We argue that the processes underlying institutionalization have not been investigated adequately and that discourse analysis provides a coherent framework for such investigation. Accordingly, we develop a discursive model of institutionalization that highlights the relationships among texts, discourse, institutions, and action. Based on this discursive model, we propose a set of conditions under which institutionalization processes are most likely to occur, and we conclude the article with an exploration of the model's implications for other areas of research.

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Discourse and Institutions

Introduction - David Grant et al Organizational Discourse: Exploring the Field PART ONE: DOMAINS OF DISCOURSE Dialogue - Kenneth J Gergen, Mary M Gergen and Frank J Barrett Life and Death of the Organization Narratives, Stories and Texts - Yiannis Gabriel Corporate Rhetoric as Organizational Discourse - George Cheney et al Tropes, Discourse and Organizing - Cliff Oswick, Linda L Putnam and Tom Keenoy PART TWO: METHODS AND PERSPECTIVES Organizational Language in Use - Gail T Fairhurst and Fran[ce]cois Cooren Interaction Analysis, Conversation Analysis and Speech Act Schematics Discourse and Identities - Susan Ainsworth and Cynthia Hardy Interpretivist Approaches to Organizational Discourse - Loizos Th. Heracleous Multi-Levelled, Multi-Method Approaches to Organizational Discourse - Kirsten Broadfoot, Stanley Deetz and Donald Anderson Doing Research in Organizational Discourse - Craig Prichard, Deborah Jones and Ralph Stablein The Importance of Researcher Context Discourse, Power and Ideology - Dennis K Mumby Unpacking the Critical Approach Deconstructing Discourse - Martin Kilduff and Mihaela Kelemen PART THREE: DISCOURSES AND ORGANIZING Gender, Discourse and Organization - Karen Lee Ashcraft Framing a Shifting Relationship Discourse and Power - Cynthia Hardy and Nelson Phillips Organizational Culture and Discourse - Mats Alvesson Tools, Technologies and Organizational Interaction - Christian Heath, Paul Luff and Hubert Knoblauch The Emergence of Workplace Studies Organizational Discourse and New Media - Pablo J Boczkowski and Wanda J Orlikowski A Practice Perspective The Discourse of Globalization and the Globalization of Discourse - Norman Fairclough and Pete Thomas PART FOUR: REFLECTIONS - Barbara Czarniawska, Karl E Weick and Mike Reed Turning to Discourse - Barbara Czarniawska A Bias for Conversation - Karl E Weick Acting Discursively in Organizations Getting Real about Organizational Discourse - Mike Reed

The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Discourse

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational life, such as culture, power, networks, and the structure–agency relation. Second, we argue that this promising contribution cannot easily find traction in management studies until it becomes “materialized” in another sense: that is, accountable to the materiality evident in organizational objects, sites, and bodies. By synthesizing current moves in this direction, we establish the basis for sustained exchange between management studies and the communication‐as‐constitutive model. Third, we demonstrate how these conceptual developments can “materialize” ...

1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication

In this article we examine the relationship between discourse and organization. It is a relationship of growing interest in the communication literature as organizations are increasingly framed as discursive constructions. However, such framing appears subject to at least 3 interpretations. First, an organization may be cast as an already formed object with features and outcomes reflected in discourse. Second, organizations may be seen in a perpetual state of becoming through the ways that the properties of discourse shape organizing. Finally, organizations may be grounded in action, anchored in social practices and discursive forms. Moreover, each of these 3 orientations provides a different cast to the terms discourse and Discourses. We use these interpretations and different notions about discourse to explore the research traditions on organizational language and social interaction. We contend that all 3 orientations are necessary and should operate simultaneously to reveal a complex view of the organization-discourse relationship.

Organizations as Discursive Constructions

This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are ‘talked’ into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and analyses grounded in communication-as-constitutive (CCO) perspectives and describe six overarching premises for such perspectives; in so doing, we sharpen and bound the explanatory power of CCO perspectives for organization studies more generally. Building on these premises, we develop an agenda for further research, call for greater cross-fertilization between the communication and organization literatures, and illustrate ways in which communication-informed analyses have complemented and strengthened theories of the firm, organizational identity, sensemaking, and strategy as practice.

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Communication, Organizing and Organization: An Overview and Introduction to the Special Issue

How can we explain a phenomenon as general and as central as social organization? This is the question discussed in this article. Starting from the analysis of uttering, and more generally, communication, it attempts to demonstrate the profoundly organizing nature of communication. Speech act theory (Austin, Searle, and Vanderveken) is used and reformulated in a new analytical model based on the concept of “modality” borrowed from the Greimassian theory and the Semantics of Modality Theory (Palmer, Bybee, and Fleischman). Through this analysis, the concepts of “interobjectivity” and “mediation,” presented by Latour as the foundations of the collective, are translated and extended to all enunciative activity. This parallel allows us to present communication as an activity of mediation which consists of illocutionarily distributing and perlocutorily fixing enablements and constraints which form the basis of all organizational structure. Key words: organization, communication, mediation, speech acts, Austin, Searle, semiotics, Greimas, semantics of modality, sociology of translation, actor-network theory, transformation, structure, interobjectivity.

Françis Cooren

Papers

Organization as an Effect of Mediation: Redefining the Link Between Organization and Communication