Constitutional Amendments:: "Materializing" Organizational Communication

The Academy of Management Annals
Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, 1–64
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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
Abstract
Academy
10.1080/19416520903047186
RAMA_A_404891.sgm
1941-6520
Original
Taylor
3102009
000002009
and
&Article
Francis
of(print)/1941-6067(online)
Francis
Management Annals
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 engagement
become 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: k.ashcraft@utah.edu
ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online

© 2009 Academy of Management
DOI: 10.1080/19416520903047186
http://www.informaworld.com
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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 over
material 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 has
evolved 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 the
discipline.
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 “Human
Communication” (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 be
identified 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
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 to
signify 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 overarching
premise 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 and
inform 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
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 the
constitutive 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
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 turn
and 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 Handbook
of 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
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
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 or
hermeneutic 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 on
narratives (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
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 in
which 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 the
same 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 management
scholars: 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
Table 1.1 Looking Back at CCO: Previous Efforts to Theorize Communication as Pivotal, not Peripheral
Current Conception of Communication
• Definition: the ongoing, dynamic, interactive process of manipulating symbols toward the creation, maintenance, destruction, and/or transformation of meanings,
which are axial to organizational existence and organizing phenomena
• Communicational explanation: those accounts that advance knowledge of how communication (as defined above) constitutes organizational reality—e.g., how it
functions as a fundamental organizing mechanism or is the site of organization
• Relative emphasis on material and ideational worlds: presumes the muscle of symbolic activity over material forces (i.e., dualist) and/or symbolic activity as a
material force (i.e., neglects other kinds of material forces)
Manifestation in
organizational Root metaphor of communication–
communication literature organization relationship Key trends/developments Implications for management
Culture (embedded) Primarily production (communication Two divergent emphases on direction of Interpretivist bent highlights the
produces culture). production: principal, active (rather than
Vestiges of container (communication (1) Communication yields organization ancillary, passive) role of
as component of culture). (interpretive approaches) communication in (re)creating
Recent seeds of equivalency (2) Organization distorts organizational culture. Illustrates

(communication as site where culture communication (critical how communication organizes
exists). approaches) local meanings and, thus, realities.
Power (embedded) Primarily production (communication Discursive struggle theorized as a viable Critical bent underscores
produces power systems; these explanation for configurations of communication as a political
systems, in turn, constrain power. process that generates and
communication) Postmodernist and feminist approaches activates (rather than express and
Some development toward demonstrate communication as an implement) organizational power.
equivalency (communication as site embodied political process with Illustrates how communication
where power relations—e.g., material consequences. organizes knowledge of system
gender—are accomplished and, thus, and self/other-interests and, thus,
literally exist) relations of power.
Communication networks Primarily production (communication Networks theorized as rule–resource Reveals communication networks
(embedded) “real-izes” latent connections, is the sets activated by situational exigencies as multilevel phenomena, far
site of coordinated activity or the more than a methodological tool.
route by which production Explicates how organizations (and
mechanisms operate). inter-organizational
Some container (communication links Communication theorized as relationships) are re/generated in
generate meaning but exist within interpersonal and inter-organizational communication. Explains
organizations). linkages, sites of activity, and instigator network evolution as “spaces”
of conceptual “spaces” for collective enabled by modes of interaction.
action.
Structure-agency 1: Primarily production (communication Three major emphases: Demonstrates organization as
Structuration (explicit) as mediated by and generative of (1) Discursive struggle theorized as site ongoing accomplishment in
organizational structure). wherein and mechanism whereby communication, not static entity.
Some development toward structural contradictions play out Highlights communication as the
equivalency, with caution against (2) Formal structures and technologies nexus where organizational/social
reductionism (e.g., “four flows” are constituted in communication structure, technology, and human
model). processes that link persons and agency collide in relations of
practices to the concept of the mutual influence. Encourages
organization analysts to (a) examine varied
types and levels of communicative
(3) Relationship among analytically
practice, as well as (b) interrogate
separable “flows” of communication
communication as structured and
that produce formal organization
structuring.
Structure-agency 2: Text/ Equivalency (communication and Communication, theorized as the Shows how communication
conversation (or the organization are different forms of modality of organizing, characterized simultaneously re/produces and
Montreal School) the same reality). by two dimensions: re/presents organization; that is,
Table 1.1 Looking Back at CCO: Previous Efforts to Theorize Communication as Pivotal, not Peripheral (Continued)
Manifestation in
organizational Root metaphor of communication–
communication literature organization relationship Key trends/developments Implications for management
(1)Textual (i.e., the recurring, coherent communication is constantly
“surface” of organization) creating organization (i.e.,
conversation) even as it also
(2) Conversational (i.e., the dynamic enables us to experience “an
“site” where organization is organization” as a coherent entity
constantly re/generating) and agent (i.e., text). Illustrates
how inertia and innovation are
concurrent products of
communication.
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 were
later 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 as
the 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 (but
not 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;
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 mutual
influence.
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 and
Pacanowsky 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
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’s
or 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, has
been 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) and
Mumby 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 opinion
on 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, communication
networks 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 public
goods 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. This
work 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 actors
at 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 organization
entails 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 organization
and 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 significant
promise.
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, shedding
light 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 steps
toward 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 not
enacted 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 the
explanans); 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 more
reliable 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 that
they 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 interest
in 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 structuration
studies); 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 ample
contemporary 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 communicational
explanation 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 to
hold 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 ontological
status (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 the
nature 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 the
conditions 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. Our
goal 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 on
each 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
Table 1.2 Going Forward with CCO: Recent Efforts to Restore Material Accountability to Communication
Emerging Conception of Communication
• Definition: the ongoing, situated, and embodied process whereby human and non-human agencies interpenetrate ideation and materiality toward realities that are
tangible and axial to organizational existence and organizing phenomena
• Communicational explanation: those accounts that look to a “materialized” or “incarnated” model of communication (as defined above) to explain organization
• Relative emphasis on material and ideational worlds: presumes the muscle and indivisibility of both; takes interest in their co-constitution rather than their
comparative weight
• Root metaphor of communication-organization relationship: Emergence, or the notion that organization continually evolves and shows “itself” in communication
Manifestation in recent Management–communication collaboration:
CCO and allied literature Emerging post-dualist insights sample future research questions
Objects Objects are composed of entangled material and How do various agencies (humans, artifacts,
ideational elements, which develop in relation to machines, texts, etc.) constitute organization
each other through human-object interaction. through co-participation in communication? How
Objects can be said to act; agency is not a sole or are particular agencies invited, or how do they
distinguishing human property. assert themselves, in organizational
communication?
Sites Sites supply “infrastructure” to communication; How does communication invoke the social
simultaneously, communication influences sites materiality of sites to constitute knowledge
by utilizing their resources in certain ways. heterogeneity? How do communicative responses
Applied to organizational knowledge, site resources to problem-solving heterogeneity (a) accomplish
are both medium and outcome of problem- that which is taken to be knowledge in a given site;
solving communication. The dynamic site– and (b) generate change in the resources that
communication relationship can explain define organizational situations?
heterogeneity in knowing and reframe it as
generative, for out of heterogeneity emerges
organizational “texts” that shape the contours of
subsequent situations.
Bodies More than “brute facts,” bodies are also a product How is the body–work relationship constructed in
of communication. organizational and occupational communication,
Weaker constitutive claim: Communication and how do these constructions of the working
enables ways of experiencing the body. body interact with other material–ideational
Stronger constitutive claim: Communication can realities of work?
transform the body’s physicality.
Communication is concurrently constrained by the
body, whose “brute facts” can resist efforts to
transform.
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 documents
participate 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, and
infrastructures 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 theorize
artifactual 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 Western
legal-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 physical
settings 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 model
holds 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. And
yet, 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 on
mental 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 not
only 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 in
the 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 relations
and 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) communication
creates 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 nor
that 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 other
words, “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 terms
of 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 proposal
returns, 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 this
does 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 she
meant!”). 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 collective
not 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 model
highlights 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 organizational
problem 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—upon
which 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 the
contours 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 Work

Emerging 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 in
communication, 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, the
work–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. Dominant
images 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 and
technically 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 to
take 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 its
familiarity 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 the
essay, 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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Constitutional Amendments:: "Materializing" Organizational Communication

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The Academy of Management Annals

Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, 1–64

KAREN LEE ASHCRAFT*

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

*Corresponding author. Email: k.ashcraft@utah.edu

ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online

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

The Constitutive Principle in Organizational Communication Studies

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

Introduction to Communication Studies

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

Distinguishing Organizational Communication

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

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

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

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

depictions or images) of the communication–organization relationship

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

Recent seeds of equivalency (2) Organization distorts organizational culture. Illustrates

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

Power. Alongside growing interest organizational culture, communica-

more fundamentally constitutive of power than is traditionally suggested” in

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

Communication networks. When interpretivism was beginning to gather

Explicit Strains of CCO: Organizational Structure and Agency

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

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

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

Distilling a Communicational Explanation

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

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

Refining the Contribution: CCO Confronts Materiality

As depicted thus far, communicative explanations exaggerate the muscle of

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

Woolgar, 1979; Pickering, 1995). Schatzki (2005) asserted a “site ontology”

A practice-based ontology of site suggests four implications for the material–

meaning is born of interaction, which brings the material body to life—social

Stimulated by a different impetus—the rise of embodied sociology (Turner,

For the relation of communication and materiality, CCO-friendly studies of the

Beyond the Materialist-Idealist Dualism: Revisiting a Communicational Explanation

here—in that it “articulates an ensemble of human technologies into a func-

“Materializing” the Contribution: Research that Activates Communication

Proposal One: Objects, Presence, and Ventriloquism

Proposal Two: Heterogeneous Knowledge and Knowing in Site

In most of the literature on knowledge and organizing, knowledge is perceived

to heterogeneity, it is likely to yield different resources for identification,

comparisons, as well as ethical evaluations of specific resource configurations

Proposal Three: Communicative Constitution of the Body and Economies of Work

Still hotly contested is how the work–body relation is constituted. For

accessible. Our three proposed research trajectories—abridged here as

Dewey, J. (1916/1944). Democracy and education. An introduction to the philosophy of

Nicotera (Eds.), Building theories of organization: The constitutive role of com-

Mumby, D.K. (2005). Theorizing resistance in organization studies: A dialectical

Robichaud, D. (2001). Interaction as a text: A semiotic look at an organizing process.

Taylor, J.R. (1995). Shifting from a heteronomous to an autonomous worldview of orga-

Willmott, H. (2005). Theorizing contemporary control: Some post-structuralist

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