Culture, technology, and process in ‘media theories’: Toward a shift in the understanding of media in organizational research

Abstract

The concept of ‘media’ can provide an anchor point for developing organizational theories about information and communication technologies, materiality, communication, and organizational change. However, to date, organizational research often takes the meaning of the term media for granted. This article therefore explores various conceptions of media, outlining how such theories can be used for advancing the conception of media in organizational research. Using three ideal-typical branches of conceptions of media, we explore key concerns regarding media in existing literature outside of organizational research. First, the culture and power branch problematizes how cultural practices and power structures are inscribed through media; second, the technology and infrastructure branch emphasizes the inherent ‘eigenlogik’ of media technology; and third, the process and change branch explores how existing economic and aesthetic conventions in media persist over time. Using organizational media in general and enterprise social media in particular we discuss how each of these three ideal-typical branches offer pathways for organizational research. Specifically we argue for shifting the use of the term media beyond merely describing tools for communication as media theories offer insights for understanding the long-term consequences of materiality and ontological co-constitution within sociomaterial assemblages.

From Automobile Capitalism to Platform Capitalism: Toyotism as a prehistory of digital platforms

“…In particular, the managerial innovations initiated at Toyota and the ripple effect of lean principles spreading across industries suggests that, as Melissa Gregg has written, 'Toyotism -not Fordism -is the crucial managerial revolution of our time' (personal communication, June 1, 2021; see also Andrijasevic et al, 2021). More attention should be paid to the rhetorics, concepts and ideas produced in management theory, and Toyotism in particular, in its complex entanglements with organizational practice and media history (Hoof, 2020).…”

“…Media studies scholars have noted the danger of taking platforms at face value. As Hoof and Boell caution, ‘“platform” has to be seen as an already value-laden description fostering certain managerial and economic interests’ ( 2019 , p. 246). If scepticism about YouTube’s claims to be a platform, for example, means we should regulate it like a media company or television broadcaster ( Napoli & Caplan, 2017 ), what are the consequences of arguing that platform capitalism is much more like automobile capitalism than we care to recognize?…”

The organizational powers of (digital) media

“…The often historical scholarship produced by this community provides rich stories about organization and organizing, even about proper organizations. While we find traces of such media thinking in organization-theoretical work on information systems and communication processes (Yates, 1993; see Hoof and Boell, 2019), on the sociomaterial constitution of organization (e.g. Carlile et al, 2013; Leonardi et al, 2012; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008), or in the cybernetic reframing of organization as ‘cyborganization’ (Parker and Cooper, 2016), the field of organization studies has so far skirted these studies, and the field of media theory in general terms.…”

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: The Role of Printing Media in Asian Countries

“…However, in the present study, instead of ranking or evaluating different forms of media, comparative perspectives of different newspapers from selected countries were examined. As the basic idea behind the MRT is that the media can be better or worse in transmitting social cues, in resolving ambiguity, or in providing immediate feedback (Hoof and Boell, 2019), this study attempted to evaluate how the selected newspapers presenting experts' concerns transmitted different aspects related to the pandemic and how they resolved ambiguity. Different theories of the press argue that state systems, ownership, politics, and economics also shape the concerns of the media (Ostini and Ostini, 2002).…”