Organization as Communication

Perspectives in Dialogue

Steffen Blaschke, Dennis Schoeneborn, Steffen Blaschke, Dennis Schoeneborn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317228547
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The idea that communication constitutes organization (CCO) provides a unique perspective to organization studies by highlighting the fundamental and formative role of communication for organizational phenomena of various kinds. The book features original works that address the idea of organization as communication in the light of other theories, related concepts, as well as the tension between strategy and emergence. The first set of chapters discusses the idea of organization communication in the light of critical works of European scholars (Habermas, Honneth, and Günther). The second set of chapters reflects on a range of concepts such as institutions, routines, and leadership from a CCO perspective. The final set of chapters examines the tension between strategic and emergent communication by drawing on new methodology and empirical evidence.

The chapters are set into dialogue with some of the most prominent proponents of CCO scholarship. The book offers an important contribution to CCO thinking by adding European perspectives on organization as communication. It connects the primarily North American approach and European traditions of theoretical thought to existing debates in communication and organization studies.

Part III
Organization as Strategic Versus Emergent Communication

9
Organization as Communication and Corporate Communication: Contributions from Relational Sociology

Peter Winkler and Stefan Wehmeier

In the last few years, a growing number of European corporate communication scholars (e. g., Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011; Christensen, Morsing, & Cheney, 2008; Schoeneborn & Trittin, 2013; Schoeneborn & Wehmeier, 2014; Wehmeier & Winkler, 2013) show effort to systematically introduce the idea of a communicative constitution of organization (CCO; for overviews, see Brummans, Cooren, Robichaud, & Taylor, 2014; Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen, & Clark, 2011; Schoeneborn et al., 2014) to their field of research. Analytically, three questions are of core interest. First, how can the restricted managerial view on corporations as unitary and integrated actors be expanded by CCO thinking? Second, how can the managerial idea of sender-centered control be informed by relational CCO thinking? And third, how can prescriptive corporate communication research be empirically enriched by CCO methods?

In the first section of this chapter, we briefly sketch central contributions of CCO scholars to the three questions mentioned above. We then argue that these contributions nonetheless pose new challenges to corporate communication research. First, this concerns a systematic explanation of the interplay between managerial unitary and situated polyphonic representations of corporate identity (Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011). Second, this affects the question of how corporations, though communicatively constituted in a multitude of relations, are nonetheless able to draw self-referential boundaries (Luhmann, 2003). And finally, this concerns the empirical problem of “scaling up,” which strives for explanation how full-fledged organizations emerge out of single communication episodes (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2009).

In the last section of this chapter, we introduce a young transatlantic school of relational sociology (Fuhse & Mützel, 2010) that contributes to the challenges mentioned above an alternative, broader angle on questions of social identity, control, and methodology. It combines the network sociology of White (2008) with Luhmann’s (1995) theory of social systems, and—like CCO thinking, but on a more general level—it follows the presumption that all social formations emerge out of communication. Furthermore, it introduces a non-essentialist perspective on identity and control as co-constitutive relational concepts all social formations emerge from. And finally, it combines the methodological repertoire of narrative and social network analysis to explain both the communicative emergence as well as scaling up of social identities from the very micro level of encounters to more enduring formations such as relationships, networks, and organizations. CCO-inspired corporate communication research may thus benefit from a closer examination of relational sociology in two ways. On the one hand, it highlights parallels between organizations and other social formations with respect to questions of the communicative constitution of identity, control, and scaling up. On the other hand, this comparative angle furthermore explains not only that communication is constitutive but also what communication is constitutive for organization.

Contributions of CCO Thinking to Corporate Identity, Control, and Methodology

One central critique of CCO-inspired scholars concerns the fact that the managerial idea of corporate identity is still dominated by a concept of organization as unitary actor (Christensen & Askegaard, 2001; Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011; Christensen, Morsing, & Cheney, 2008). Classic corporate communication approaches refer to a specific mode of organizational self-description, which Cornelissen (2008b) calls “metaphor-from-metonomy,” where each part of the organization strives to represent the organization as a whole. Such unitary conceptions of corporate identity do not only support managerial self-seduction (Christensen & Cheney, 2000) in terms of encouraging the belief in a coherent corporate identity. They are also pervasive in the public perception of corporations because stakeholders, too, tend to refer to organizations as unitary actors with holistic identity traits (Cohen & Basu, 1987). Finally, such unitary concepts of corporate identity have direct managerial impact. This can be best observed in approaches of integrated communication (Bruhn, 1995; Duncan & Caywood, 1996; Kliatchko, 2008; D. E. Schultz, 1996) that plea for alignment of all corporate communication departments, messages, and symbols under a single overarching communication function in order to provide corporate consistency, clarity, continuity, and coherence.

CCO-inspired scholars challenge both the assumption of organization as a unitary actor as well as the necessity of formal integration of all communication activities, pointing at severe organizational consequences, like loss of flexibility and creativity as well as an increase of deviant behavior (Christensen, Morsing, & Cheney, 2008). Alternatively, and in line with CCO thinking, they call for an understanding of organizations as polyphonic networks of communication (Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011; Christensen, Morsing, & Thyssen, 2010). This implies that managers should not only accept organizations as necessarily constituted by a multiplicity of voices, but they should also learn to appreciate and foster the increase of situational adaptability and flexibility arising from such a perspective. Along these lines, the idea of full communicative integration in terms of consistency, clarity, continuity, and coherence is put in question. Rather, CCO-inspired scholars advice to give back autonomy to local communication teams and not to neglect but to embrace communicative ambiguity, as it allows for situational interpretation and thus higher adaptability to environmental demands (Christensen, Firat, & Cornelissen, 2009; Christensen, Firat, & Torp, 2008; Christensen, Torp, & Firat, 2005).

Besides corporate identity, CCO-inspired scholars also challenge the idea of corporate control over communication. They point out that established communication models in the field of corporate communication still predominantly rest upon the so called “transmission” or “conduit” metaphor, which describes communication as a sender-centered, linear, and unidirectional process (Axley, 1984; Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011; Schoeneborn & Trittin, 2013; Schoeneborn & Wehmeier, 2014).

Again, this metaphor does not only serve as successful form of managerial self-seduction, as it encourages the idea of centralized control over all corporate communication activities. It also has direct impact on the way how classic corporate communication literature approaches corporate relations. Empirical investigation of such relations is rare (Wehmeier, 2012; Wehmeier & Winkler, 2013). Rather, the focus is on prescriptive models how such relations should be designed and controlled in order to perform most effectively and efficiently. This is especially true for the discussion of external relations. Approaches such as the situational theory of publics (Grunig, 1997; Grunig, Grunig, & Dozier, 2002), the stakeholder salience model (Agle, Mitchell, & Sonnenfeld, 1999; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997), or the power-interest matrix (Cornelissen, 2008a) do not focus on an empirical analysis of the communication between stakeholders and organizations. They give prescriptive advice on how to monitor, prioritize, approach, and evaluate external stakeholders most efficiently and sustainably.

CCO-inspired scholars fundamentally challenge these presumptions. First of all, classic managerial assumptions concerning the sender-centricity and one-directionality of communication are regarded as indefensible. Organizations are rather constituted by heterogeneous and partly dissonant communicative relations (Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011; Schoeneborn & Trittin, 2013). Accordingly, communicative control is also perceived as a precarious, relational endeavor, not a stable, linear process.

As most of CCO research is still focused on intra-organizational communication, CCO-inspired corporate communication scholars predominantly draw on internal processes, like management and leadership, teamwork, organizational learning, and culture (Cheney, Christensen, Zorn, Ganesh, & Lair, 2010; Eisenberg, Goodall, & Trethewey, 2010) when addressing the relational negotiation of corporate control. However, in recent publications, CCO scholars also focus on negotiation processes between corporate and external actors (Koschmann, Kuhn, & Pfarrer, 2012; Kuhn, 2008). This opens up fruitful perspectives for corporate communication research.

The perspective thus shifts to organizational boundaries, which in classic management thinking are regarded as formally determined by corporate goals, property, or membership. In CCO thinking, however, organizational boundaries are regarded as an ongoing negotiation process, turning around the question to what extent internal but also external actors are authorized to talk, decide, and act in behalf of the organization (Taylor & van Every, 2014). Such questions are not only of academic interest, but they have practical relevance when thinking of increasing stakeholder participation in the fields of social-media communication or the communication of corporate social responsibility (Capriotti, 2011; Christensen et al., 2010; F. Schultz & Wehmeier, 2010).

Furthermore, a relational perspective on corporate control also addresses a phenomenon that Christensen, Morsing, and Thyssen (2013) label as “aspirational talk.” It describes situations in which corporations, in order to maintain public legitimacy, anticipate so-far unfulfilled public expectations and address them in their external communication. Yet, such “aspirational talk” is not necessarily to be condemned as avoidable hypocrisy (Christensen & Langer, 2009). Rather, hypocritical gaps between corporate talk, decision, and action (Brunsson, 2003a, 2003b) extend the effective corporate scope and enable aspirational talk to influence future decision and action. We are thus confronted with a very specific relational control scenario where the communicative anticipation of environmental expectations has impact on the future development of the corporation as such.

Besides contributions to corporate identity and control, we have recently stated possible methodological contributions of CCO thinking to PR research (Wehmeier & Winkler, 2013). These reflections apple to corporate communication research in more general terms.

Classic corporate communication research follows a praxeologic agenda. That is to say, it primarily focuses on providing adequate management tools to practitioners. Accordingly, the primary empirical focus is on prescriptive research methods such as large-scale quantitative management surveys or best-practice studies. The consequences for corporate communication research are quite restrictive. On the one hand, it entails the problem that much of the research does not study corporate communication in its very empirical emergence. Rather, it either investigates how managers believe that communication should look like, or, in case of best-practice studies, it evaluates ex-post what is to be considered as successful communication practice. On the other hand, it also restricts the academic virtue of corporate communication research to what Aristotle (2000) labeled as techne, that is, instrumental rationality in solving well-defined practical problems. CCO research, in turn, employs another recently re-introduced Aristotelian virtue, phronesis (Flyvbjerg, 2001), which strives for context-sensitive practical wisdom. Following CCO thinking, the focus of corporate communication research shifts from the prescription (techne) to the explanation (phronesis) of the “communicative mechanisms that come into play to sustain and reconstruct the organization in and through its daily practices” (Taylor & van Every, 2011, p. 242). This shift also widens the methodological repertoire of corporate communication research and allow for an integration of ethnographic studies and respective methods (e. g., narrative inquiry, discourse, and conversation analysis; see Robichaud, Giroux, & Taylor, 2004). Finally, such methods loosen corporate communications’ pre-determined focus on organizational benefit and help to develop a more balanced and context-sensitive perspective on the multiple authority claims at stake, which then clarify the interpretative standpoint and agenda of researchers (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009).

A CCO-inspired view thus introduces fruitful new perspectives to classic managerial approaches to corporate identity, control, and methodology. Table 9.1 contrasts crucial differences between the classic corporate communication and the CCO-inspired view.

Table 9.1 Differences Between the Classic View and a CCO-Inspired View on Corporate Communication

Issue	Classic View	CCO-Inspired View
Identity	Unitary, integrated	Polyphonic, ambiguous
Control	Sender-centered, linear	Relational, precarious
Methodology	Prescriptive, instrumental techne	Explorative, reflective phronesis

New Challenges

Confronting the classic view on corporate communication with CCO thinking obviously bears analytic value. It contests established beliefs and routines and opens up new, at the beginning probably counter-intuitive, but subsequently inspiring perspectives. However, it is also evident that corporate communication research cannot approach the two contrasted views as a dichotomous either-or question. Rather, the real challenge of strengthening ties between corporate communication research and CCO thinking lies ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• I Organization as Communication in the Light of Other Theories
• II Organization as Communication and Related Concepts: Institutions, Routines, Leadership
• III Organization as Strategic Versus Emergent Communication
• IV Epilogue
• Index