TY - JOUR

T1 - The Communicative Constitution of Organization, Organizing, and Organizationality

AU - Schoeneborn, Dennis

AU - Kuhn, Timothy

AU - Kärreman, Dan

PY - 2019/4/1

Y1 - 2019/4/1

N2 - Although the lion’s share of scholarship in management and organization studies conceives of organizations as entities within which communication occurs, “Communication Constitutes Organization” (CCO) scholarship has attracted interest because it makes a productive reversal, that is, by asking how organization happens in communication. Over the past decade, Organization Studies has become the key scholarly outlet for CCO thinking in the management and organization studies field. Accordingly, in this paper we discuss seven articles that have appeared in this journal as evidence of the perspective’s centrality. We first situate CCO theorizing within the linguistic turn, and position CCO with respect to other lines of scholarship underwritten by a rich conception of language and discourse. We examine the varied ways CCO thinking has found organization in communication, locating in the seven articles productive tensions between the process of communication, on the one hand, and organization, organizing, and organizationality, on the other. We contribute to CCO scholarship with reflections on these three theoretical orientations and provide a set of possibilities for its further development.

AB - Although the lion’s share of scholarship in management and organization studies conceives of organizations as entities within which communication occurs, “Communication Constitutes Organization” (CCO) scholarship has attracted interest because it makes a productive reversal, that is, by asking how organization happens in communication. Over the past decade, Organization Studies has become the key scholarly outlet for CCO thinking in the management and organization studies field. Accordingly, in this paper we discuss seven articles that have appeared in this journal as evidence of the perspective’s centrality. We first situate CCO theorizing within the linguistic turn, and position CCO with respect to other lines of scholarship underwritten by a rich conception of language and discourse. We examine the varied ways CCO thinking has found organization in communication, locating in the seven articles productive tensions between the process of communication, on the one hand, and organization, organizing, and organizationality, on the other. We contribute to CCO scholarship with reflections on these three theoretical orientations and provide a set of possibilities for its further development.

KW - Management studies

KW - communicative constitution of organization (CCO)

KW - linguistic turn

KW - partial organization

KW - organization theory

KW - organizational discourse

KW - organizational communication

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85050262428&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0170840618782284

DO - 10.1177/0170840618782284

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 40

SP - 475

EP - 496

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 4

ER -