The Evolution of Organizational Communication

Abstract

Organizational communication, by its very definition, constitutes an intersection, one that exists between the study of human communication and the study of human organization (Farace, Monge, & Russell, 1977). Several intellectual perspectives have influenced how this intersection has been studied and the knowledge claims established. These include (a) the cultural, interpretive perspective (Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983), (b) the critical, postmodern perspective (Deetz, 1992; Mumby, 1987), and (c) the network perspective (Monge & Contractor, 2003). In this article, we articulate two additional perspectives that have emerged in recent years, ecological/evolutionary theory and the organizational discourse perspective. Further, we show how these two areas and their intersection can inform one another and perhaps other intersections that exist in communication. We believe this intersection has the potential to transform organizational communication scholarship in ways just as significant as the other three. There are literally hundreds of thousands of organizations in the world today, ranging in size from very small to enormous (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006). Organizations that have similar characteristics can be grouped together into organizational forms or populations such as educational institutions, government regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical businesses, new religious movements, drug cartels, and so on (Castells, 2000; McKelvey, 1982). Usually, organizational or population identity is conferred on members as the legitimacy and “taken for grantedness” of the form become established (Hsu & Hannan, 2005). The survival, the very existence of almost all the members of these organizational populations as well as the populations themselves depends on their ability to compete for scarce resources, though sometimes cooperation is also a successful strategy (Hannan & Freeman, 1977). Few of these organizations or organizational populations live in isolation; almost all exist in social communities or ecologies and are interconnected by various relations and networks that constitute a communication infrastructure (Astley, 1985; Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2003; Monge, Heiss, & Margolin, 2008). For example, Powell, White, Koput, and Owen-Smith (2005) studied the first 10 years of the emergent biotechnology community, which consisted of new biotechnology firms, public research organizations, venture capitalist firms, government regulatory agencies, and pharmaceutical companies. The organizations and populations in this community were tied together with multiplex relations like research and development and capital flows.

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