Envisioning PR research without taking organizations as collective actors for granted: A rejoinder and extension to Hou
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In: Public Relations Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 1, 01.2021, p. 119-127.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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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 -