Digital media are pervasive, ubiquitous and mundane constituents of organization. Organized life relies on, and is propelled by, technologies that store, transmit and process data and are based on networked computation. How can we understand and explore the fundamental mediatedness of organization? This article contextualizes and introduces the special issue on 'The organizational powers of (digital) media' by staging an encounter between organization theory and media theory. In provoking investigations of the power and effects of technological mediation in its many guises, not least in regard to digital or computational media, this encounter ushers in a 'medial thought' of organization.

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Der vorliegende Band beruht auf der Dissertationsschrift der Autorin, die im September 2015 an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar eingereicht wurde. Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (BY-NC-ND). Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (BY-NC-ND). Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 DE Lizenz (BY-NC-ND). Diese Lizenz erlaubt die private Nutzung, gestattet aber keine Bearbeitung und keine kommerzielle Nutzung.

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Planning tables are a ubiquitous tool of organizing. They can have different shapes and different names, but what all the variants have in common is a twofold capacity: to create an unambiguous order on the one hand, and to quickly reshuffle this order on the other. A planning table allows the drafting of different plans of how to act and eventually, it initiates the translation of the plan into the real. This is how the planning table unfolds its organizational powers. Planning tables that are appropriate and fit well with the context elicit affection, whereas the lack of these properties creates resistance.