The Three Schools of CCO Thinking

Abstract

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.

Contributorship and Partial Inclusion

“…Given that a large proportion of CCO literature is founded on implicit understandings of membership, a better conception of this notion, including by grounding it on TMS's definition of communication as action (Schoeneborn et al, 2014), is crucial to opening of new avenues for research.…”

Workplace flexibility and communication flows: a structurational view

“…capitalism. (Schoeneborn et al, 2014) The membership negotiation flow describes 'a set of ongoing processes (intentional and unintentional) through which knowledgeable individuals and focal organizations engage, disengage, and accomplish reciprocal -but still asymmetrical -influence over the intended meanings for an individual's participation in organizational functions' (Scott & Myers, 2010, p. 80). It can concern many dimensions of membership (e.g.…”

Rebuilding Babel: A Constitutive Approach to Tongues-in-use

“…The Montreal School perspective (TMS) on organizational communication (Brummans, 2006;Schoeneborn et al, 2014) is a fruitful avenue to contribute to the plurilingual organizations literature and complement some of its shortcomings. TMS researchers indeed doubt taken-forgranted assumptions regarding organizations, communication and the various concepts that are associated with these two constructs.…”

“…It is indeed increasingly commonplace to suggest that discourse is constitutive of organizational reality (c.f., Boje, Oswick, & Ford, 2004), in particular under the rubric of the "communicative constitution of organizations" or CCO (Cooren, 2000;McPhee & Zaug, 2000;Schoeneborn et al, 2014;Taylor & Van Every, 2000). For instance, Brummans et al (2013) suggest that: "Once constituted, langue (language) has powerful structuring effects since as people use its categories to decode their own activities, they are also buying into a structured pattern of interaction and its interpretation.…”