INSEAD Library

Includes bibliographical references and index

Digitized

The Emergent Organization Communication as its Site and Surface Contents Preface ix PART I: THEORY OF COMMUNICATION 1. ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: A NEW LOOK Precedents 5 The Rediscovery of the Natural World of Communication--Its "Conversation" 6 Critical Theory and Organizational Process 16 Why Study Organizational Communication in a New Way? 30 1 3 2. COMMUNICATION AS COORIENTATION Toward a Bidimensional Text/Conversation Model of Communication 35 The Theory of Narrative 41 Communication as Coorientation 58 Conclusion 62 33 3. HOW THE A PRIORI FORMS OF TEXT REVEAL THE ORGANIZATION In Search of the A Priori Forms 72 What to Look for: The Semantics of Organizational Communication 75 Where to Look: Interactive Exchanges 89 How to Look: Discourse Dimensions 95 Conclusion 104 69 vi CONTENTS 4. LANGUAGE AS TECHNOLOGY AND AGENT Language as Technology 106 Noam Chomsky and His School 107 Agentive Properties of Language and Text 121 Linking Discourse-World to Text-World 126 Conclusion 134 105 PART II: THEORY OF ORGANIZATION 5. REINTERPRETING ORGANIZATIONAL LITERATURE The "Flatland" Perspective on Organization 141 Karl Weick: Enactment 144 Anthony Giddens: Structuration 149 Bruno Latour: Translation 157 Latour, Weick, and Giddens 163 Labov and Fanshel: Rights and Obligations 167 Conclusion 171 137 139 6. FROM SYMBOL PROCESSING TO SUBSYMBOLIC SOCIALLY DISTRIBUTED COGNITION System Theory: Organization and Communication 175 March and Simon's Model Revisited 183 The Theory of Computation and Organization 187 Reversing the Field: Computationist Theory in Disarray 191 The New Theory of Computation 194 Socially Distributed Cognition: A New Model of Organization 199 Conclusion 205 173 7. CONVERSATION TRANSFORMED: ORGANIZATION Bottom-Up Thinking 208 What We Will Find 209 The Organization Has to Map More Than the Environment; It Has to Map Itself 210 Organization as Conversation 211 From the "Business of Talk" to the "Talk of Business" 218 Lamination of Conversations 220 Why Organization-as-Conversation Is Not Enough 223 Backpropagation: The Learning Organization 228 Organization-in-Text 236 Conclusion 240 207 CONTENTS 8. REENACTING ENACTMENT Weick and Enactment 244 The Concept of an Interpretation System 246 Enactment Reenacted 263 Limits of the Computational Metaphor 272 An Afterword on Weick's Evolution 274 vii 243 9. WHY "IN"? OF MAPS, TERRITORIES, AND GOVERNANCE The Importance of Maps 278 Some General Properties of Maps 281 The Organizational Map 283 Differences Between Our View and Other Theories of Cause Maps 284 Summarizing Our Principal Assumptions 288 Becoming Recognized on the Organizational Map: A Departmental Evaluation 293 What Is an Organization? 324 276 REFERENCES AUTHOR INDEX SUBJECT INDEX 327 341 347