TY - JOUR

T1 - Envisioning PR research without taking organizations as collective actors for granted

T2 - A rejoinder and extension to Hou

AU - Buhmann, Alexander

AU - Schoeneborn, Dennis

N1 - The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was funded by a public research grant from the Norwegian Research Council as part of the TOPFORSK project “Future Ways of Working in the Digital Economy” led by BI Norwegian Business School (project no. 275347). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.

PY - 2021/1

Y1 - 2021/1

N2 - In a recent article in Public Relations Inquiry, Jenny Hou has fittingly argued for a stronger focus on agency and actorhood in PR research. We point to two crucial aspects in which we think her arguments need to be extended, namely: (a) embracing the constitutive role of communication for organizational actorhood and agency, and (b) rethinking the role of PR in the constitution of organizational actors. We argue that such extension would allow for an important and radical twist in perspective that highlights a widely neglected question in PR research: What if the collective actorhood status of organizations is not treated as a given but rather arises from communicative attributions of such actorhood status to social entities? Finally, we develop key implications from this shift in perspective for PR scholarship, education, and practice.

AB - In a recent article in Public Relations Inquiry, Jenny Hou has fittingly argued for a stronger focus on agency and actorhood in PR research. We point to two crucial aspects in which we think her arguments need to be extended, namely: (a) embracing the constitutive role of communication for organizational actorhood and agency, and (b) rethinking the role of PR in the constitution of organizational actors. We argue that such extension would allow for an important and radical twist in perspective that highlights a widely neglected question in PR research: What if the collective actorhood status of organizations is not treated as a given but rather arises from communicative attributions of such actorhood status to social entities? Finally, we develop key implications from this shift in perspective for PR scholarship, education, and practice.

KW - Agency

KW - communicative institutionalism

KW - institutional theory

KW - organizational actorhood

KW - public relations

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099500655&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/2046147X20987337

DO - 10.1177/2046147X20987337

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85099500655

VL - 10

SP - 119

EP - 127

JO - Public Relations Inquiry

JF - Public Relations Inquiry

SN - 2046-147X

IS - 1

ER -