the practice of communication by

participating in that practice. In other words, scholarship is no more outside

of language and interaction than our performance review; we inevitably come

to know things by composing them in communication. With this constitutive

claim as an umbrella model, the discipline examines myriad ways communi-

cation might be constituted and considers if and how these yield novel com-

municational explanations (Craig, 1989, 1999, 2007).

Distinguishing Organizational Communication

A constitutive view of communication has found particular traction in the

subfield of organizational communication, and this premise differentiates

organizational communication from the similar-sounding fields with which it

is often presumed to be affiliated. “Business communication” and other

versions of communication housed within North American and European

schools of business, for instance, tend to operate primarily from a transmis-

sion model, align with a skills-based agenda, and move in separate profes-sional circles, such as the Association for Business Communication.

1

In

contrast, most of the major research topics in organizational communication

studies are readily recognizable to management scholars in organizational

behavior (OB) and organization theory (OT): organizational forms, systems,

and design; communication networks; culture; identity and identification;

leadership; socialization; groups and teams; relations of power and difference

(or in management terms, “diversity”—e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality);

knowledge formation and management; communication technology; deci-

sion-making; work and family; sustainability; globalization; and so on.

Although these interests are common to management research, communi-

cation scholars approach them in distinct ways, which—as substantiated in

the next section—stem from treating communication as a constitutive and,

thus, consequential force (Sigman, 1995). Latent in this statement and the




6


foregoing depiction is the question: What is communication, anyway? To this,

there is no easy answer. Early transmission views of communication as mes-

sage exchange (i.e., cycles of speaking and listening) in face-to-face dyads (e.g.,

superior–subordinate) or groups (e.g., team meetings) have exploded into rec-ognition of a wide range of verbal, nonverbal, textual, and mediated commu-

nication forms.

2

Because communication can be constituted in many ways (as

the previous meta-model maintains), the best preliminary answer we can offer

here is the current “elastic consensus” among the organizational communica-

tion community: Communication entails the dynamic, interactive negotiation

of meaning through symbol use.

As charted earlier, this definition of commu-

nication reflects a hybrid of intellectual foundations bred by housing interper-

sonal and rhetorical studies in a single discipline. Over time, these origins

have merged with the profound impact of the afore-mentioned linguistic turnand related social theories, creating a unique fusion of humanistic and social

scientific approaches to organizing.

Beyond the leading communication journals noted previously, organiza-

tional communication scholarship appears most frequently in Management

Communication Quarterly

, an international publication whose contents typi-

cally belie its title (i.e., they bear little resemblance to Business Communica-

tion Quarterly

and its historical focus on effective teaching; they address

organizational phenomena more broadly and theoretically). For readers seek-ing more efficient exposure, such anthologies as The New Handbook of Orga-

nizational Communication

(Jablin & Putnam, 2001), Engaging Organizational

Communication Theory and Research

(May & Mumby, 2005), Perspectives on

Organizational Communication: Finding Common Ground

(Corman & Poole,

2000), and the recent five-volume set, Major Works in Organizational Com-

munication

(Putnam & Krone, 2006), may prove particularly helpful.

Organizational communication scholarship also appears in anthologies on

organizational and business discourse (e.g., the Handbook of Organizational

Discourse

(Grant, Hardy, Oswick, Phillips, & Putnam, 2004) or the Handbookof Business Discourse

(Bargiela-Chiappini, 2009), suggesting the field’s grow-

ing affiliation with organization studies in Europe, Australia, Canada, and

New Zealand. Much organizational communication research—especially that

influenced by humanistic and critical orientations—readily connects with aca-

demic communities beyond North America, particularly those concerned

with organizational discourse and critical management studies. Indeed, in our

experience, organizational communication is often marked by these scholars

as a “natural” linkage and “surprising” anomaly in their understanding of US

management studies (Ashcraft, 2006a).

As the latter characterization hints, misrecognition appears to be a vulner-

ability of the rare fusion achieved by organizational communication. Many

colleagues beyond North America seem surprised by our existence, having

presumed that US management studies entails mostly conventional social





7

scientific approaches. Meanwhile, as noted earlier, colleagues in US manage-

ment studies often conflate us with business communication or variants

thereof, overlooking the more likely affiliation with areas like OB and OT.

Individual organizational communication scholars publish in leading man-agement journals (Ashcraft, 1999, 2001; Barker, 1993; Deetz, 1996, 2000;

Fairhurst, 2004, 2007a; Kuhn, 2006, 2008, in press; Monge, 1990; Mumby &

Putnam, 1992; Poole & Van de Ven, 1989; Putnam & Boys, 2006), but rarely

does this lead to recognition of communication as a field that offers a unique

take on organizational life, one worth engaging more systematically. Making

that

case is the overall aim of this essay.

In preparation, this section has situated organizational communication

studies as a thriving subfield of the communication discipline and outlined its

basic institutional and theoretical context. Specifically, we identified a consti-tutive model of communication as vital to the field’s identity and contribu-

tion. Substantiating this claim, the next section traces the evolution of the

constitutive principle in communication studies of organizational culture,

power, networks, and the structure–agency relation.

Tracing the Contribution: The Rise of the “Communicative Constitution of

Organization” (CCO)

As argued previously, taking communication seriously means asking: How does communication constitute the realities of organizational life? Without

communication, there would be no organization. As Chester Barnard

(1938)—who is often appropriated as a founder of organizational communi-

cation studies (Tompkins, 1993)—declared, “An organization comes into

being when (1) there are persons able to communicate with each other (2)

who are willing to contribute to action (3) to accomplish a common purpose.

These elements are necessary and sufficient conditions initially, and they are

found in all such organizations” (Barnard, 1938, p. 82). A constitutive

approach stretches beyond this observation. If communication creates

and

maintains

organization, it is also the nexus where systems are contested

and

dismantled

(Deetz, 1992a). Communication, then, is the site where organiza-

tion is continually negotiated (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Extending

Barnard’s definition, communication is how, over time, “a common purpose”

is established, obscured, and obliterated, or how people are persuaded “to

contribute to action” and resist.

Although the actual moniker communicative

constitution of organization

(CCO)

is rather recent (Putnam & Nicotera, 2008), the notion that communi-

cation might be the building block of organization has been a central focus of

the field for the past thirty years, inspired by the linguistic turn in social theory

mentioned previously. Influenced by such works as Karl Weick’s (1979)

groundbreaking Social Psychology of Organizing

, several communication and

management scholars gathered at Alta, Utah in 1980 to discuss alternatives to




8


functionalism

(i.e., shorthand for positivist or empiricist approaches to orga-

nization science, aimed at the prediction and control of variable relations),

which was then considered the norm in our field. Out of these conversations

grew a landmark volume on interpretivism

(i.e., shorthand for humanistic orhermeneutic approaches to organization science, growing out of the linguistic

turn and aimed at understanding the meaning and significance of symbolic

activity). The edited volume produced from this conference (Putnam &

Pacanoswky, 1983) quickly became a focal reference for studying organization

from a communication perspective.

While this volume paved the way for CCO approaches, its particular take

on the social construction of reality, mainly influenced by phenomenologists

like Berger and Luckman (1966), reflected some early limitations. Even as

organizational communication scholars were now encouraged to focus onnarratives (Brown, 1985; Clair, 1993b), metaphors (Smith & Eisenberg, 1987),

and paradoxes (Putnam, 1986), communication was largely reduced to “orga-

nizational interpretations” (Putnam, Phillips, & Chapman, 1996) instead of

the interactive process

of producing meaning. In other words, initial work

stressed sensemaking frames and outcomes like ideology (Jian, Schmisseur, &

Fairhurst, 2008), rather than how people actively co-constructed these in com-

munication. Aligning communication with interpretation also increased

the risk of reducing organization to mere abstraction, reification, or myth(Putnam, 1983; Weick, 1979).

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, communication scholars began to study

organizational interaction per se

, guided by the work of Gail Fairhurst

(Fairhurst, 1993; Fairhurst, Rogers, & Sarr, 1987; Fairhurst, Green, &

Courtright, 1995), Marshall Scott Poole (Poole, Folger, & Hewes, 1987), and

Linda L. Putnam (Putnam & Jones, 1982; Putnam & Wilson, 1989), all of

whom developed independent coding schemes for analyzing actual interac-

tions. This sort of analysis demonstrated “that systems emerge over repeated

interactions that evolve into multi-leveled orders of pattern” (Fairhurst, 2004,p. 342). Around this time, Taylor (1993) and the Montreal School of organiza-

tional communication began to confront the organizing role of communica-

tion. In this agenda, interpretation is a piece of the puzzle. When we

communicate, we certainly make collective sense of situations (i.e., à la Weick,

1995), but we also participate in the co-construction of our world (Giddens,

1979, 1984). Underscoring participation

means that people (re)create this

world in tandem with other influential agents (a point to be developed later),

whereas highlighting co-construction

implies that organizing is an ongoing,

interactive achievement that exceeds any single agency, however powerful

she/he/it may be.

In an attempt to discern emerging variations in perspective, Ruth Smith

(1993) conducted an influential review of organizational communication

studies that categorized the literature in terms of root metaphors (i.e., implicit





9

depictions or images) of the communication–organization relationship

(which later became known as “the CCO question”). Smith showed how the

majority of work published up to that point conceived of communication as

happening within

organizations and of organization as a bracketed space inwhich communication occurs. From this container root metaphor, the onto-

logical status of organization (i.e., what is it?) is rarely questioned, and com-

munication does not play a constitutive role (Hawes, 1977; Putnam et al.,

1996). In contrast, a second root metaphor of production holds that commu-

nication yields organization; organization delimits communication; and/or

both shape each other. While studies in this vein overtly address the commu-

nication–organization relationship, they tend to polarize the two as discrete

phenomena. Polarization fades away in a third root metaphor of equivalency,

which treats communication and organization as “variant expressions for thesame reality” (Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud, 1996, p. 28). From this

view, organization literally exists in

communication.

3

Smith’s (1993) root metaphor framework is often adopted to clarify avail-

able renditions of the organization–communication relationship (Fairhurst &

Putnam, 1999, 2004; Putnam et al., 1996; Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001). Rather

than reconsider this relation in the abstract, we aim to make the contribution

of CCO more concrete for our audience by tracing the evolution of the consti-

tutive principle across four specific areas of study shared by managementscholars: culture, power, networks, and structure and agency. In discussing

each, we consider how CCO has developed over time and in relation to

Smith’s root metaphors, as well as its distinctive spin on matters held in com-

mon with management scholars. We organize the discussion around “embed-

ded” and “explicit” strains of CCO thinking. Organizational communication

literatures on (a) culture; (b) power; and (c) networks are considered in the

former category, for their constitutive claims are not their primary focus;

hence, they are seldom recognized as CCO “proper”. In contrast, two strands

of organizational communication studies—(d) structuration and (e) text/conversation (a.k.a. the Montreal School)—take up the CCO question directly

and are overtly marked with the CCO label. Both can be usefully read as

divergent interventions in a debate familiar to management scholars: the

structure–agency relationship. Table 1.1 condenses our analysis by summariz-

ing root metaphors, major developments, and implications for management

studies associated with each of the five strains of CCO reviewed below.

Embedded Strains of CCO: Organizational Culture, Power, and Networks

Culture.

As with many pioneering texts, the Putnam and Pacanowsky

(1983) volume advanced basic oppositions that linger in contemporary orga-

nizational communication studies. In an introductory chapter, for instance,

Putnam (1983) identified functionalism by its material

and cooperative

view

of organization (e.g., as “concrete, materialistic entities”, p. 34; “cooperative




10


T a b l e

1 .

1

L o o k i n g

B a c k a t C C O : P r e v i o u s

E f f o r t s t o T h e o r i z e C o m m u n i c a t i o n a s

P i v o t a l , n o t P e r i p h e r a l

C u r r e n t C o n c e p t i o n

o f C o m m u n i c a t i o n

•

D e f i n i t i o n

: t h e o n g o i n g ,

d y n a m i c , i n t e r a c t i v e p r o c e s s o f m a n i p u l a t i n g s y m

b o l s t o w a r d

t h e c r e a t i o n , m a i n t e n a n c e , d e s t r u c t i o n , a n d / o r

t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f m e a n i n g s ,

w h i c h a r e a x i a l t o o r g a n i z a t i o n a l e x i s t e n c e a n d o r g a n i z i n g p h e n o m e n a

•

C o m m u n i c a t i o n a l e x p l a n a t i o n

: t h o s e a c c o u n t s

t h a t a d v a n c e

k n o w l e d g e o f

h o w c o m m u n i c a t i o n

( a s d e f i n e d a b o v e ) c o n s t i t u t e s o r g a n i z a t i o n a l r e a l i t y —

e . g .

, h o w i t

f u n c t i o n s a s a

f u n d a m e n t a l o r g a n i z i n g m e c h a n

i s m o r i s

t h e s i t e o f o r g a n i z a t i o n

•

R e l a t i v e e m p

h a s i s o n m a t e r i a l a n d i d e a t i o n a l

w o r l d s

: p r e s u m e s

t h e m u s c l e o f s

y m b o l i c a c t i v i t y

o v e r

m a t e r i a l f o r c e s

( i . e . ,

d u a l i s t ) a n d / o r s y m

b o l i c

a c t i v i t y

a s

a

m a t e r i a l f o r c e

( i . e . , n e g l e c t s

o t h e r k i n d s o f m a t e r i a l f o r c e s )

M a n i f e s t a t i o n i n

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l

c o m m u n i c a t i o n

l i t e r a t u r e

R o o t m e t a p h o r

o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n –

o r g a n i z a t i o n r e l a t i o n s h i p

K e y t r e n d s / d e v e l o p m e n t s

I m p l i c a t i o n s f o r m a n

a g e m e n t

C u l t u r e ( e m b e d d e d )

P r i m a r i l y p r o d u c t i o n ( c o m m u n i c a t i o n

p r o d u c e s c u l t u r e ) .

V e s t i g e s o f c o n t a i n e r ( c o m m u n i c a t i o n

a s c o m p o n e n t o

f c u l t u r e ) .

R e c e n t s e e d s o f e q u i v a l e n c y

( c o m m u n i c a t i o n a s s i t e w h e r e c u l t u r e

e x i s t s ) .

T w o d

i v e r g e n t e m p h a s e s o n d i r e c t i o n o f

p r o d u c t i o n :

( 1 ) C o m m u n i c a t i o n y i e l d s o r g a n i z a t i o n

( i n

t e r p r e t i v e a p p r o a c h e s )

( 2 ) O r g a n i z a t i o n d i s t o r t s

c o

m m u n i c a t i o n ( c r i t i c a l

a p

p r o a c h e s )

I n t e r p r e t i v i s t b e n t h i g h l i g h t s t h e

p r i n c i p a l , a c t i v e ( r a t h e

r t h a n

a n c i l l a r y , p a s s i v e ) r o l e

o f

c o m m u n i c a t i o n i n ( r e ) c r e a t i n g

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l c u l t u r e . I

l l u s t r a t e s

h o w c o m m u n i c a t i o n o

r g a n i z e s

l o c a l m e a n i n g s a n d , t h u s , r e a l i t i e s .

P o w e r ( e m b e d d e d )


p r o d u c e s p o w e r

s y s t e m s ; t h e s e

s y s t e m s , i n t u r n , c o n s t r a i n


)

S o m e d e v e l o p m e n t t o w a r d

e q u i v a l e n c y ( c o m m u n i c a t i o n a s s i t e

w h e r e p o w e r r e l a t i o n s — e . g . ,

g e n d e r — a r e a c c

o m p l i s h e d a n d , t

h u s ,

l i t e r a l l y e x i s t )

D i s c u r s i v e s t r u g g l e t h e o r i z e d a s a v i a b l e

e x p l a

n a t i o n f o r c o n f i g u r a t i o n s o f

p o w e

r .

P o s t m

o d e r n i s t a n d f e m i n i s t a p p r o a c

h e s

d e m o n s t r a t e c o m m u n i c a t i o n a s a n

e m b o d i e d p o l i t i c a l p r o c e s s w i t h

m a t e r i a l c o n s e q u e n c e s .

C r i t i c a l b e n t u n d e r s c o r e s

c o m m u n i c a t i o n a s a p o l i t i c a l

p r o c e s s t h a t g e n e r a t e s

a n d

a c t i v a t e s ( r a t h e r t h a n e

x p r e s s a n d

i m p l e m e n t ) o r g a n i z a t i o n a l p o w e r .

I l l u s t r a t e s h o w c o m m u

n i c a t i o n

o r g a n i z e s k n o w l e d g e o

f s y s t e m

a n d s e l f / o t h e r - i n t e r e s t s a n d , t

h u s ,

r e l a t i o n s o f p o w e r .





11

C o m m u n i c a t i o n

n e t w o r k s

( e m b e d d e d )


“ r e a l - i z e s ” l a t e n t c o n n e c t i o n s , i s t h e

s i t e o f c o o r d i n a t e d a c t i v i t y o r t h e

r o u t e b y w h i c h p

r o d u c t i o n

m e c h a n i s m s o p e

r a t e ) .

N e t w o

r k s t h e o r i z e d a s r u l e – r e s o u r c e

s e t s a c t i v a t e d b y s i t u a t i o n a l e x i g e n c

i e s

R e v e a l s c o m m u n i c a t i o n

n e t w o r k s

a s m u l t i l e v e l p h e n o m e n a , f a r

m o r e t h a n a m e t h o d o l o g i c a l t o o l .

E x p l i c a t e s

h o w

o r g a n i z a t i o n s ( a n d

i n t e r - o r g a n i z a t i o n a l

r e l a t i o n s h i p s ) a r e r e / g e

n e r a t e d i n

c o m m u n i c a t i o n . E x p l a i n s

n e t w o r k e v o l u t i o n a s “ s p a c e s ”

e n a b l e d b y m o d e s o f i n

t e r a c t i o n .

S o m e c o n t a i n e r ( c o m m u n i c a t i o n l i n k s

g e n e r a t e m e a n i n

g b u t e x i s t w i t h i n

o r g a n i z a t i o n s ) .

C o m m

u n i c a t i o n t h e o r i z e d a s

i n t e r p

e r s o n a l a n d i n t e r - o r g a n i z a t i o n a l

l i n k a g e s , s i t e s o f a c t i v i t y , a n d i n s t i g a

t o r

o f c o n c e p t u a l “ s p a c e s ” f o r c o l l e c t i v e

a c t i o n .

S t r u c t u r e - a g e n c y 1 :

S t r u c t u r a t i o n ( e x p l i c i t )


a s m e d i a t e d b y a

n d g e n e r a t i v e o f

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l s t r u c t u r e ) .

S o m e d e v e l o p m e n t t o w a r d

e q u i v a l e n c y , w i t h c a u t i o n a g a i n s t

r e d u c t i o n i s m ( e . g . ,

“ f o u r f l o w s ”

m o d e l ) .

T h r e e m a j o r e m p h a s e s :

( 1 ) D i s c u r s i v e s t r u g g l e t h e o r i z e d a s s i t e

w h

e r e i n a n d m e c h a n i s m w h e r e b y

s t r u c t u r a l c o n t r a d i c t i o n s p l a y o u

t

( 2 ) F o r m a l s t r u c t u r e s a n d t e c h n o l o g

i e s

a r e c o n s t i t u t e d i n c o m m u n i c a t i o

n

p r o c e s s e s t h a t l i n k p e r s o n s a n d

p r a c t i c e s t o t h e c o n c e p t o f t h e

o r g a n i z a t i o n

( 3 ) R e l a t i o n s h i p a m o n g a n a l y t i c a l l y

s e p

a r a b l e “ f l o w s ” o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n

t h a t p r o d u c e f o r m a l o r g a n i z a t i o n

D e m o n s t r a t e s o r g a n i z a t i o n a s

o n g o i n g a c c o m p l i s h m e

n t i n

c o m m u n i c a t i o n , n o t s t a t i c e n t i t y .

H i g h l i g h t s c o m m u n i c a

t i o n a s t h e

n e x u s w h e r e o r g a n i z a t i o n a l / s o c i a l

s t r u c t u r e , t e c h n o l o g y , a

n d h u m a n

a g e n c y c o l l i d e i n r e l a t i o n s o f

m u t u a l i n f l u e n c e . E n c o

u r a g e s

a n a l y s t s t o ( a ) e x a m i n e

v a r i e d

t y p e s a n d l e v e l s o f c o m m u n i c a t i v e

p r a c t i c e , a s w e l l a s ( b ) i n t e r r o g a t e

c o m m u n i c a t i o n a s s t r u

c t u r

e d

a n d

s t r u c t u r

i n g

.

S t r u c t u r e - a g e n c y 2 : T e x t /

c o n v e r s a t i o n ( o

r t h e

M o n t r e a l S c h o o l )

E q u i v a l e n c y ( c o m

m u n i c a t i o n a n d

o r g a n i z a t i o n a r e

d i f f e r e n t f o r m s o f

t h e s a m e r e a l i t y )

.

C o m m

u n i c a t i o n , t

h e o r i z e d a s

t h e

m o d a

l i t y o f o r g a n i z i n g , c h a r a c t e r i z e d

b y t w o d i m e n s i o n s :

S h o w s h o w c o m m u n i c a t i o n

s i m u l t a n e o u s l y r e / p r o d

u c e s a n d

r e / p r e s e n t s o r g a n i z a t i o

n ; t h a t i s ,




12


T a b l e

1 .

1

L o o k i n g

B a c k a t C C O : P r e v i o u s

E f f o r t s t o T h e o r i z e C o m m u n i c a t i o n a s

P i v o t a l , n o t P e r i p h e r a l ( C o n t i n u e d )

M a n i f e s t a t i o n i n

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l


l i t e r a t u r e

R o o t m e t a p h o r

o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n –

o r g a n i z a t i o n r e l a t i o n s h i p

K e y t r e n d s / d e v e l o p m e n t s

I m p l i c a t i o n s f o r m a n

a g e m e n t

( 1 ) T e x

t u a l ( i . e . , t h e r e c u r r i n g , c o h e r e n t

“ s u r f a c e ” o f o r g a n i z a t i o n )

c o m m u n i c a t i o n i s c o n s t a n t l y

c r e a t i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n ( i . e . ,

c o n v e r s a t i o n ) e v e n a s i t a l s o

( 2 ) C o n v e r s a t i o n a l ( i . e . , t h e d y n a m i c

“ s i t e ” w h e r e o r g a n i z a t i o n i s

c o

n s t a n t l y r e / g e n e r a t i n g )

e n a b l e s u s t o e x p e r i e n c e “ a n

o r g a n i z a t i o n ” a s a c o h e r e n t e n t i t y

a n d a g e n t ( i . e . , t e x t ) . I l l u s t r a t e s

h o w i n e r t i a a n d i n n o v a t i o n a r e

c o n c u r r e n t p r o d u c t s o f

c o m m u n i c a t i o n .





13

systems in pursuit of common interests and goals”, p. 37) and distinguished

interpretivism by its symbolic

and conflict-curious

outlook on organizations

(e.g., as “symbolic processes”, p. 34; “an array of factionalized groups with

diverse purposes and goals”, p. 38). Although such binary oppositions werelater critiqued for caricaturing functionalism (Miller, 2000), they also

spawned a research program on organizational and corporate culture that

took communication as a valid point of departure, not simply one factor

among many others (Kuhn & Ashcraft, 2003).

Hailed as a crucial exercise in recovering the role of meaning, interpretive

approaches became the dominant means by which communication scholars

studied culture. In this view, culture is not, as characterized in some manage-

ment literature, a thing or variable—one of many organizational assets to be

manipulated for competitive advantage (Smircich & Calás, 1987). Rather, cul-ture is what an organization is

—the ongoing social construction of reality that

renders a collective unique. Commenting on this shift, Eisenberg and Riley

(2001) noted:

Unlike scholars in other areas of organization studies that did not

initially grasp the power of the [organizational culture] metaphor,

communication researchers displayed an instinctive appreciation for

organizations as social entities that were constituted in interaction.

From the early 1980s forward, communication processes were recast asthe way organizations were constructed, maintained, and transformed.

Thus communication’s constitutive role in creating organizational

culture was identified and elucidated. (p. 293)

Some communication studies continued to examine culture in a functionalist

fashion reminiscent of Smith’s (1993) container metaphor, thereby curbing

the power of communication (Glaser, Zamanou, & Hacker, 1987). This work

tended to treat communication as a phenomenon within

organizational

culture or a subsidiary of

it—for instance, as a vehicle for disseminating (butnot creating) culture. However, the weight of organizational communication

culture research quickly shifted toward interpretive approaches with a clear

constitutive bent, premised largely on Smith’s (1993) production metaphor.

Communication here is the process that generates, maintains, and transforms

culture—or, in more advanced accounts based on an equivalency metaphor,

communication is the site of culture itself (i.e., where culture exists).

Two tendencies can be identified in this literature, diverging around the

researcher’s stance on critique. The first trend—emphasizing how communi-

cation produces organization—is represented by interpretive scholars seeking

to describe or analyze how narratives (Brown, 1985, 1990; Helmer, 1993; Kreps,

1990; Meyer, 1995; Myrsiadis, 1987), metaphors (Cornelissen, 2005, 2006;

Smith & Eisenberg, 1987; Smith & Turner, 1995), socialization (Myers, 2005),

and dramaturgical performances (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983;




14 • The Academy of Management Annals

Trujillo, 1983, 1992) yield organizational realities received as “facts”. The sec-

ond tendency, which reverses emphasis to show how organization distorts

communication, is primarily represented by critical scholars who seek to cri-

tique or deconstruct relations of power latent in organizational culture and,specifically, narratives (Cloud, 2005; Mumby, 1987, 1993, Smith & Keyton,

2001; Trethewey, 2001), negotiation practices (Stage, 1999), and discourses of

control and resistance (Barker, 1999; Cheney, 1997, 1999; Fleming, 2005;

Parker, 2001; Thackaberry, 2004). To be clear, it is not that research exhibiting

the first tendency denies how organizations constrain communication, nor

that research in the second vein dismisses the constitutive power of commu-

nication. Rather, they tend to stress opposite directions of influence. Across

most of this work, the production metaphor reigns: Organization and commu-

nication remain mostly discrete and polarized, bound in a relation of mutualinfluence.

Much of this research relies on interview and observational data, which

often hinders detailed analysis of interaction per se. The specificity with which

organizational communication studies of culture actually accounted for com-

munication could thus be questioned, especially vis-à-vis the precision of key

management studies like Martin (1992, 2001) or Alvesson (2002) (see also

Brummans, 2003). Due to the relative (methodological) neglect of interaction

as the very site of culture’s existence, communication scholars have barely begun to study organizational culture from Smith’s (1993) third metaphor of

equivalency. That said, notable exceptions (Courtright, Fairhurst, & Rogers,

1989; Deetz, Heath, & MacDonald, 2007; Fairhurst, Green, & Courtright,

1995; Fitch & Foley, 2007; Putnam, 2007; Stohl, 2007; Tracy, 2007) appear to

be on the rise.

Power. Alongside growing interest organizational culture, communica-

tion scholars began to confront the politics of meaning. Deetz and Kersten

(1983) charted an early agenda for critical inquiry in the Putnam andPacanowsky volume mentioned earlier. They define organizational communi-

cation as a social process that is shored up by the production/labor process, and

which enacts both surface structure (i.e., recognized formal and informal

systems) and deep structure (i.e., fundamental material conditions of produc-

tion and governing ideologies). Communication produces organizational poli-

tics because it is “how organizational members develop norms, values,

meanings, that is, a certain consciousness that makes the organization and their

place in it understandable and meaningful” (p. 160). In other words, commu-

nication constitutes “norms, values, and roles”, which then “define, interpret,

and limit the way in which people deal with each other” (p. 160). These early

claims were significantly expanded by Deetz and Mumby’s (1990) influential

Communication Yearbook essay, which offered a communicational explana-

tion of organizational power. There, the authors argue that “communication is




Constitutional Amendments • 15

more fundamentally constitutive of power than is traditionally suggested” in

the management literature, for “power is most successfully exercised when an

individual or group has the ability to frame discursive and nondiscursive prac-

tices within a system of meanings that is commensurate with that individual’sor group’s own interests” (p. 32). Ultimately, they claim that contemporary

configurations of power are as much or more the product of discursive struggle

(i.e., the ongoing human contest over meaning) as they are of economic forces.

For the purpose of later discussion, it is worth noting now how this claim simul-

taneously advances symbolic over material explanations (e.g., communication

vs. economics) and asserts symbolic processes as material (e.g., communication

activates “real” power structures).

Detectable in the subtle shift between these oft-cited pieces is the growth of

a stronger constitutive model of communication, wherein our experiences of power and perceptions of our own best interests are formed in discursive

struggle, not determined merely by our material relation to production. The

early finding of critical research on organizational culture (referenced in the

previous “culture” discussion)—namely, that organizations are power struc-

tures or political containers—is thereby expanded to show how communica-

tion “talks back”, usually (re)producing but sometimes challenging the very

systems of power that impinge upon it. This stronger version, which treats

communication as a political and material act with tangible consequences, hasbeen elaborated in a number of works (Deetz, 1992a, 1994, 1995; Mumby,

1988, 1997). Here too Smith’s (1993) production metaphor dominates, as

organization and communication appear to be separate entities that affect one

another.

Over time, two developments extended rising awareness of communica-

tion as a politically generative process: (a) so-called postmodern theoretical

influences; and (b) the rise of feminist perspectives on organizational com-

munication (Alvesson & Deetz, 1996; Mumby, 1996; Taylor, 2005). Although

postmodern accounts were not the first to explain how ideology is incorpo-rated in social and material practices (Althusser, 1971; Hall, 1985), Foucault-

inspired approaches in particular brought organizational communication

scholars fresh analytic tools with which to study resistance and consent as

embodied processes and to conceive of the body–institution relationship as a

product of discursive struggle (Barker & Cheney, 1994; Deetz, 1992b, 1998;

Tracy, 2000; Trethewey, 1999, 2000). The virtual explosion of gender and

feminist studies in organizational communication since the 1990s also illu-

minated the embodied politics of communication through a range of per-

spectives, which vary in the constitutive strength assigned to communication

(Ashcraft, 2004, 2005). While we return to these developments later, for now

we note that they reflect sprouts of Smith’s (1993) equivalency metaphor.

Feminist scholars, for example, now theorize gender as something literally

existing in (organizational) interaction, not cognitively formulated then





manifested in communication (Gherardi, 1994; West & Fenstermaker, 1995;

West & Zimmerman, 1987). And organizational communication scholars

have gone far to extend Deetz & Mumby’s (1990) suggestion that organiza-

tional ideology, power, and interests transpire in communication (for exten-sive reviews of this research, see Deetz, 2005; Mumby, 2001).

In part because North American management scholarship has yet to sub-

stantially integrate critical approaches—and in part because much critical

communication research has been conducted through “radical” qualitative

methodologies (i.e., more humanistic, self-reflexive, political, and/or postmod-

ern in tone than traditional qualitative work) that are still finding legitimacy

in the former context—there has been relatively little exchange between critical

organizational communication and North American management studies (for

examples of exceptions, see Ashcraft (1999, 2001), Deetz (1996, 2000) andMumby and Putnam (1992)). Thus far, critical organizational communication

scholars have found a ready intellectual fit with the European-dominated

critical management studies (CMS) community (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992,

2003; Alvesson & Deetz, 2000). Nonetheless, critical communication

approaches to power represent an alternative to dominant conceptions in

North American management studies, which stress power as a tangible entity,

structural and relational feature, or resource and influence struggle existing

independent of the interactions in which they are expressed (Frost, 1987;Pfeffer, 1981, 1992; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Raven, 1993). It is not that critical

communication scholars deny institutional, economic, and other material

forces. At minimum, the claim is rather this: Communication constitutes our

perceptions and experience of material imperatives, such that it constitutes

them in a very real sense.

Communication networks. When interpretivism was beginning to gather

steam in organizational communication, the study of communication

networks was one of the chief methodological approaches in the field.Communication network analysis continues to thrive and, inspired by the rise

of interpretivism, now steps beyond the use of networks as tools for mapping

literal patterns of interaction and toward a view of organizations as networks,

such that “the network” becomes a key concept for developing theories about

the construction of complex systems (Salancik, 1995; Stohl, 1995).

Such a conception is not the norm in management and organization stud-

ies, where networks are commonly conceived as methodological devices for

measuring the amount and direction of messaging in various types of (inter-)

organizational relations, such as trust, advice, authority, and resource depen-

dence (Krackhardt & Brass, 1994; Shah, 1998; Walker, 1985). There, the central

questions generally concern individuals’ and organizations’ message flow and

positions in a network, as evident in research on topics as diverse as knowledge

and innovation (Barley, 1990; Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006), the development of





social capital (Oh, Labianca, & Chung, 2006; Nahapiet & Ghosal, 1998), and

governance (Jones, Hesterly, & Borgatti, 1997; Madhok, 1996; Powell, 1990).

In much of this work, the transmission model of communication is apparent:

organizations are portrayed as containers for communication, while commu-nication is typically rendered as an information processing tool.

With the advent of an interpretive or “cultural tradition” in communica-

tion network studies (Monge & Eisenberg, 1987; Rogers & Kincaid, 1981),

organizational communication scholars began to depart from preoccupation

with positions and flows of interaction and, instead, considered the content

and meaning of communication. Monge and Eisenberg (1987), for example,

proposed that network links “include not only the presence or absence of

interaction, but also the degree of understanding (do communicators share a

common symbol-referent system?) and agreement (do they agree in opinionon the topics being communicated about?)” (p. 333). One outcome of such

arguments was semantic network analysis, which analyzed the “semantic

space” around organizational symbols or events, based on the study of links

among words and phrases in key texts (Danowski, 1982, 1993; Doerfel &

Barnett 1999; Jacobs & Rau, 1993; Rice & Danowski, 1993), as well as the

degree to which interpretations are shared among members (Carley & Kaufer,

1993; Marshall & Stohl, 1993; Stohl, 1993).

Semantic network studies, however, tend to examine networks as occurring“within” organizations, thereby preserving the container metaphor. One

alternative that embraces the meaning of messages yet pursues a production

metaphor is Corman and Scott’s (1994; see also Corman, 1990) situated action

model of organizational formation. They begin with the assumption that com-

munication networks are best considered perceived links with others. When

triggering events are interpreted and local organizational activity becomes

focused around some issue, members draw upon those perceived networks.

Their activity results in observable message exchange that, in turn, re-produces

those perceived links (i.e., structure). From this perspective, communicationnetworks are not mere message patterns; they are rules and resources that

become “actualized” in communication (McPhee & Corman, 1995). Similar

claims are advanced by network scholars who explore communication as both

the site of knowledge transfer and the location of organizational memory

(Palazzolo, Serb, She, Su, & Contractor, 2006).

The future relationship between communication network studies and CCO

depends on enhancing the capacity of the former to (a) explain how organiza-

tion is produced; and (b) trace how complex (inter-)organizational systems

evolve. On the first issue, communication scholars are now developing per-

spectives that honor the multiple theories and levels of network analysis

(Monge & Contractor, 2003), while also creating analytic techniques, like com-

putational modeling, suited to their combined complexity (Contractor,

Wasserman, & Faust, 2006; Corman, Kuhn, McPhee, & Dooley, 2002; Palazzolo





et al., 2006). With its methodological innovation and capacity to integrate and

extend network concepts and theories, this work should be of great interest to

management scholars. On the second issue, recent communication research

employing population ecology, social capital, collective action, and publicgoods theory has begun to examine how actors bridge boundaries and engage

in coordinated activity (Fulk, Flanagin, Kalman, Monge, & Ryan, 1996; Monge

et al., 1998; Stohl & Stohl, 2005). For instance, Flanagin, Stohl, and Bimber

(2006) argue that a constitutive view of communication can explain the much-

touted shift to network-based organizational forms, because organizations per-

ceive opportunities to move through conceptual “space” created by their modes

of interaction with other organizations. In sum, contemporary communication

network research can aid management studies in understanding the produc-

tion and operation of both organizations and inter-organizational action. Thiswork invites management scholars to thematize the meaning and content of

communication while pursuing common interests in (inter-)organizational

phenomena.

Explicit Strains of CCO: Organizational Structure and Agency

Variant one: communicating structuration. In the 1970s, scholars became

uneasy with extant social theories, which usually emphasized either macro-

level, deterministic structures or the accumulated agency of individual actorsat a micro level. Anthony Giddens (1979, 1984) argued that structure and

agency exist simultaneously in all social practices (i.e., the “duality of struc-

ture”) and are equally responsible for producing systems. His theory of struc-

turation has exerted tremendous influence over both management studies and

organizational communication; because the theory is generally well-known,

we forego a detailed description to concentrate on its influence among organi-

zational communication scholars working within the CCO stream.

Early appropriations primarily used structuration theory to inform how

communication generates small group decision-making (Poole, Holmes, & DeSanctis, 1991; Poole, McPhee, & Seibold, 1982; Poole, Seibold, & McPhee,

1985). Among studies addressing organizational communication, three

emphases have emerged. The first develops the relationship between structu-

ration and discursive struggle. Howard and Geist (1995), for instance, drew

upon Giddens’ notion of the dialectic of control to analyze structural contra-

dictions and member interpretations during a proposed merger, revealing

how structure is both in process and in contention. Others (Deetz, 1992a;

Mumby, 1987, 1988; Mumby & Stohl, 1991; Clair, 1998) utilized Giddens to

show how ideology hinders agents’ ability to construct meaning creatively,

yet control over meaning is never absolute and always entails seeds of resis-

tance. This line of work enhances structuration theory by explaining discur-

sive struggle as a vital practice through which structural contradictions are

activated and negotiated.





The second emphasis draws on structuration theory to explain the role of

communication with respect to organizational structures and technologies

(Banks & Riley, 1993; Fairhurst, Cooren, & Cahill, 2002; Kuhn & Corman,

2003). For instance, McPhee (1985, 1989) argued that all formal organizationentails interaction that creates, justifies, applies, or resists collective rules and

resources. Such communication enables organization across time and space,

for example, by linking elements (e.g., persons, activity systems) that rarely

have direct contact. Of central interest to scholars working in this vein are tech-

nologies, reconceived as artifactual rules and resources that are manifest in and

responsive to organizational practice (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). Through this

lens, technologies are not fixed, objective entities with predictable influence

(Orlikowski, 1992); like other structures, they are continually (re)produced in

communication (Jackson, 1996). In other words, communication is intimately bound with technologies and structures in a mutually determining dialectic.

The first two emphases align with Smith’s (1993) production metaphor, in

that they probe the reciprocal influence of communication and structure

while retaining the analytical distinction. The third emphasis leans toward an

equivalency metaphor as it pursues a uniquely structurational rendition of

CCO theory. McPhee and colleagues’ “four flows” model (Corman, McPhee,

& Iverson, 2007; McPhee & Iverson, 2009; McPhee, 2004; McPhee & Zaug,

2000) posits generic communication processes that constitute organizationand distinguish it from less formal social groups. The four flows—activity

coordination, membership negotiation, self-structuring, and institutional

positioning—encompass what are typically seen as “internal” and “external”

matters. McPhee and colleagues argue for equivalency yet warn of reduction-

ism: “Organization is not simply communication, but a relationship among

distinct types of analytically separable processes, so saying that it ‘is commu-

nication’ is misleading…” (McPhee & Zaug, 2000, para. 46).4 Empirical stud-

ies of the model are just beginning, but Browning, Greene, Sitkin, Sutcliffe, &

Obstfeld’s (2009) research with US Air Force technicians suggests significantpromise.

Communicative developments of structuration theory are not always

readily distinct from those in management and organization studies (cf.

Barley, 1986; Heracleous & Hendry, 2000; Ranson, Hinings, & Greenwood,

1980; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). And yet, as they explicate the complexity of

ongoing symbol-based control and contention, CCO structuration studies

move beyond debates over emphasis (i.e., which matters more: structural

features or agents’ information-processing?) to reveal the simultaneously

structured and structuring aspects of interaction (Jackson, Poole, & Kuhn,

2002). In short, these studies seek to connect institution and action by specify-

ing the constitutive functions of communication. Pertinent to management

studies, this work suggests that organizations are not containers for message

flow; they are evolving products of the dynamic relation among various forms





and levels of communication. Hence, understanding matters of power, struc-

ture, and technology entails observing the communication practices through

which these play out across space and time. Heeding this call could, for exam-

ple, develop novel explanations for organizational performance, sheddinglight on (a) intra-institutional variations in organizational structure and out-

come (Fombrun, 1986; March & Sutton, 1997); (b) how strategic decision-

makers engineer (and become caught up in) flows of communication based on

a structure-performance link; (c) how performance-related rules and

resources can contradict one another in practice; and (d) how discursive

struggle favors certain performance metrics over others.

Variant two: text and conversation. Most of the previous manifestations

of CCO have stressed Smith’s (1993) production metaphor and initiated stepstoward equivalency. The equivalency root metaphor calls attention to the

organizing properties of communication (Cooren, 2000); and this is precisely

what Taylor and Van Every (2000) achieved by theorizing communication as

the essential modality for organizing. Taylor and colleagues (all representa-

tives of what is now called the Montreal School) critique structuration theory

for its narrow conception of communication as one modality among others

(i.e., power and sanction) through which organization occurs. They argue that

communication constitutes power and sanction as well; for if these are notenacted in communication, how else could they express themselves? Whereas

variant one earlier elaborates the duality of structure, this second variant

rejects it. For the Montreal school, such duality maintains an artificial opposi-

tion between agency (i.e., inter/actions) and structure (i.e., enduring systems

enabling and constraining inter/actions). Rather than a structure–agency

dialectic, organization can be said to teem with agencies of various sorts—

textual, mechanical, architectural, natural, and human—or what Cooren

(2006) calls a plenum (i.e., “full” in Latin) of agencies. Following Latour

(2002), these scholars contend that structure does not explain (i.e., is not theexplanans); it is what needs to be explained (i.e., the explanandum). Organiza-

tion is surely patterned, yet this is born not of duality, but of actions yielding a

(more or less) structured world.

According to the Montreal School, communication has two manifestations:

(a) a textual modality; and (b) a conversational modality. The textual dimen-

sion corresponds with the recurring, fairly stable and uneventful side of com-

munication (e.g., the organization’s “surface”), while the conversational

dimension refers to the lively and evolving co-constructive side of communi-

cation (i.e., the “site” of organization) (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Organiza-

tion is therefore accomplished (or “real-ized”) and experienced in conversation,

identified and described through text. In this usage, “text” takes various forms—

verbal, non-verbal (i.e., gestural and kinesic), and written—that represent

organization. In other words, an organization is incarnated in the texts (e.g.,





documents, spokespersons) that speak in its name and through the conversa-

tions (e.g., live exchanges) where these texts are (re)produced. For instance, an

organization exists in texts that define “its” stance, as in “The White House

denies this report”, or “Microsoft hopes further research will lead to a morereliable system”. Through this textual modality, organizations take on the sta-

tus of beings and actors. Yet these texts are the outcome of dynamic interac-

tions in which “their” representatives confer and declare while journalists

translate and spin; in short, texts are produced by the conversational modality

of communication.

In keeping with Bruno Latour (2005), the Montreal School contends that

analysts need not leave the terra firma (i.e., ground level) of interaction or

resort to structure in order to account for organization. On the contrary, it is

in conversation that organization is literally achieved and through texts thatthey are recognized. As developed here, the equivalency metaphor thus treats

communication as the site where organization surfaces. As Fairhurst and

Putnam (2004) put it, this “grounded in action” orientation asks: “How is the

‘organization’ anchored in … the durée or the continuous flow of discursive

conduct?” (p. 16). From this view, organizations are embodied in interaction,

textually and conversationally. This perspective has been developed in theo-

retical contributions (Cooren, 1999, 2000, 2001a, 2004a; Cooren & Taylor,

1997; Robichaud, 2001, 2006; Taylor, 1993, 1995, 2000; Taylor et al., 1996;Taylor & Cooren, 1997; Taylor et Van Every, 2000) and in a plethora of case

studies on, for example, the organization of coalitions (Cooren, 2001a), col-

laboration and facilitation processes (Cooren, Thompson, Canestraro, &

Bodor, 2006; Güney, 2006; Saludadez & Taylor, 2006), meetings (Castor &

Cooren, 2006; Katambwe & Taylor, 2006; Taylor & Robichaud, 2004, 2006),

humanitarian interventions (Cooren, Matte, Vasquez, & Taylor, 2007), com-

puterization processes (Taylor, Groleau, Heaton, & Van Every, 2001; Taylor &

Van Every, 1993), municipal administrations (Robichaud, 2003; Robichaud

et al., 2004), police interventions (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2004), leadership(Cooren & Fairhurst, 2002; Fairhurst, 2007b) and routine operations (Cooren,

Fox, Robichaud, & Talih, 2005; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009).

Empirical studies emanating from the Montreal School demonstrate the

embodied character of organizations, revealing their co-construction through

interaction “for another next first time” (Garfinkel, 2002)—or how phenom-

ena presumed structural entail predictable, formulaic, and institutionalized

(i.e., textual) and erratic, emergent, and negotiated (i.e., conversational)

dimensions of communication. For management studies, this work paradoxi-

cally shows, for example, how organizational inertia or routines are co-created

in situ, but also how their opposite—innovation and change—are textually

justified, yielding new “scripts” or templates for conversation. The two modal-

ities of communication are therefore irreducible, key not only to understand-

ing how organizations function, but also to managing them well.





Distilling a Communicational Explanation

In sum, the linguistic turn and associated rise of interpretivism in organiza-

tional communication studies activated the growth of CCO. Rising interestin the social construction of meaning sparked awareness that communica-

tion might play a more active role than previously granted in creating orga-

nizational realities. CCO thus emerged in various lines of response,

condensed in Table 1.1. In more subtle, indirect, or embedded ways, it devel-

oped in three literatures aimed at re-visioning organizational phenomena by

placing communication front and center: (a) interpretive approaches to

culture; (b) critical approaches to power; and (c) interpretive network theory.

CCO also developed more explicitly in two strands of CCO “proper” that

intervene in the structure–agency debate. Communication-based studies of (d) structuration theorize the central role(s) of communication in the struc-

turing process, revealing communication as a key site for the simultaneous

workings of structure and agency. Meanwhile, (e) the Montreal School

claims communication as the fundamental modality of constituting organi-

zation, transforming the analytical distinction between structure and agency

into a dialectic of text and conversation, “variant expressions for the same

reality” (Taylor et al., 1996, p. 28). Seeds of an equivalency metaphor can be

found in many of these strands, but the latter is most developed in this

regard.

It is worth pausing to take stock of communication as represented so far.

This review of CCO’s development substantiates our opening response to the

question: What is communication, anyway? It adds flesh to the diversity with

which communication scholars answer this question, ranging from message

exchange and face-to-face interaction among pairs and groups (e.g., empha-

sized in many network studies); to collective story-telling, ritual perfor-

mances, and interactive sense-making (e.g., stressed in many culture studies);

to goal-focused flows of discourse activity (e.g., as in recent structurationstudies); to mediated representations of organization (e.g., increasingly con-

sidered in critical studies and by the Montreal School). As even this abridged

array of options suggests, the container metaphor of communication contin-

ues to shatter. Communication as a phenomenon has developed from an

emphasis on people speaking and listening to include nonverbal, textual,

mediated, and virtual forms of interaction. In short, like the process of com-

municating through which it develops, the field’s understanding of what

“counts” as communication is contested and evolving. Nevertheless, it is safe

to elaborate our earlier “elastic consensus” with a definition that enjoys amplecontemporary support: Communication is the ongoing, dynamic, interactive

process of manipulating symbols toward the creation, maintenance, destruction,

and/or transformation of meanings, which are axial—not peripheral—to orga-

nizational existence and organizing phenomena. With its focus on symbols in





use, communication can be understood as always situated in space and time,

even when textual, mediated, or transpiring at a distance.

Later, we will modify this definition, but in order to establish the problem

prompting us to do so, we first weigh its implications for a communicationalexplanation of organizing. As Table 1.1 makes succinct, taking communica-

tion (as defined here) seriously means treating discursive struggle as a genera-

tive process. A communicative explanation is thus any account that hones our

understanding of how communication constitutes organizational reality, clar-

ifies how communication works as an organizing mechanism, or illuminates

communication (rather than, for instance, physical location) as the site of

organization.

But what can management studies glean from such accounts? After all, this

version of communication reflects the influence of select (OT and OB) man-agement scholars like Karl Weick. And arguably, the subfields of organizational

discourse (Grant, Keenoy, & Oswick, 1998; Grant et al., 2004), business dis-

course (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2009; Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1997), and OT

scholars like Chia (1999) and Tsoukas (2005; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002) are raising

parallel questions about how organizations come to be and treating organiza-

tions as discourse formations. We argue that organizational communication

offers something distinctive from these seemingly similar developments. For

instance, organizational discourse scholars tend not to study situated interac-tion per se, preferring an emphasis on what Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) call

Discourse (i.e., with a capital “D”—dominant narratives in wide cultural

circulation, which shape yet transcend the buzz of local activity, such as Dis-

courses of merit or poverty), or what Taylor and Van Every (2000) call the tex-

tual modality of communication. In some contrast, business discourse scholars

often focus on situated interaction (Boden, 1994), or what Alvesson and

Kärreman (2000) deem discourse (i.e., with a lower case “d”) and Taylor and

Van Every (2000) call the conversational modality of communication. With its

conception of communication, CCO scholarship demonstrates a capacity tohold together and account for the dynamic relation of both: the relatively dura-

ble, institutionalized, and translocal (i.e., Discourse, or the textual modality)

and the erratic, grounded, and local (i.e., discourse, or the conversational

modality) aspects of organizing (Barge & Fairhurst, 2008; Jian et al., 2008).

And yet, as long as communication remains in the realm of symbolic

activity, one burning question, especially pressing for management scholars,

persists: How can CCO account for the material aspects of organization?

Clearly, organizations exist not only when people invoke them in communica-

tion, but also in tangible architecture, artifacts, and technologies; the conduct

of tasks by actual bodies and machines; and so forth. However seductive,

reducing the constitution of organization to communication as defined here

runs the risk of naïve constructivism. After all, organizations are more than

what we say they are.





Refining the Contribution: CCO Confronts Materiality

As depicted thus far, communicative explanations exaggerate the muscle of

symbolism. To reach a wider audience, CCO must refute the nominalism (i.e.,the claim that reality is whatever we say it is) implied in such a charge. The

accusation that CCO ignores some solid base of existence harks back to

Enlightenment views, which initiated a dualism between the realms of

language/discourse and nature/economy (Kimball, 1986). John Locke, for

instance, regarded words as empty vessels hosting the “matter” of ideas,

whereas ideas exert power over the social world (Peters, 1999). Such views

linger in the transmission model reviewed earlier, as well as in the contempo-

rary bifurcation of talk and action (Craig, 1999; Marshak, 1998; Sturdy &

Fleming, 2003), which discredits communication as a tool lacking ontologicalstatus (i.e., “mere” talk, useless for explaining organization). The talk–action

split has become a major scholarly concern, mainly for this reason: If commu-

nication is truly tangential to “real” forces at work, then the hope of interven-

ing in organizational systems is limited at best. Simply put, if communication

is “immaterial”, then most of what managers do to guide organizations

(Gronn, 1983; Mintzberg, 1973, 1975) is all but pointless.

It follows that understanding the symbolic-material relation is a growing

imperative for management studies, not simply for communication theorists

(Cheney & Cloud, 2006). Adler and Borys (1993) argue that organization schol-

ars have long grappled with the relative influence of technological, economic,

ideational, political, and symbolic forces; but the debate becomes all the more

pressing as we contend with the modern realities of computerization, environ-

mental embeddedness, and the market. Evidence of the rising intensity lurks

across organization studies—in debates, for instance, about structure, power,

and discourse (Fleetwood, 2005; Fleetwood & Ackroyd, 2004; Mumby, 2005;

Reed, 2001, 2005; Willmott, 2005); contemporary worker identity and agency

(Czarniawska, 2006; Dale & Burrell, 2008; du Gay, 1996; Kuhn, 2006); and thenature of organization itself (Chia, 2003; Ford & Harding, 2004; Smith, 2001).

Contributors to such debates generally invoke materialism and idealism as

the schools of thought supporting their arguments. Materialists grant priority

to technical, economic, institutional, and physical factors driving organiza-

tional identities and goals. Here, materiality entails “brute facts” and “institu-

tional facts” (Searle, 1995) robust enough to oblige accommodation and resist

change efforts. Illustrative theories are those emphasizing economic forces

that shape firm strategy and growth (Foss, 1999; Penrose, 1959); those stress-

ing technological potency (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Heilbroner, 1967; Thompson,1967); and those associated with (post-)Marxist perspectives (e.g., contempo-

rary historical and dialectical materialism, as in Cloud, 2001, 2005). Through

a materialist lens, the talk–action split remains logical, as communication

seems epiphenomenal (Conrad, 2004; Reed, 2000, 2004).





In contrast, idealism stresses the influence of such human factors as lan-

guage, cognition, images, metaphors, and norms. Generally speaking, “sym-

bolic facts” are prioritized, not to exclude the material, but to assert that

discourse formations (i.e., shared systems of meaning that result from discur-sive struggle, akin to Discourse and/or the Montreal School’s textual modal-

ity) and “mental objects” are deeply relevant to understanding organization.

Scholarship aligned with idealism underscores, for example, the role of lin-

guistic and cognitive activity in forming organizational identities and images

(Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Hatch & Schultz, 1997), the organiza-

tion as a decision-making apparatus (Cyert & March, 1963; Deetz, 1992a), and

the formative impact of cultural values and practices (Hofstede, 1991; Kunda,

1992; Weeks & Galunic, 2003). From an idealist perspective, the division of

talk and action dissolves, and communication is seen not only to create theconditions of action, but as a form of action itself (i.e., “speech acts”, see

Gronn, 1983).

To be sure, stark renditions of materialism versus idealism are caricatures

that minimize debate within both “camps”,5 creating crude foils for contrast.

For example, one unfortunate legacy of articulating CCO in opposition to

functionalism is a symbolic slant so strong that it barely nods to the material

(Cloud, 2001, 2005). The next generation of CCO and management theory

demands more sophisticated treatment of the material–symbolic relation. Ourgoal in the remainder of the essay is to synthesize budding literatures that

chart such a path. To do so, we draw on emerging CCO as well as “CCO-

friendly” work in and beyond communication studies. Because we seek to

foster alliances rather than redraw disciplinary turf, we integrate literatures—

management studies included—that share CCO’s concern with transcending

tired dualisms like materialism and idealism, talk and action. We arrange our

review not in terms of field of origin, specific theories, or other well-worn

labels, but around three commonly cited material elements: (a) objects; (b)

sites; and (c) bodies. After clarifying nascent “post-dualistic” alternatives oneach of these, we pause once again—this time, to consider how taking materi-

ality seriously alters the definition of communication and what it means to

deliver a communicational explanation. Table 1.2 summarizes these efforts

and the promising points of contact they reveal between organizational com-

munication and management studies.

Objects

Clearly, materiality is experienced through the artifacts and technologies with

which we interact (Gagliardi, 1992; Gumbrecht, 2004). At the same time,

many organization scholars depict objects as tangible incarnations of culture

that capture and “carry” collective norms and values (Hatch, 1997; Keyton,

2005; Schein, 1990). In short, organizational objects have both material and

ideational qualities; and recent works in object studies have moved to unravel





T a b l e

1 .

2

G o i n g F o r w a r d w

i t h C C O : R e c e n t E f f o r t s t o

R e s t o r e M a t e r i a l A c c o u n t a b i l i t y t o

C o m m u n i c a t i o n

E m e r g i n g

C o n c e p t i o n o f C o m m u n i c a t i o n

• D e f i n i t i o n : t h

e o n g o i n g , s i t u a t e d , a n d e m

b o d i e d

p r o c e s s w

h e r e b y h u m a n a n d n o n - h u m

a n a g e n c i e s

i n t e r p e n e t r a t e i d

e a t i o n a n d m a t e r i a l i t y

t o w a r d r e a

l i t i e s t h a t a r e

t a n g i b l e a n d

a x i a l t o o r g a n i z a t i o n a l e x i s t e n c e a n d o r g a n i z i n g p h e n o m e n a

• C o m m u n i c a t i o n a l e x p l a n a t i o n : t h o s e

a c c o u n t s t h a t l o o k t o a

“ m a t e r i a l i z e d ” o r “ i n c a r n a t e d ” m o d e l o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n

( a s d e f i n e d a b o v e ) t o e x p l a i n o r g a n i z a t i o n

• R e l a t i v e e m p

h a s i s o n m a t e r i a l a n d i d e a t i o n a l

w o r l d s :

p r e s u m e s

t h e m u s c l e a n

d i n d i v i s i b i l i t y o f

b o t h ; t a k e s i n t e r e s t

i n t h e i r c o - c o n s t i t u t i o n r a t h e r

t h a n t h e i r

c o m p a r a t i v e w e i g h t

• R o o t m e t a p h o r o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n - o r g a n i z a t i o n r e l a t i o n s h i p

: E m e r g e n c e , o r t h e n o

t i o n t h a t o r g a n i z a t i o n c o n t i n u a l l y e

v o l v e s a n d s h o w s

“ i t s e l f ” i n c o m m

u n i c a t i o n

M a n i f e s t a t i o n

i n r e c e n t

C C O a n d a l l i e d

l i t e r a t u r e

E m e r g i n g p o s t - d u a l i s t i n s i g h t s

M a n a g e

m e n t – c o m m u n i c a t i o n c o l l a b

o r a t i o n :

s a

m p l e f u t u r e r e s e a r c h q u e s t i o

n s

O b j e c t s

O b j e c t s a r e c o m p o s e d o f e n t a n g l e d m a t e

r i a l a n d

i d e a t i o n a

l e l e m e n t s , w

h i c h d e v e l o p i n r

e l a t i o n t o

e a c h o t h e r t h r o u g h h u m a n - o b j e c t i n t e r

a c t i o n .

O b j e c t s c a

n b e s a i d t o a c t ; a g e n c y i s n o t a s o l e o r

d i s t i n g u i s h i n g h u m a n p r o p e r t y .

H o w d o v a

r i o u s a g e n c i e s ( h u m a n s , a r t i f a

c t s ,

m a c h i n e s

, t e x t s , e t c . ) c o n s t i t u t e o r g a n i z

a t i o n

t h r o u g h c

o - p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n c o m m u n i c a

t i o n ? H o w

a r e p a r t i c

u l a r a g e n c i e s i n v i t e d , o r h o w d o t h e y

a s s e r t t h e

m s e l v e s , i n o r g a n i z a t i o n a l

c o m m u n i c a t i o n ?

S i t e s

S i t e s s u p p l y “ i n f r a s t r u c t u r e ” t o c o m m u n

i c a t i o n ;

s i m u l t a n e o u s l y , c o m m u n i c a t i o n i n f l u e n c e s s i t e s

b y u t i l i z i n g t h e i r r e s o u r c e s i n c e r t a i n w

a y s .

A p p l i e d t o

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l k n o w l e d g e , s i t e r e s o u r c e s

a r e b o t h m e d i u m a n d o u t c o m e o f p r o b l e m -

s o l v i n g c o m m u n i c a t i o n . T

h e d y n a m i c s i t e –

c o m m u n

i c a t i o n r e l a t i o n s h i p c a n e x p l a i n

h e t e r o g e n e i t y i n k n o w i n g a n d r e f r a m e i t a s

g e n e r a t i v

e , f o r o u t o f h e t e r o g e n e i t y e m e r g e s

o r g a n i z a t i o n a l “ t e x t s ” t h a t s h a p e t h e c o

n t o u r s o f

s u b s e q u e

n t s i t u a t i o n s .

H o w d o e s

c o m m u n i c a t i o n i n v o k e t h e s o c i a l

m a t e r i a l i t y o f s i t e s t o c o n s t i t u t e k n o w l e

d g e

h e t e r o g e n

e i t y ? H o w d o c o m m u n i c a t i v e

r e s p o n s e s

t o p r o b l e m - s o l v i n g h e t e r o g e n e i t y ( a ) a c

c o m p l i s h

t h a t w h i c h i s t a k e n t o b e k n o w l e d g e i n a

g i v e n s i t e ;

a n d ( b ) g e n e r a t e c h a n g e i n t h e r e s o u r c e

s t h a t

d e f i n e o r g a n i z a t i o n a l s i t u a t i o n s ?





B o d i e s

M o r e t h a n

“ b r u t e f a c t s , ” b o d i e s a r e a l s o a p r o d u c t

o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n .

W e a k e r

c o n s t i t u t i v e c l a i m : C o m m u n i c a t i o n

e n a b l e s

w a y s o f e x p e r i e n c i n g t h e b o d y .

S t r o n g e

r c o n s t i t u t i v e c l a i m : C o m m u n

i c a t i o n c a n

t r a n s f o r m t h e b o d y ’ s p h y s i c a l i t y .

C o m m u n i c a t i o n i s c o n c u r r e n t l y c o n s t r a i n e d b y t h e

b o d y , w h

o s e “ b r u t e f a c t s ” c a n r e s i s t e f f o r t s t o

t r a n s f o r m

.

H o w i s t h e

b o d y – w o r k r e l a t i o n s h i p c o n s

t r u c t e d i n

o r g a n i z a t

i o n a l a n d o c c u p a t i o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n ,

a n d h o w d o t h e s e c o n s t r u c t i o n s o f t h e w o r k i n g

b o d y i n t e

r a c t w i t h o t h e r m a t e r i a l – i d e a t

i o n a l

r e a l i t i e s o

f w o r k ?





the dualism between these. Rafaeli and Vilnai-Yavetz (2004a, 2004b), for

example, claim that artifacts can be analyzed through multiple dimensions

(e.g., instrumentality, aesthetics, and symbolism) that stimulate diverse

emotional reactions as encountered. In their words, “Artifacts come to influ-ence individual behavior and attitudes toward organizations” (p. 681). A

related line of research considers organizational documents, such as memos

(Yates, 1989), checklists (Bazerman, 1997), work orders (Winsor, 2000),

records (Schryer, 1993), meeting minutes, and testing instruments (Holmer

Nadesan, 1996; Mehan, 1993). Textual objects function to coordinate and

control, for instance, remote work (Law, 1986; Yates, 1993), the classification

of (ab)normal members (Holmer Nadesan, 1996; Mehan, 1993), and public

accountability (Geisler, 2001). Extending Miller’s (1984) landmark essay on

genre as social action, such studies illustrate how organizational documentsparticipate in the accomplishment of action (Cooren, 2004a).

Turning to technology, Bechky (2003) analyzes how machines and related

documentation coordinate work by mediating relations and task boundaries

among occupational communities. As she puts it, “Artifacts, subject to inter-

pretation, participate in the constitution of the social dynamics in the organi-

zation” (p. 746). Other technology studies also reflect post-dualistic efforts,

particularly the work of structuration theorists like Orlikowski (1992, 1996,

2000) and scholars interested in technology adoption and use (e.g., Barley,1988; Ciborra, 2000). By demonstrating how rules, norms, and usage struc-

tures arise from user–machine interactions, such research illuminates “tech-

nology in practice” (Orlikowski, 2000).

And yet, even as these studies invite reconsideration of the material–ideal

dualism, many do not explicitly challenge it, and few if any transcend it.

Orlikowski (2007) grapples with this shortcoming, identifying two common

ways of orienting toward materiality. The first “largely disregards, downplays,

or takes for granted the materiality of organizations”, and thus, lacks consci-

entious “theorizing of the material artifacts, bodies, arrangements, andinfrastructures through which practices are performed. (p. 1436). A second

way—illustrated by her own past work and that addressing the adoption,

diffusion, and/or use of organizational technologies (Barley, 1988; Braverman,

1974; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991; Suchman, 1994; Zuboff, 1988)—highlights the

crucial role of materiality in organizing but suffers two key difficulties. First,

by depicting technologies as influential under certain circumstances, such stud-

ies depict material influence as “a special case, and this is problematic because

it loses sight of how every organizational practice is always bound with mate-

riality” (Orlikowski, 2007, p. 1436, original emphasis). The second difficulty

involves a “tendency to focus either on technology effects (a techno-centric per-

spective) or on interactions with technology (a human-centered perspective)”

(Orlikowski, 2007, p. 36, emphasis added)—or in our terms, a tendency to

reproduce the materialist–idealist dualism. In response, Orlikowski (2007)





draws on the work of several CCO-friendly theorists (Cooren et al., 2006; Knorr

Cetina, 1997; Latour, 2005; Law, 2004) to propose “constitutive entangle-

ment”—an invitation to theorize human–object influence relationally (Bechky,

2003; Robichaud, 2006) and “socio-materially”, a term she borrows from Mol(2002) and Suchman (2007), and to which we return in the next section.

For now, we briefly note the major implications of this work for the material–

ideational relation: namely, (a) objects are simultaneously material and

ideational; (b) these “facts” and “notions” develop in relation to one another

through human–object interaction; (c) objects can be said to act; hence, (d)

agency cannot be seen as a strictly human property. Transcending the materi-

alist–idealist dualism thus entails awareness of a plenum of organizational agen-

cies (Cooren, 2006). Applied to objects, this insight directs us to theorizeartifactual agency in human interaction (Orlikowski, 2007; Pickering, 1995).

Sure, managers use work orders to coordinate and control work, but equally vital

is how work orders facilitate their own appropriation (Cooren, 2004a, 2006).

Human-made or otherwise, organizational artifacts do things; their existence

and features guide interaction even as they also encapsulate past interactions.

Sites

Although management scholars have long acknowledged physical organiza-tion sites, they have done so in ways that mostly downplay materiality and/or

reinscribe the materialist–ideational dualism (for a recent review, see Elsbach

& Pratt (2008)). Consider the overwhelming emphasis on forces like culture

and politics in the research on inter-organizational differences in managerial

and organizational behavior. Particularly prolific is the work on cross-cultural

challenges for organizational interaction (Gannon & Newman, 2001), market-

ing and production (Jackson, 2000; McCall & Warrington, 1989), and corpo-

rate governance and strategy (Gourevitch & Shinn, 2005; Licht, 2001). In

these, important location-based differences are concentrated in the realm of the cultural and political while material components are largely ignored.

Material aspects of sites are also minimized in studies of cross-cultural team-

work in “virtual” environments, even as they ask how computer-mediated

communication bridges time and space (Lilley, Lightfoot, & Amaral, 2004;

Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000).

As the latter example hints, even research stressing other aspects of materi-

ality—ranging from the object studies reviewed previously to “shop-floor”

studies of the labor process (Braverman, 1974; Burawoy, 1979; Collinson,

1988; Edwards, 1979)—tend to treat organization site as an unproblematic

container. For example, analyses of contemporary service work often address

standardization techniques, employee performance, gender norms, wage

differentials, and cultural contradictions (Korczynski, Shire, Frenkel, & Tam,

2001; Pal & Buzzanell, 2007; Taylor, Hyman, Mulvey, & Bain, 2002) yet rarely





consider how the physical location of work shapes its conduct. Globalization

research, too, rarely weighs how specific organizational spaces influence pow-

ers of determination amid global capitalism, even as this work accentuates the

distribution of “(un)skilled” jobs around the world, the dispersion of Westernlegal-political norms, the (de)centralization of supply chains, and the impact

of NGOs (Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006; Parker & Clegg, 2006; Prasad & Emles,

2005). Overall, management and organization scholarship has done little to

theorize the materiality of physical sites, perpetuating a container metaphor or

treating place in ideational terms (Taylor & Spicer, 2007).

Recent work suggests that the tide is turning. A weaker form of material

consciousness can be found in studies of discursive practice “in” location.

Arguing for a more robust conception of context, Keenoy and Oswick (2003)

recommend focus on the “multiple locales” of discourse, such that physicalsettings are not static containers, but rather nodal points for the meeting of

several contexts. Here, a locale is “a site-specific combination of presences and

absences, a particular combination of physical resources, a specific conjunc-

tion of human artifacts and/or elements of the natural world, that serves to

enable and focus the interaction or activities in question” (Pred, 1990, p. 123).

Few have yet taken up this charge, but two illustrations stand out. Halford and

Leonard (2006) examine how spatial and temporal contexts condition the pro-

duction and reception of discourses among medical professions; and Kuhn(2006) analyzed the implications of geographical and material surround for

identity formation in contrasting spatio-cultural locations. Such work

strengthens the role of material place in discursive struggle but tends not to

clarify specific ways in which space and discourse become entangled.

A stronger material consciousness can be found in the work of Burrell and

Dale (Burrell & Dale, 2003a, 2003b; Dale & Burrell, 2003, 2008), who aim to

allow “for the material and the social to be constituted not merely as reflected

in and constrained by each other, but as mutually implicated elements of each

other (Keenoy, 2005, p. 679, original emphasis). Their social materiality modelholds that the physical world assumes cultural meaning and that human agency

and relations stem from and contribute to materiality. Drawing on Lefebvre

(1991), Dale (2005) contends that space is produced through physical and imag-

inary aspects of materiality, and this built environment fosters certain forms

of identity control. Analyzing a headquarters building designed to project

professionalism and availability for interaction, she shows how discourses of

flexibility and modes of communication interact with what the edifice affords.

Underlying such a model is a turn toward practice theory (and “activity

theory”) across the social sciences, specifically in management and organiza-

tion studies (e.g., Brown & Duguid, 1991, 2001; Lave & Wenger, 1991;

Reckwitz, 2002a, 2002b; Suchmann, 1996). In large part, this turn came about

when science and technology studies observed that laboratories uniquely

incubate innovation and preserve practices (Knorr Centina, 1999; Latour &





Woolgar, 1979; Pickering, 1995). Schatzki (2005) asserted a “site ontology”

that rejects dualisms, maintaining that sites and activities constitute one

another in and through practices. A practice, in turn, is a nexus of doings and

sayings that unfolds in time and is dispersed in space and dependent on mate-rial arrangements (Shatzki, 1996). The built environment is thus a potentially

important “anchor” for social practices (Swales, 1998; Swidler, 2001).

A practice-based ontology of site suggests four implications for the material–

ideational relation. First, (a) material place/space influences the resources

available for interaction and, thus, conditions agency. Agency is not about

determining the attributes of actors, but is instead about the constant

(re)negotiation of possibilities, such that material and human agencies keep

shaping one another in evolving space and time (Barad, 2003; Nardi, 2007;Orlikowski & Scott, 2008). CCO-friendly models of site probe the dynamics of

this mutual constitution in specific moments. Of course, this also means that,

(b), organizational place is never predetermined or finished (Halford, 2008);

rather, it is (re)created in interaction (Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004). The next

two implications stem from this dialectic.

A third implication is that (c) design supplies a meaningful “infrastructure”

to interaction. If sites and interaction are mutually determining, then atten-

tion to the engineering and use of built environments (Boland & Collopy,2004) is imperative to understanding how design “functions as a communica-

tive artifact around which communities of practice can negotiate their contri-

bution, their position, and their alignment” (Wenger, 1998: 235). Studies of

this sort could explain how human and non-human agents collide to generate

conditions of possibility once thought difficult, impossible, or unimagined

altogether (Aakhus, 2007).

Finally, (d) if sites are always (re)configured in interaction, it follows that

organizational boundaries are as well. What lies “inside” and “outside” orga-

nization is a longstanding concern for management scholars (Koza & Thoe-nig, 2003; Taylor, 2006), yet those rejecting facile borders have offered little

beyond acknowledgment that boundaries are “multiple” and “fuzzy” (Araujo,

Dubois, & Gedde, 2003; Heracleous, 2004; Oinas, 2006; Santos & Eisenhardt,

2005). This is not to say that CCO-friendly work already yields a novel

account of boundaries but, rather, that a practice-based approach shows

potential for advance on themes of keen interest to management studies.

Boundaries could capture the limits of social-material interaction, for

instance; like the sites they allegedly demarcate, they guide interaction and

remain open to contestation and change (Kuhn, 2008; Schatzki, 2005, 2006).

Bodies

It is not such a stretch to concede the dual presence of materiality and symbol-

ism in organizational objects and sites, for without social relations, both





would largely cease to exist in a very real sense. More readily perceptible as a

“brute fact” are the human bodies through which we work. As much as we

overlay them with meaning, bodies reject the say of symbolism with their

susceptibility to injury, illness, hunger, reproduction, aging, and death. Andyet, since early scientific management sought to predict and control labor

movements, interest in the body faded from management studies, replaced by

disembodied concerns with governance structures and institutional forms,

individual and social cognitions, and so on (Hassard, Holliday, & Willmott,

2000; Wolkowitz, 2006).

This is not to say that scholars of work neglect the body altogether.

Abundant literature on occupational health and safety, for instance, refutes

any such claim (Levenstein & Wooding, 1997; Williams 1999). Most of this

work investigates how the physical body is affected by labor policy and prac-tice. Management scholars have also attended to the body, albeit less directly,

for example, in research on gender and cultural diversity (Brief, 2008; Gatrell

& Swan, 2008). Here, bodies tend to be taken as a major indicator of variation

(e.g., in styles, values, and behaviors). The primary focus remains on such

dependent variables, while the body itself is reduced to a fixed independent

variable, such as sex, race-ethnicity, or national origin. In a different sort of

exception, scholars of knowledge work have recognized embodied forms of

expertise (Blackler, 1995), yet the overwhelming focus of this literature is onmental or codified knowledge abstracted from the body. Other examples

abound, but the point is made: management scholarship has not so much

interrogated the physical body as it has addressed the body implicitly or left its

study to those in affiliate fields (for recent exceptions, see Heaphy & Dutton

(2008), Judge & Cable (2004) and Sinclair (2005)).

Increasingly, organization scholars are challenging the resulting impres-

sion that “where the body is, work is not” (Wolkowitz, 2002, p. 498). Although

some of this scholarship retains a strong materialist view that stresses the

physical body (Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007; Judge & Cable, 2004; McKie & Watson, 2000), much of it emanates from studies in the CCO vein. On the

surface, this may seem counter-intuitive: Given the body’s evident place in the

realm of materiality, what can a symbolic lens bring to its study? One easy

answer, already implied by applications of social identity theory in manage-

ment studies (Whetten & Godfrey, 1998), might be that bodily features (like

gender, race, or attractiveness) are among the cues people use to cognitively

align self and others with particular in- and out-groups. Put another way,

physical features assume meaning and influence through their social coding,

and it is the mental and relational process of identification that lends order to

the body’s raw material resources.

Emerging CCO-friendly scholarship on the body would not wholly dis-

agree, but it would treat communication as generative of cognition (rather

than the reverse) and thereby alter the claim: Our knowledge of the body’s





meaning is born of interaction, which brings the material body to life—social

life, that is—and individual cognitions trans/form in the process. But the liter-

ature is also moving toward more sophisticated claims, wherein bodies evince

the materiality of communication. Communication has material force notonly because “speech acts”, but also because (a) it is an embodied process

situated in space and time; and (b) the physical body can be transformed

(phenomenologically and physically—seen, felt, manipulated differently) as a

result of communication. In the body, communication becomes “touchable”

in at least two senses: First, communication is an embodied act, even when

mediated or transpiring at a distance. Second, bodies literally “take shape”, at

least in part, through communication. In the latter sense, the body is not sim-

ply made sensible in talk and symbolism; it is the product of symbolism collid-

ing with various physical limitations. In contrast to enduring cultural faith inthe mind/body split, this view of the body shatters the dualism. The body

becomes a key site for the interpenetration of material and ideational worlds,

and communication is how that happens.

The most compelling illustrations of this view stem from a literature men-

tioned earlier: analyses of gender and power. In an early example, feminist

communication scholars theorized sexual harassment as a discursive struggle

not affixed to certain behaviors (Bingham, 1994). The realities of harassment

are constituted in communication, situated in the context of specific relation-ships, organizational cultures and politics, and broader Discourses (legal and

otherwise) of sex and power (Clair, 1993a, 1993b; Kramarae, 1992; Strine,

1992; Taylor & Conrad, 1992). Following this turn, scholars began to consider

sexuality at work as a unique blend of control, pleasure, resistance, and vio-

lence (Brewis & Grey, 1994; Burrell, 1992; Williams, Giuffre, & Dellinger,

1999; Witz, Halford, & Savage, 1996). In this view, organizational sexuality

and efforts to manage it are fundamentally communicative in character,

for they entail not so much physical consummation as collective negotiation

of bodily banter, expression, representation, and “legitimate” uses thereof (Gherardi, 1995).

A related literature examines how managerial and professional identity

work entails management of the body. Scholars have studied how organiza-

tional texts and conversations discipline feminized bodies in terms of age,

appearance, feeling, desire, and reproduction (Acker, 1990; Ashcraft, 1999;

Brewis, Hampton, & Linstead, 1997; Martin, 1990; Sheppard, 1989; Trethewey,

2000, 2001). This work documents how common norms of professionalism

cast women’s bodies as excessively emotional, sexual, and undisciplined

(Holmer Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000). Increasingly, scholars study embodi-

ments of masculinity in a range of organizational and occupational contexts

(Roper, 1996; Tracy & Scott, 2006; Wolkowitz, 2006). Much of this work

reflects poststructuralist influences, such as Foucauldian analyses of how orga-

nizational discourse yields “docile bodies” (Trethewey, 1999).





Stimulated by a different impetus—the rise of embodied sociology (Turner,

1996)—another line of research engages “body work” as a class of occupations

that service (as in beautify, pleasure, heal, care for) other people’s bodies

(Wolkowitz, 2002). These studies investigate how provider–client relationsand representations thereof (re)create the body, with material consequences

for the division of labor, health and aging, and discrimination. Emerging

research on aesthetic aspects of labor also aims to recover sensory/sensual

matters and to theorize organizational behavior as embodied investments

made in interaction rather than a product of cognitive attachments (Clair,

1998; Witz, Warhurst, & Nickson, 2003). Together, studies of the manage-

ment of sexuality and bodies, “body work”, and aesthetics of labor show how

communication generates real corporeal effects and how the body becomes

both resource for and resistance to organizational identities (Davies, 2003).Importantly, bodily elements of identity are not seen as “skin-deep” manifes-

tations of our cognitive and emotional worlds. On the contrary, the manage-

ment of appearances circumscribes our inner worlds (Witz et al., 2003).

For the relation of communication and materiality, CCO-friendly studies of the

body develop three important points, beyond confirmation that symbolic activ-

ity often targets material entities. First, these studies show that bodies are more

than “brute facts”. A weaker version of the claim holds that (a1) communicationcreates possible ways of experiencing the body; a stronger rendition asserts that

(a2) communication can transform the body, bearing new corporeal realities.

Both maintain that the body is a communicative product. Concurrently, CCO-

oriented studies illustrate how (b) the body’s “brute facts” resist efforts to

impose corporeal imagery onto actual bodies. In this sense, communication is

constrained by the body: Performances of identity are limited by physical

capacities; and all available options are not available to all people.

The dialectical relation (i.e., reciprocal influence) of these claims suggests a

final point: (c) communication belongs to neither the realm of the material northat of the ideational, despite its defensible claim to both. Instead, communi-

cation is the mechanism whereby the material and ideational co-mingle and

transform accordingly. In communication, symbol becomes material; material

becomes symbol; and neither stay the same as a result. Applied to the case of

bodies, it is insufficient to say that there are actual bodies and notions of bod-

ies, and that communication employs the former to express the latter. Rather,

in communication, ideas materialize in bodies in un/expected ways; ideas take

root or shift in response to bodily resistance; and bodies are experientially and

literally altered. Combining insights drawn from our discussion of objects and

sites, we can thus re-define communication as the ongoing, situated, and

embodied process whereby human and non-human agencies interpenetrate ide-

ation and materiality toward meanings that are tangible and axial to organiza-

tional existence and organizing phenomena. Put simply, communication means





grappling with the dual presence of material and symbolic elements. Commu-

nicative explanations are thus not another form of idealism; they account

for the dynamic interweaving of material and ideational worlds, as shown in

Table 1.2.

Beyond the Materialist-Idealist Dualism: Revisiting a Communicational Explanation

Whereas earlier, we weighed how taking communication seriously explains

organization, we consider now how taking materiality seriously challenges

communicational explanations (see summary of resulting shifts in Table 1.2).

Recent scholarship emanating from CCO and allied literature has begun to

recast the material as simultaneously symbolic/ideational in character.

Departing from dualistic models, these “both/and/more” perspectives treat

materiality and symbolism as concurrent, interdependent forms. In otherwords, “facts” and “notions” can never be entirely disentangled. Each is

already embedded in the other, and they develop—and so, can only be

known—in relation, through their evolving interaction.

From this vantage point, our earlier rendition of CCO as an explanatory

lens is not entirely wrong; it is just not entirely right. It is the case that organi-

zation transpires in symbolic activity, and it is valid to say that material

aspects of organizing become real (i.e., assume meaning and get altered) in the

process. Yet, the previous review makes clear that the meanings defining orga-nizational reality are not merely those in people’s heads; they are distributed

across a variety of material objects, locales, and bodies. Moreover, our capacity

to wield symbols is affected by non-human agents, not all of our own making.

Consequently, the symbolic–material relation and the plenum of agencies that

orchestrate it merit attention. As the Montreal School contends, people are

among the participants in the co-construction of reality, but other partici-

pants, hence the process itself, demand a fuller accounting (Cooren, 2006;

Cooren, Brummans, & Charrieras, 2008; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009). In this

light, it makes no sense to grant some agencies greater strength without exam-ining their actual interaction; it is not tenable to prioritize symbolic or mate-

rial forces in the abstract. Communication is the site of their interpenetration,

the process through which agencies collide to co-create realities.

This shift demands that scholars (re)constitute communication in a more

robust fashion, condensed in Table 1.2 and guided by the following premises:

(a) Communication is the site of organization, where the interplay of material

and ideational worlds is continually “real-ized”; (b) communication is how a

plenum of agencies meet; in other words, organizational order “materializes”

at the dynamic junction of objects, bodies, physical and spatial configurations,

economic and institutional imperatives, and Discourses; (c) primacy cannot be

granted a priori to any of these; agencies can only be known as they play out

in relation, in communication; (d) communication thus follows a logic of

emergence—a fourth root metaphor latent in the recent literature reviewed





here—in that it “articulates an ensemble of human technologies into a func-

tioning network of power… by distributing discourses, institutions, and pop-

ulations onto a field of action” (Greene, 1998, p. 22). (e) As this hints, and the

concluding section confirms, communication can always be evaluated in termsof moral concerns (Penman, 1992), for it is an inevitably political process.

“Materializing” the Contribution: Research that Activates Communication

in Management Studies

Of course, conceptual developments tend to prove more useful when made

tangible. We thus conclude with three empirical research streams—drawn

from our own work but applied to broadly shared agendas—that illustrate

how management scholars can actually take up with the materially conscious

CCO developed here and abridged in Table 1.2. For continuity, each proposalreturns, respectively, to a material–ideational fusion theorized earlier: objects,

sites, and bodies.

Proposal One: Objects, Presence, and Ventriloquism

As the Montreal School maintains, organizational encounters are not merely

human. We live in a plenum of agencies as we talk with co-workers, utilize

space, and operate technologies. The nonhuman agents among us can also be

said to communicate (as redefined in Table 1.2); thus, CCO asks how encoun-ters with such agents affects the emergence of specific organizational forms.

This interest challenges two premises prevalent in organization studies. First,

noted earlier, it asserts that humans and other living creatures do not own

action. For example, a contract is a “binding agreement between two or more

persons or parties” (Merriam Webster) that commits them to “performing, or

refraining from performing, some specified act(s) in exchange for lawful

considerations” (investorwords.com). Once signed, the document compels

people to certain behavior, and in this sense actually does something. Of

course, contracts never act alone (i.e., people have to mobilize them), but thisdoes not negate their action. To the extent that agency entails the potential to

make a difference (Latour, 2005), a contract can be considered a textual agent

precisely because it can be mobilized toward situational effects.

This brings us to the second challenge: accounting not only for the perfor-

mative aspects of organization (i.e., how it is accomplished), but also for its

recognitional dimensions (i.e., how it is identified as a legitimate actor). Thus

far, scholars have said more about the former than the latter (Chia, 1999;

Latour, 1991; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002). But we know that those seeking to act on

behalf of an organization are not necessarily authorized to do so; and the valid-

ity of their action is not defined simply by the agent but by others partaking in

the performance. Again, contracts provide a useful example. What exactly a

contract “forces” parties to do is inevitably defined in interaction, legal or

mundane (Fairhurst & Cooren, in press). This human activity of making





objects “speak”, or discerning what they are “already saying”—a kind of met-

aphorical ventriloquism (Cooren, 2008)—is vital to the constitution of an

organization. It is here that contracts, titles, machines, and other artifacts

achieve recognition as valid incarnations of organization. Through this lens,the choice between materialism and idealism is senseless, for communication

is not confined to human symbolic agency. It would be a mistake, for instance,

to reduce the agency of a contract to however humans invoke it. The materi-

ality of a document distinguishes the contract as an agent that can make a dif-

ference; and human appeals to it implicitly acknowledge this capacity (e.g.,

“That’s what the contract says; our hands are tied!”). Moreover, a contract can

resist human interpretations; it cannot be made to say anything, and in this

way, participates in defining reality. That it is subject to variable readings does

not distinguish it from what humans say and do (e.g., “That’s not what shemeant!”). We are always interpreting one another in the face of indefinite

meanings, yet this feature has never hindered claims of “obvious” human

agency.

The primary difference—and an important one—is that contracts and

other objects, by themselves, can neither describe their actions nor respond to

misinterpretation. In other words, nonhuman agents act largely through those

who mobilize their “intent”. A similar logic, of course, holds for organizations

or any unit (e.g., teams, nations) claiming to function as a whole: A collectivenot only speaks and acts but exists through its representatives, whether human

or nonhuman. We experience an organization as an entity—an “it”—when it

is made present through representatives and incarnations. In other words, “it”

is not an enigma, for “it” is constituted precisely by its recognized agents.

However circular this reasoning may seem, it reveals that an organization is

both symbolically made and materially real: “It” assumes meaning as agents

move on its behalf; and “it” becomes material as embodied in these very

agents. What, then, is Microsoft? It is the configuration of human and nonhu-

man representatives (e.g., products, websites, spokespersons, physical build-ings)—an intricate web of figures (thus, “con-figuration”). This does not make

Microsoft’s existence unproblematic, but it signals communication as the site

of battles over what Microsoft is and does. Studying communication as out-

lined in Table 1.2 is therefore crucial because it is always in interaction that an

organization becomes a being with agency.

Such an ontological stance paves the way for an original research agenda

that illuminates the question: How do various human and non-human agencies

constitute organization through co-participation in communication? Research

in this vein de-centers human actors, transcending the dualism of human

symbolic activity versus material imperative. In search of complex distinctions

among diverse forms of action and influence, such as that of various objects,

such research explores communication as the process through which human

and nonhuman figures collide to “(re)con-figure” organizational existence.





Proposal Two: Heterogeneous Knowledge and Knowing in Site

In most of the literature on knowledge and organizing, knowledge is perceived

to be a cognitive entity, a commodity possessed in tacit or explicit form (Maier,Prange, & von Rosenstiel, 2001). Accordingly, managerial imperatives are to

extract and transfer knowledge from one location to another, promote knowl-

edge sharing and accumulation through recording and training, and create

divisions of labor that enable seamless coordination (Nonaka, 1994; Walsh &

Ungson, 1991). In contrast, a practice-based CCO lens sees knowledge as an

attribution made about practice, not as a discrete entity. Analytical interest

thus shifts to processes of knowing—to the activity of problem-solving, which

is always embodied, embedded in sites, and connected to the material circum-

stances through which it emerges (Brown & Duguid, 2001; Bruni, Gherardi, & Parolin, 2007; Cook & Brown, 1999). This approach holds that work is not

so much interdependent lines of action among autonomous agents (e.g.,

Thompson, 1967) as it is ongoing problem-solving across intra-organizational

sites. Such dispersed activity may well lack coordination and work at cross-

purposes; in short, knowing is heterogeneous. Foregrounding communication

means exploring how the physical and symbolic features of sites become

resources for interactive problem-solving. In this sense, “knowledge heteroge-

neity” refers to divergent problem-solving approaches that arise from a situ-

ated blend of social and material constituents—in a call center, for example,

such elements as computing technologies, norms for handling calls, surveil-

lance systems and authority structures, occupational divisions, spatial separa-

tion and the built environment, economic pressures, and cultural differences.

The CCO argument, then, is that organizations are simultaneously located

in sites and are themselves comprised of myriad sites. Recognizing this directs

attention to how communication assembles site-specific social and material

elements in the act of problem-solving. Kuhn and Jackson’s (2008) communi-

cative model of knowing provides a useful research framework. This modelhighlights the interactive moves that “accomplish” (realize, claim, or invent)

knowledge, defined as a capacity to act in relation to organizational problems.

Knowing is thus about situated problem-solving. Responding to vague asser-

tions of “situatedness” in much of the practice-based literature, the model

maintains that sites offer variations on three key resources for (and claims

upon) action: identification, accountability, and legitimacy (Lazega, 1992).

These variations result from momentary configurations of material and ide-

ational features, and they become the basis for articulating local circumstances

with organizational and social structures. Drawing on data from a call center,Kuhn and Jackson empirically demonstrate how site-specific resource varia-

tions shape knowing, such that simple information transmissions are devel-

oped for situations deemed routine, whereas intricate improvisations emerge

in situations marked ambiguous. Although there are always many responses





to heterogeneity, it is likely to yield different resources for identification,

accountability, and legitimacy within particular situations.

But what does such a communicative view offer to management scholars?

Chiefly, it suggests that heterogeneity in knowing is not an organizationalproblem to be controlled and bounded by managers. Instead, it is generative—

the very source of knowledge accomplishment. To treat heterogeneity as such

is to acknowledge how difference becomes a resource for constructing judg-

ments of situational appropriateness, enabling or compelling actors to engage

in particular forms of knowing. Heterogeneity emerges in problem-solving

communication, and how actors use resources for identification, accountabil-

ity, and legitimacy can become a source of change in local practice (cf. Ford &

Ford, 1995).

Although this description provides a novel account of constituting knowl-edge, it says little about the constitution of the organization. But if we see the

representation of formal organization as a web of texts that become “satu-

rated” through encounters with other social and organizational texts (as in the

Montreal School and the nascent communicative theory of the firm; Kuhn,

2005, 2008), we also begin to see how heterogeneity can generate more than

change in local practice. In Kuhn and Jackson’s model, situational variations

produce “textualized” knowledge with the potential to exceed those situations

and become part of the sites—the social-material substrate, if you will—uponwhich organization unfolds. In other words, differences in symbolic–material

fusions across practice sites can create changes in the texts that constitute

organization. For instance, challenges of heterogeneity in call center problem-

solving can lead to reconfiguring space to facilitate interaction, spanning

organizational boundaries to “incorporate” needed knowledge (Bechky, 2003;

Carlile, 2002; Pentland, 1992), securing new technological fixes (Orlikowski &

Gash, 1994; Taylor et al., 2001), and tightening control over agents (Botan,

1996); and all of these responses proffer texts that influence subsequent con-

versation. In other words, the texts in organizational circulation (a) form thecontours of identification, legitimacy, and accountability; and (b) are affected

by the symbolic–material (i.e., the communicative) responses to heteroge-

neous problem-solving.

Consequently, key research questions that link communication and man-

agement interests include the following: How do the social and material

resources of sites come together in communication and with what implications

for heterogeneity in knowing? How does problem-solving interaction accomplish

that which is taken to be knowledge in a given site? How do communicative

responses to heterogeneity influence site resources for identification, legitimacy,

and accountability? Addressing these questions entails studying how situated

problem-solving communication confronts and actualizes the social-material

elements of a given site. Guided by particular concern for identification, legit-

imacy, and accountability, such studies could also enable cross-organizational





comparisons, as well as ethical evaluations of specific resource configurations

that come to define particular situations.

Proposal Three: Communicative Constitution of the Body and Economies of WorkEmerging research on the communicative constitution of the body, reviewed

earlier, accentuates work/ers already aligned with the body (e.g., managerial

and professional women; body work linked to women and gay men; “blue-

collar” and “dirty” labor). The resulting impression is that the material–

ideational body is more relevant to certain types of work/ers, while extraneous

to others. Missing are the (mostly male) bodies of executives and managers,

knowledge workers, and other professionals, as if these bodies are largely

peripheral to the work they perform. Ashcraft (2008) contests this premise by

showing how the “fact” of disembodied professionals is accomplished incommunication, as various maneuvers converge to erase the body from view.

Most organizational roles, she contends, require bodies to “live up” in some

way; and communication that makes the body disappear is just as much “body

work” as pacifying customers through flirtatious service. As Witz (2000, p. 20,

original emphasis) suggests, bringing the body back into management studies

entails asking “whose body never appeared to matter”, and how was that

erasure achieved?

But how are such omissions consequential for management studies?Drawing on Ashcraft’s (2008) synthesis of related research, we submit that

work is to a great extent known by its relation to the body. Specifically, the

nature, difficulty, and worth of tasks are assessed in large part on (a) the extent

to which and how the body is involved; and (b) the particular bodies with

which they are associated. Empirical evidence abounds. Much of this work

conceives of the body in fairly materialist, or what might be called “weak”

idealist, ways—for instance, where the habitual coding of anatomy (e.g., sex

categories) or other physical and/or hereditary markers (e.g., race categories)

are of primary interest. Scholars have found that skill classifications, wages,degree of autonomy and supervision, and assessments of knowledge complex-

ity revolve more around the race and gender profile of workers than other

factors (Charles & Grusky, 2004; Phillips & Taylor, 1980; Tomaskovic-Devey,

1993; Weeden, 2002). Joining the fray, idealist perspectives have also begun to

document how bodily symbolism is manipulated to secure elite professional

standing (Kirkham & Loft, 1993; for a fuller review, see Ashcraft (2006b)).

Such findings from a profuse and growing interdisciplinary literature dem-

onstrate how work is configured around the body. Succinctly, the physical and

symbolic “bodies of work” significantly influence the organization and econ-

omy of work. If management theory continues to proceed as if cultural

notions and concrete arrangements of knowledge, skill, and task are divorced

from the bodies performing them, it will misrecognize the fundamental char-

acter of work as a phenomenon independent of the body.





Still hotly contested is how the work–body relation is constituted. For

decades, scholars have clung to materialist-leaning explanations, where eco-

nomic and institutional forces are buttressed by cultural-political (e.g., patri-

archal) support (Bielby, 1991; Blackburn, Browne, Brooks, & Jarman, 2002;Hakim, 1992; Witz, 1992). As stronger idealist accounts have entered the debate,

scholars have disputed “chicken and egg”: whether cultural norms collide with

inherent task features to summon certain bodies (Charles & Grusky, 2004), or

whether the initial occupants of a job lead to the gender- and race-typing of its

tasks (Hearn, 1982; Phillips & Taylor, 1980). A communicative explanation

rejects this version of the materialist–idealist dualism, treating the work–body

link instead as an indeterminate relation negotiated in communication. What

bodies “logically” or “naturally” align with work is never self-evident; neither

is it a matter of economic, institutional, or even cultural destiny. Rather, thework–body relation is more or less “up for grabs”, and communication is the

site of that struggle, the process whereby agencies vie to create specific

articulations of material–ideational “bodies that work” (Ashcraft, 2008).

This communication explanation can be illustrated with the case of US

commercial airline pilots (Ashcraft, 2007; Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004). Today,

we might assume that flying readily aligned with white upper-middle-class

men due to task properties, military associations, and gender norms. But by

the late 1920s, both men and women were flying in the public eye. Dominantimages of male pilots (e.g., “intrepid birdmen” of air shows, airmail fliers) put

the pilot’s body on display, garnering adoration for his physical prowess but

also fear of flight as the hobby of supermen (Corn, 1979; Hopkins, 1998). The

general aviation industry countered with the “ladybird” image, personified by

Amelia Earhart and a sizeable cohort of female pilots. Promoters asked “lady-

fliers” to act in a hyper-feminine fashion, for the point was to shame men into

flying (“If she can do it…”; Corn, 1979). But the ladybird’s popularity in the

mid-1920s unleashed surprising turns. Some mused whether flying was

women’s work; and constructions of flying ranged wildly, from physically andtechnically demanding labor to a graceful, intuitive, artistic pastime. The com-

mercial aviation industry intervened in this sea of images. Reacting to dismal

ticket sales, airlines and the budding pilot union joined forces in the late 1920s,

assuaging an anxious public by converting the pilot into a dependable profes-

sional. His full-body makeover minimized physicality with the cloak of profes-

sional regalia (based on a ship’s captain)—an officer’s uniform complete with

rank symbols, a technical navigation kit, and an intercom system blaring the

invisible voice of authority (Hopkins, 1998). Against the body of the ladybird,

the airline pilot was reborn as a disembodied—and thus, a knowledgeable,

reliable—professional. The communicative dust had mostly settled by the mid-

1930s, well before WWII brought a significant influx of military-trained pilots.

As this example attests, neither the bodies initially doing the work nor cul-

tural coding of innate task content adequately explains the case of airline





pilots. Neither did material forces (e.g., labor supply) precede discursive strug-

gle over the pilot’s body and labor. As communication constructs the work–

body relation, it activates ideational–material hybrids (e.g., the professional

airline pilot) that enable other economic, institutional, and cultural realities totake root. Here, we see a communicative explanation of professionalization,

occupational segregation, and their intersection (Ashcraft, 2008). This exam-

ple extends our earlier claim that communication entwines and thereby trans-

forms the material–ideational body: Chiefly, it shows how the communicative

constitution of the body (a) engenders work/organizational effects (e.g., pro-

fessionalization); and (b) responds to previous ways that communication has

entangled the material and ideational (e.g., Discourse of hazardous flight

based on pilot image and accident reports). In so doing, it sparks a novel

research question aimed at the mutual interests of management and commu-nication scholars: How is the work–body relation constructed, and how does

this interact with other realities of work? Faith in the disembodied professional

has long eclipsed such lines of inquiry, exhibiting—if nothing else—the power

of communication to generate “facts” even scholars take for granted.

Conclusion

This essay “materialized” organizational communication in three ways. First,

it offered a tangible description of the field of study in order to enhance itsfamiliarity to a North American management studies audience. Specifically,

we traced a major contribution of our literature: constitutive models of

communication. Second, the essay developed the relevance of this contribu-

tion for management studies by engaging constitutive models with recent

research on the materiality of organizing. Along the way, as captured in the

shift from Table 1.1 to Table 1.2, our understanding of communication

evolved: from a focus on symbols-in-use to the ways in which manipulating

symbols at once involves materiality. In particular, our definition changed

from “the creation, maintenance, destruction, and/or transformation of mean-ings” that constitute organizational realities (Table 1.1) to the process whereby

“human and non-human agencies interpenetrate ideation and materiality

toward meanings that are tangible and axial” to organizational existence

(Table 1.2). The character of a communicational explanation of organizing

also shifted accordingly: from those that (over)emphasize the might of

symbolic activity (Table 1.1) to those that treat communication as the meeting

of material and ideational worlds (Table 1.2). From the latter view, communi-

cation is where and how “things” (i.e., notions and facts of many kinds) are

interwoven and (re-)configured by concrete agents toward various practical

ends. Ultimately, the recent shifts charted here position the study of commu-

nication as integral to theorizing organization at the emerging intersection of

social and material forces. Finally, the essay “materialized” organizational

communication by rendering these conceptual developments empirically





accessible. Our three proposed research trajectories—abridged here as

“(re)presenting objects”, “knowing sites”, and “working bodies”—illustrate

paths through which management and communication scholars might

converge around shared interests. In the spirit of exchange that guides theessay, we look forward to hearing other alternatives. After all, as communica-

tion scholars, we should recognize our turn to listen.

Endnotes

1. For a notable exception, see the work of many “business discourse” scholars (e.g.,

Bargiela-Chiappini, 2009), referenced again later.

2. Miller (2005), for example, identifies numerous definitions of communication

debated over time (see especially Chapter 1, Table 1.1).

3. Such a claim resembles Dewey’s (1916/1944) conception of society as existing in

communication.

4. For a critique, see Taylor (2009).

5. For example, while the “materialism versus idealism” frame joins OB and organi-

zational communication scholarship in the idealist camp, one can readily imagine

a lively debate between these subfields about the relative role and weight of cogni-

tion and communication.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Gail Fairhurst, Linda Putnam, and James Taylor

for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of this essay. Thank you also

to the Annals editors, Art Brief and Jim Walsh, for their excellent remarks.

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