How things make things do things with words, or how to pay attention to what things have to say

Abstract

The first paragraph in this version is different from the published version to better reflect Luhamann's conception of communication.Author note I wish to thank the participants to the 2015 EGOS "Organization as Communication" special working group's sub-theme, as well as the guest editors and reviewers of this special issue, for their comments and suggestions. A special thanks to Bryanna Hebenstreit and James P.Snack for their insights and advice.

The Communicative Constitution of Organization, Organizing, and Organizationality

“…From these perspectives, organizations are best understood not as stable and enduring entities, but as ongoing and precarious flows of practice (e.g., Ford & Harding, 2004;Hernes, 2014;Tsoukas & Chia, 2002;Weick, 1979). Similarly, in CCO thinking, communication is usually framed as an open-ended process that generates meanings and connects or relates various elements (Bencherki, 2016;Cooren, 2015;Putnam & Boys, 2006). Although existing perspectives on communication diverge with respect to how they engage with materiality, as well as what they recognize as participating in communication (Ashcraft et al, 2009), works that emphasize communication as a verb seek to reveal how organizing emerges in and through practices of communicative co-orientation.…”

The role of space in the emergence and endurance of organizing: How independent workers and material assemblages constitute organizations

“…Alternatively, they focus on the interactions through which participants use, interpret or design those artefacts. This emphasis on communicative artefacts and their interpretation may result from this tradition's analytical grounding in conversation analysis or discourse analysis, which may turn the researcher's attention to language at the expense of other practices (Bencherki, 2016;Wilhoit, 2016). Our two cases offer empirical illustrations of organizational practices besides conversation and verbal language use, including concrete engagement with materiality and space, thus responding to Kuhn and Burk's (2014) call to study space's physical dimension.…”

“…Choosing ethnography also appears sensible given that literature in the CCO tradition uses ethnographic methods to document artefacts' contribution to organizational endurance and to observe the concrete difference artefact make in organizing, including documents, instruments and computer files (e.g., Cooren, 2004;Schoeneborn, 2013;Bencherki, 2016). Contrary to other methods, ethnography requires researchers to welcome surprise and to make familiar contexts strange again (Ybema and Kamsteeg, 2009).…”

“…CCO studies focus on the role of discourse in constituting organizations (e.g., Taylor and Van Every, 2000;McPhee, 2004;Grant et al, 2005;Schoeneborn, 2011), but also recognize the part of materiality in the constitutive process. Documents, blackboards, sticks, measuring instruments and other artefacts can all contribute to the durability of organizations (Cooren, 2004;Brummans, 2007;Cooren and Bencherki, 2010;Cooren and Matte, 2010;Bencherki, 2016).…”

Being Followed by an Organization

“…Thanks to its materialization in human beings, the organization gains the ability to speak. However, human beings do not have the prerogative of articulating the organization: for instance, a measuring stick (Cooren & Matte, 2010) or electronic instruments (Bencherki, 2016) may also become the spokesobjects of organizations (Vásquez & Cooren, 2011).…”