The Three Schools of CCO Thinking: Interactive Dialogue and Systematic Comparison

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Dennis Schoeneborn
  • Steffen Blaschke
  • François Cooren
  • Robert D. McPhee
  • David Seidl
  • James R. Taylor

The idea of the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) has gained considerable attention in organizational communication studies. This rather heterogeneous theoretical endeavor is driven by three main schools of thought: the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, the Four-Flows Model (based on Giddens's Structuration Theory), and Luhmann's Theory of Social Systems. In this article, we let proponents of all three schools directly speak to each other in form of an interactive dialogue that is structured around guiding questions addressing the epistemological, ontological, and methodological dimension of CCO as a theoretical paradigm. Based on this dialogue, we systematically compare the three schools of CCO thinking and identify common grounds as well as key differences.

Original languageEnglish
JournalManagement Communication Quarterly
Volume28
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)285-316
Number of pages32
ISSN0893-3189
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 05.2014

    Research areas

  • Management studies
  • communication as constitutive of organizations, organization theory, organizational communication, paradigms

DOI