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TEXT COMPARISON
CHAPTER OUTLINES
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Theory Outlines
11th Edition
11th Edition
From the Instructors Manual
List mode: Normal (click on theory name to show detail) | Show All details | Clear details
Chapter 23—Communicative Constitution of Organizations
- Introduction
- Robert McPhee and other communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) theorists believe that communication is not just a process that happens within organizations; it creates the organization itself.
- CCO isn’t a single theory but rather a family of theoretical approaches to thinking about how organizations are co-constructed.
- McPhee believes that communication creates, or constitutes, an organization.
- Communication: The essence of organization
- Employees are not a set of lifeless parts; people create an organization.
- Communication calls organization into being.
- For CCO theorists, communication is the primary means of constructing social reality.
- McPhee’s answer to the big CCO question [how does communication create organization?] is four specific forms of communication, or flows.
- Membership negotiation.
- Self-structuring.
- Activity coordination.
- Institutional positioning.
- McPhee thinks each flow literally creates the company as members talk. These flows aren’t something an organization does but rather what an organization is.
- The four flows of CCO.
- CCO theorists believe organizations are like a river—always moving and changing.
- McPhee believes the communication must occur in four flows, or “circulating systems or fields of messages.”
- Specifically, these four flows concern who is a member of the organization, how these members structure their working relationships, how they coordinate their work, and how the organization positions itself with other people and organizations.
- It’s worth noting that not all communication between organization members involves the four flows.
- What sets the four flows apart is that they are necessary for creating the organization itself.
- Chapter illustrations are drawn from Habitat for Humanity and Greek organizations on campuses.
- Membership negotiation: Joining and learning the ropes.
- All organizations regulate who is a member and who is not.
- You become an organizational member through a communicative process.
- Membership negotiation doesn’t end after accepting a job offer.
- The next step of membership negotiation is socialization, or learning what it means to be a member of the organization.
- Self-structuring: Figuring out who’s who in the organization.
- Self-structuring refers to the formal communication acts that create the organization.
- After the organization’s founding, self-structuring continues through the writing of procedures manuals, memos, and sometimes a chart that specifies the relationships among employees.
- How can members align their activities when they’re geographically far apart? Cooren and Fairhurst point out that we seek closure, or a sense of shared understanding that emerges in back-and-forth interaction.
- McPhee reminds us that the official chart isn’t the final word on structure.
- Activity coordination: Getting the job done.
- McPhee believes all organizations have goals.
- A defined purpose, such as a mission statement, separates an organization from a crowd of people. Most important to CCO theorists, members communicate to accomplish the organization’s day-to-day work toward their goals—a flow McPhee terms activity coordination.
- Activity coordination becomes quite complex at any organization with more than a handful of employees.
- Institutional positioning: Dealing with other people and organizations.
- Institutional positioning is communication between an organization and external entities—other organizations and people.
- No organization survives on its own.
- Four principles of the four flows.
- McPhee claims that communication constitutes organization through the four flows of membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning.
- It’s the intersection of the four flows, mixing and blending together, that constitutes organization.
- Four principles direct the four flows of communication.
- All four flows are necessary for organization.
- Different flows happen in different places.
- The same message can address multiple flows.
- Different flows address different audiences.
- Self-structuring is of little interest to those outside an organization.
- Membership negotiation targets new members or those who may be leaving.
- Activity coordination addresses specific groups within an organization.
- Institutional positioning focuses on external organizations.
- Diverting the flow: Crafting solutions to organizational problems.
- Some CCO scholars are pragmatists who try to use such insights to fix organizational problems.
- Recall that one goal of an interpretive theory is to foster new understanding of people.
- It is likely that improvements to an organization must address more than just one flow.
- Critique: Are the four flows the best approach to communicative constitution?
- The idea that communication creates organizations provides a compelling explanation for the value of organizational communication.
- McPhee provides a degree of relative simplicity and aesthetic appeal by suggesting the four flows, but that simplicity doesn’t appeal to everybody.
- CCO researcher James Taylor is critical of McPhee’s simplicity and its top-down approach and instead prefers a ground-up theory that starts with everyday conversation.
- Taylor is critical of McPhee’s vague definitions, particularly of the term “flow.”
- With such imprecision, Taylor doubts CCO can provide a new understanding of people.
- Taylor counters that conversations organize when members engage in co-orientation, or communication “wherein two or more actors are entwined in relation to an object.”
- Some researchers suggest that this focus on materiality is the reason the Montreal School approach has generated more extensions of theory and research than McPhee’s CCO.
- According to Bishop and Bisel, both approaches are valuable.
- Both may be necessary conditions rather than sufficient conditions.
- Although they may disagree on the details, CCO theorists share a broad community of agreement.
You can access the Outline for a particular chapter in several ways:
- Switch to View by Theory, then select the desired theory/chapter from the drop-down list at the top of the page. Look in the list of available resources.
- To quickly find a theory by chapter number, use the Table of Contents and link from there. It will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.
- You can also use the Theory List, which will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.
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OUTLINES
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Resources?
Find out more
in this short
video overview
(3:01).
CHANGE TO View by Theory
Theory Outlines
11th Edition
11th Edition
From the Instructors Manual
List mode: Normal (click on theory name to show detail) | Show All details | Clear details
Chapter 23—Communicative Constitution of Organizations
- Introduction
- Robert McPhee and other communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) theorists believe that communication is not just a process that happens within organizations; it creates the organization itself.
- CCO isn’t a single theory but rather a family of theoretical approaches to thinking about how organizations are co-constructed.
- McPhee believes that communication creates, or constitutes, an organization.
- Communication: The essence of organization
- Employees are not a set of lifeless parts; people create an organization.
- Communication calls organization into being.
- For CCO theorists, communication is the primary means of constructing social reality.
- McPhee’s answer to the big CCO question [how does communication create organization?] is four specific forms of communication, or flows.
- Membership negotiation.
- Self-structuring.
- Activity coordination.
- Institutional positioning.
- McPhee thinks each flow literally creates the company as members talk. These flows aren’t something an organization does but rather what an organization is.
- The four flows of CCO.
- CCO theorists believe organizations are like a river—always moving and changing.
- McPhee believes the communication must occur in four flows, or “circulating systems or fields of messages.”
- Specifically, these four flows concern who is a member of the organization, how these members structure their working relationships, how they coordinate their work, and how the organization positions itself with other people and organizations.
- It’s worth noting that not all communication between organization members involves the four flows.
- What sets the four flows apart is that they are necessary for creating the organization itself.
- Chapter illustrations are drawn from Habitat for Humanity and Greek organizations on campuses.
- Membership negotiation: Joining and learning the ropes.
- All organizations regulate who is a member and who is not.
- You become an organizational member through a communicative process.
- Membership negotiation doesn’t end after accepting a job offer.
- The next step of membership negotiation is socialization, or learning what it means to be a member of the organization.
- Self-structuring: Figuring out who’s who in the organization.
- Self-structuring refers to the formal communication acts that create the organization.
- After the organization’s founding, self-structuring continues through the writing of procedures manuals, memos, and sometimes a chart that specifies the relationships among employees.
- How can members align their activities when they’re geographically far apart? Cooren and Fairhurst point out that we seek closure, or a sense of shared understanding that emerges in back-and-forth interaction.
- McPhee reminds us that the official chart isn’t the final word on structure.
- Activity coordination: Getting the job done.
- McPhee believes all organizations have goals.
- A defined purpose, such as a mission statement, separates an organization from a crowd of people. Most important to CCO theorists, members communicate to accomplish the organization’s day-to-day work toward their goals—a flow McPhee terms activity coordination.
- Activity coordination becomes quite complex at any organization with more than a handful of employees.
- Institutional positioning: Dealing with other people and organizations.
- Institutional positioning is communication between an organization and external entities—other organizations and people.
- No organization survives on its own.
- Four principles of the four flows.
- McPhee claims that communication constitutes organization through the four flows of membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning.
- It’s the intersection of the four flows, mixing and blending together, that constitutes organization.
- Four principles direct the four flows of communication.
- All four flows are necessary for organization.
- Different flows happen in different places.
- The same message can address multiple flows.
- Different flows address different audiences.
- Self-structuring is of little interest to those outside an organization.
- Membership negotiation targets new members or those who may be leaving.
- Activity coordination addresses specific groups within an organization.
- Institutional positioning focuses on external organizations.
- Diverting the flow: Crafting solutions to organizational problems.
- Some CCO scholars are pragmatists who try to use such insights to fix organizational problems.
- Recall that one goal of an interpretive theory is to foster new understanding of people.
- It is likely that improvements to an organization must address more than just one flow.
- Critique: Are the four flows the best approach to communicative constitution?
- The idea that communication creates organizations provides a compelling explanation for the value of organizational communication.
- McPhee provides a degree of relative simplicity and aesthetic appeal by suggesting the four flows, but that simplicity doesn’t appeal to everybody.
- CCO researcher James Taylor is critical of McPhee’s simplicity and its top-down approach and instead prefers a ground-up theory that starts with everyday conversation.
- Taylor is critical of McPhee’s vague definitions, particularly of the term “flow.”
- With such imprecision, Taylor doubts CCO can provide a new understanding of people.
- Taylor counters that conversations organize when members engage in co-orientation, or communication “wherein two or more actors are entwined in relation to an object.”
- Some researchers suggest that this focus on materiality is the reason the Montreal School approach has generated more extensions of theory and research than McPhee’s CCO.
- According to Bishop and Bisel, both approaches are valuable.
- Both may be necessary conditions rather than sufficient conditions.
- Although they may disagree on the details, CCO theorists share a broad community of agreement.
You can access the Outline for a particular chapter in several ways:
- Switch to View by Theory, then select the desired theory/chapter from the drop-down list at the top of the page. Look in the list of available resources.
- To quickly find a theory by chapter number, use the Table of Contents and link from there. It will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.
- You can also use the Theory List, which will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.
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