Organization as an (Imbricated) Configuring of Transactions

Abstract

This paper argues that taking communication as a primary focus of theory and research leads to new insights on the nature of organization, as currently displayed in studies of strategy, institutionalization, boundary objects, discourse and materiality. Communicatively, an organization is both a configuring of practices, each with its own interactive modes of exchange, and a corporate legal person whose ‘voice’ becomes, paradoxically, a component of that same discursive geography. The ‘paradox’ dissolves, however, in a communicative theory, which argues that organizational identity, and its personhood, are established in the same way as those of individuals. The article then presents an original vision of organization as an ‘imbrication’ of domains of discourse out of which layers of identity emerge. The primary mechanism responsible for coherence of purpose and identity is authority, in that the persons of both organization and members must be continually “authored” for them to exist. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of taking a communicative approach for future research.

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