Communication as Organizing

Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation

Francois Cooren, James R. Taylor, Elizabeth J. Van Every

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136683763
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

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

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

François Cooren
James R. Taylor
Université de Montréal

Elizabeth J. Van Every
Montréal

In analyzing the conceptual foundations of organizational communication research, Deetz (2001) observed that “gradually, since the early 1980s, scholars in communication departments as well as a large number of non-U.S. scholars and some scholars from other academic units have focused on organizations as complex discursive formations where discursive practices are both ‘in’ organizations and productive of them” (pp. 5–6). One logical implication of this shift, he pointed out, is that the production of the field as an academic discipline—and indeed organizational communication as a distinct phenomenon that merits our attention—is itself a discursive accomplishment. Sauce for the goose, he is saying, is sauce for the gander. We have to come to terms with the need to look at ourselves as a domain of organizing and accounting in the same way—through the same lens—as we do for the object we are studying, organizations.

He then argued that, when we make this move, the academic field of organizational communication could be seen as divided into contrasting research orientations, depending on whether the emphasis is primarily on (a) consensus or dissensus, and (b) “élite/a priori” or “local/emergent” constitutive processes of organizing. Deetz (2001) then identified four resulting tendencies (it would be an exaggeration to call them more than that): (a) interpretive (premodern, traditional), (b) normative (modern, progressive), (c) critical (late modern, reformist), and (d) dialogic (postmodern, deconstructionist).

One could quibble with the classification scheme but a cursory scan of the current literature would suggest that Deetz was on to something. Corman and Poole (2000), for example, organized the chapters of their edited collection of essays by themes of interpretive, postpositivist, and critical. If we retain “critical” and “interpretive” and equate “postpositivist” to “normative” then three of Deetz’s (2001) categories appear. On closer reading, however, it turns out that none of the authors invited to explicate the categories are very comfortable with them: The borders between them, they argue, are too fuzzy. Taylor, Flanagin, Cheney, and Seibold (2001), while “lamenting the resulting lack of a clear disciplinary identity” (p. 115), also echoed some of Deetz’s categories in their listing of emphases of research: ethnographically oriented, focused on rhetoric and narrativity, critical and feminist approaches. However, they too emphasize the “permeability and the ready receptiveness to ideas” that they see as characteristic of the field. May and Mumby (2005) equally noted the current “paradigm proliferation” (p. 8). They identified no fewer than six dominant perspectives that both echo and extend Deetz’s list: post-positivism, social constructionism, the rhetorical tradition, critical theory, postmodernism, and feminism. Miller (2002), for her part, reinforced the idea that the field is “highly interdisciplinary, both in its roots and in the resources drawn on in current research” (p. 196), but she developed a different classification scheme based, like Putnam, Phillips and Chapman (1996), on contrasting metaphors of the relation of communication to organization.

We undertook the writing of this book with a different idea in mind. What is missing in the current literature, we believe, is a synthesis within which these contrasting streams of reflection on the communicative basis of organizing—and the science of organization—are seen to be complementary dimensions of a single problematic, rather than somewhat awkward partners, if not, for the most part, competitors.

This volume attempts to address this gap. It is based on one elementary idea, that organization emerges in the interplay of two interrelated spaces: the textual-conceptual world of ideas and interpretations and the practical world of an object-oriented conversation directed to action. To adopt this position, however, is to supercede the kind of divisive categorization Deetz proposed.

Consider the first of his dimensions: consensus–dissensus. Scholars, he argued, can be grouped according to whether they see the organization as essentially consensual or dissensual. An emphasis on consensus is consistent with notions of coordination, centralized planning and strategy, conflict resolution, socialization of employees, training, reward systems, and, ultimately, in a recent manifestation, reengineering. It is a conservative image, emphasizing tradition and rationality. An emphasis on dissensus, on the contrary, assumes that “struggle, conflict and tensions” are the “natural state” of organization (Deetz, 2001, p. 15). It highlights, and aims to develop a consciousness of, “suppression of basic conflicts” and “domination of people.”

As the reader will discover, the chapters of this book present a very different picture of organizational work, one that assumes communication to be the route to the establishment of both consensus and dissensus. We see cooperation and collaboration, on the one hand, and conflict, tension, and domination, on the other, as co-present elements in the organizational experience, and a consequence of how communication really works.

Deetz’s system of classification assumes an either/or logic. Our emphasis in this book is on both/and thinking. Güney (chap. 2, this volume) uses her ethnographic research to illustrate the tension that develops in a very large high-tech company when distinct, although in principle complementary, development teams collaborate to develop a new product. Consensus and dissensus are so intertwined that it is hard to separate the threads. Saludadez and Taylor (chap. 3, this volume) present evidence of the same contradictory pressures in interdisciplinary teams of scientists, working in Southeast Asia. Katambwe and Taylor (chap. 4, this volume) go even further in their chapter, arguing that both consensus and dissensus are indispensable to the life of the organization. Both, they claim, must be constructed in communication. They develop an analysis of a filmed record of managerial interaction to illustrate how what they call association and dissociation emerge out of communication and why both may be essential to the continued vitality of the organization.

The conventional consensus–dissensus dichotomy may seem logically inescapable to the extent that we are limited to two-person interaction. The two either agree or disagree (the relationship is bipolar, although perhaps multidimensional). However, the moment a third person is taken into account, consensus and dissensus may be simultaneously present. Caplow (1968), in fact, argued that this ambivalent outcome is inevitable in triads. As he observed, the most significant property of a triad “is its tendency to divide into a coalition of two members against the third” (p. 2). If, as he believed, “triads are the building blocks of which all social organizations are constructed,” then all forms of complex organization will inevitably be characterized by both consensus and dissensus. Even in congregations of many members, all participating in the same discussion, as Katambwe and Taylor show, interaction patterns resolve to the triadic form—I (first person, or speaker); you (second person, or targeted listener); and he, she, or they (third person, or to whom they are referring).

The resulting image of organizational interaction is of an essentially fluid and open-ended process of organizing, in which inherited positions of strength are exploited creatively by the participants. Structure is certainly present, built into the context, but it is also emergent. As coalitions form and dissolve so does the configuration of power (Groleau, chap. 9, this volume; Taylor & Cooren, chap. 7, this volume).

Similarly with Deetz’s second dimension: élite/a priori versus local/emergent. The researcher, he claimed, can either begin by thinking of the organization as an established patterning of interaction that reflects preexisting codes, rules, cultures, and hierarchies of influence, power, and wealth (it is “a priori”) or as a spontaneous organizing that unfolds continuously in the local communication activities of people (it is “emergent”).

The authors in this volume once again go beyond the either/or assumption implicit in Deetz’s scheme to adopt both/and thinking. Groleau observes contradictory pressures in every activity system, underpinning a dialectic of transformation and change, on the one hand, and systemic continuity, on the other. Taylor and Cooren discover in the recorded conversation of an ordinary organizational transaction both the shadow of the a priori, established understandings of social roles and, simultaneously, the emergence of local and emergent patterning of interaction.

TOWARD A PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHY OF RESEARCH

In another respect, however, the authors in this volume take Deetz’s cautionary remarks very much to heart, when he observed that we must apply the same lens to analyze ourselves as a research community as the one we adopt for the organizations we study. If there is one principle that all those who have participated in the preparation of this volume share, it is that communication is not simply information transmission, nor the neutral conveyance of observations and ideas. Communication is about acting—having an effect—fully as much as all the other purposive activities in which we engage as human beings (Cooren, chap. 5, this volume; Robichaud, chap. 6, this volume). This principle is vividly illustrated in several chapters (Güney, chap. 2, this volume; Katambwe & Taylor, chap. 4, this volume; Saludadez & Taylor, chap. 3, this volume; Taylor & Cooren, chap. 7; Varey, chap. 10). As Brummans (chap. 11, this volume) observes, the scientific community is never merely a network for the dissemination of the results of findings. It, too, is an arena where ambitions are realized, and competing ideological camps engage in a contest to establish their authority.

In the classic picture of science, investigators manipulate technology (mostly symbolic in the social sciences) to make discoveries; the resulting knowledge is disseminated within the scientific community through papers, talks, and informal correspondence and is eventually applied (if it is) in different fields of practice. However, that “knowledge” is, in fact, when we stop to think about it, a socially embedded form of accounting: an attempt to explain the way the world is for a given community. To cite Varey (chap. 10, this volume), “practical accounting is the construction of worlds of meaning in the course of social interaction.” By focusing on the dynamic of accounting, our attention is recentered on relationships between people, in our own field fully as much as in other organizations, rather than uniquely on the mediating modalities of a subject–object relationship. Knowledge is no longer seen as something that one actor communicates to another, nor as something incorporated into the ability of an actor to mold or manipulate an object (Brummans, chap. 11, this volume). Instead, knowledge is seen as what must be constructed by people working together. It is both a precondition of their interaction, and emerges in it, and out of it, to become the basis of their collaboration. It is, thereby, problematic: It depends on the dynamics of the interaction.

Brummans (chap. 11, this volume) situates the work we are reporting on in the volume within the pragmatic tradition associated with pioneers such as Peirce, James, and Dewey. In this respect, it is worth citing Peirce, who originated the term pragmatism. Here is what he wrote in 1877: “The sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless … The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true” (Peirce, 1955, pp. 10–11). He also went on to write: “Unless we make ourselves hermits, we shall necessarily influence each other’s opinions; so that the problem becomes how to fix belief, not in the individual merely, but in the community” (p. 13).

The chapters of the book illustrate the kind of ongoing dialogue that we believe to be consistent with our belief that knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is a product of “influencing each other’s opinions” in the continuing quest for the “fixation of belief” in a community of which we are part. Peirce was very far from advocating a kind of inquiry that is lacking in rigor, and we share his unfailing commitment to the touchstone of the empirical. However, he also accorded fully as much credit to the speculative, creative side of research (which he called abduction) as he did to inductive and deductive methodology. The reader will discover in the chapters of this volume the kind of blend we understand him to have had in mind: continually returning to describe and analyze, using empirical methods, that which we are trying to explain, but also striving to enunciate original theoretical intuitions that will encourage us to look at the world in new ways.

The volume is thus a report of our collective hands-on investigation into the life of organizations. We privilege a variety of methods: conversation analysis, ethnography, account analysis—all in their way delving into the dynamics of organizational discourse. However the book is also an exploration in the communicational theory of organization: from the managerial theory of accounting (Varey, chap. 10, this volume), to narrative theory (Taylor & Cooren, chap. 7, this volume), to worldview (Taylor & Cooren), to the relational bases of agency (Robichaud, chap. 6, this volume), to coorientation (Taylor, chap. 8, this volume), to activity theory (Groleau, chap. 9, this volume) and to the moral basis of agency (Brummans, chap. 11, this volume). Although the emphasis may shift from chapter to chapter, all of them grow out of the authors’ involvement in empirical research and theoretical development. Taken together they illustrate, we hope, what is meant by a pragmatic approach to inquiry.

SOME DOMINANT THEMES

The chapters of this volume arc organized into four sections to emphasize thematic convergences and facilitate reading. Nevertheless, the principal themes taken up for treatment in the volume actually cross-cut all of the chapters and provide the real unity of the whole. As we examine them in turn, the reader will, we hope, have a better idea of what is to come.

Integration, Differentiation, and Ambiguity

In chapter 7, Taylor and Cooren explore the structuring role of narrative in human communication. They present in some detail a rich theory of narrative inspired by the writings of a little known French theorist, Algirdas Greimas. A narrative, Greimas proposed, is initiated by the interference of two narrative paths, one of which (that of the protagonist) is the point of view privileged by the narrator, and the other (that of an antagonist) presents, to the protagonist, an unwanted disturbance that must be dealt with. The alternative point of view, the one that is not privileged, remains a shadowy virtuality: It could have been the focus, but then that would have been a different story—a story that was not told. As Brummans (chap. 11, this volume) argues, and as Greimas found, there is thus a moral decision to be confronted: whose values take precedence—whose story are we listening to? Narrative always presupposes a backdrop of established conventional values that justify the actions of the protagonist in opposing the moves of the antagonist.

In everyday life, this choice of perspective, which view is to be privileged and which is not, presents an issue to be pragmatically resolved in the cut-and-thrust of organizational conversation: Whose story is going to get told—given precedence? As Güney (chap. 2, this volume) observes, sensemaking—translating one’s experience into an account of what is happening—never occurs in a vacuum. It is rooted in what people see as the raison d’être of not merely their organizational status, but of the roles and activities that give them and their community meaning: their investment in their work. Values are at stake, but so is their existence as socially validated actors.

To illustrate, she reports on an ethnographic study she conducted in a major high-tech corporation, that she calls Deep Purple. Asked to collaborate on the development of a new product, two divisions of the corporation experienced a sequence of conflict-laden episodes during which their spokespersons fell back on their respective statuses (program manager vs. senior engineer) to resist the imposition of a compromise solution. When negotiations broke down, their rear-guard maneuvers threatened the collaborative process with total collapse. Güney found that the representatives of the two design divisions proved incapable of making sense of their collaborative project beyond the agendas inherent in their respective positions. Güney doc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• I. INTEGRATION, DIFFERENTIATION, AND AMBIGUITY
• II. AGENCY AND NARRATIVITY
• III. COORIENTATION
• IV. SOME IMPLICATIONS
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index