EGOS 2017 Sub-Theme No. 05 “The Communicative Constitution of Organizing”

The EGOS Standing Working Group (SWG) No. 05 Organization as Communication (formerly SWG No. 16) is happy to announce the sub-theme for the EGOS 2017 Colloquium in Copenhagen, Denmark (July 6-8, 2017).

The sub-theme No. 05 entitled “The Communicative Constitution of Organizing: Toward and Beyond (Formal) Organization” will be facilitated by Dennis Schoeneborn, Timothy R. Kuhn, and James R. Barker.

As you will see in the Call for Papers, the sub-theme places a special focus on the formative and constitutive role of communication for practices of organizing that occur toward and beyond formal organization. That said, we also invite conceptual or empirical papers that more generally apply a communication-centered or discursive lens to study organizational phenomena of various kinds.

We are looking forward to receiving your short paper submissions (max. 3,000 words) by Jan. 9th, 2017 via the EGOS website!

See you in Copenhagen!

Storify Report of EGOS 2016 PDW on CSR & Communication

If you would like to get a peek into what happened at the EGOS 2016 PDW on “CSR & Communication” in Naples/Italy, please check out our brief Storify report here (generated with friendly support of our social media expert, Annamaria Tuan, University of Pisa).

And please also make sure of course to take a look at the video podcast of the panel debate that was posted earlier in this blog.

Pre-Conference Workshop on CSR and Communication at EGOS

The annual colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) took place in early July in Naples, Italy. Next to the program of standing working group (SWG) on the communicative constitution of organization, a pre-conference workshop on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and communication brought together work in progress with feedback from established scholars. The workshop opened with a panel discussion on corporate social responsibility and communication. Guido Palazzo (University of Lausanne), Tim Kuhn (University of Colorado at Boulder), Jana Costas (Viadrina University Frankfurt/Oder), and Jean-Pascal Gond (CASS Business School) each voiced their opinion on the matter and later answered questions from the audience under the moderation of Mette Morsing (Copenhagen Business School). Check out the panel in all of its 57-minutes glory.

Workshop on “Large Social Phenomena” at the University of Warwick (Dec. 5-6, 2016)

Check out this exciting workshop on “Large Social Phenomena” at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (Dec. 5-6, 2016), jointly organized by Davide Nicolini (U of Warwick) and Katharina Dittrich (U of Zurich). The Call for Papers explicitly invites communication-centered approaches – see here: Workshop on Large Social Phenomena.

EGOS 2016 – SWG ‘Organization as Communication’

From the 7th to the 9th of July, around 40 scholars coming from diverse countries and disciplines gathered at the EGOS 2016 colloquium in the sub-theme #16 “Organization as communication” to discuss issues, theories and practical implications related to the constitutive force of communication and materiality in processes of (dis)organization. Many different approaches to materiality where discussed (STS, CCO, sociomateriality, to name a few), many were the materials studied through these approaches (objects, bodies, technologies, social media, discourses, talk, text, workspace, etc.), as well as the topics (identity, sensemaking, paradoxes and tensions, decision making, CSR, etc.) that were addressed during these three days. Questions related to agency (whose agency? for what?) were raised but not completely resolved, as well as methodological interrogations concerning the study of (im)materiality (e.g. how to interview an object? how to make a workspace talk?). Some of the traces of these discussions were posted on a wall (see picture bellow).

In this diversity, some common trends emerged in our final session, which was animated by Tim Kuhn, with the collaboration of three special guests: Viviane Sergi, Dennis Schoeneborn and Peter Monge. Some of these trends included the focus on (a) mundane and daily work interactions, (b) the disruptive, disorganizing, transforming and even destructive role of organizational communication, (c) the embodiment, materialization, in-formation (e.g. taking form) of discourse in many different ways. Special attention was given to bridging the CCO community with other scholarly communities in both organization communication and organization studies, as well as developing the social relevance of our scholarly work to political and practical issues.

In parallel to the sub-theme the SWG also was part of other activities: the PDW workshop on CSR and Communication and the ‘off EGOS’ workshop on Space, creativity and organizing.

Thanks to all that made this great reunion possible! Looking forward to see you next year in Copenhagen. More to come about the colloquium on the EGOS website. For now you can take a look at the  video announcing the venue (you will recognize some of the scholars ‘starring’ in it!)

SWG on OaC at EGOS 2016

Let me unpack the somewhat cryptical headline for you: Standing Working Group (SWG) on Organization as Communication at the 2016 Annual Colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS). In true EGOS fashion, we’re spending three days together in altogether seven sessions works related to this year’s theme of (Dis)organizing through Texts, Artifacts, and Other Materialities. We’ll be posting pictures and videos from plenary sessions and panel discussions, maybe even more goodies and background noise, so stay tuned. You can follow us on Twitter #CCO #EGOS2016. And if you are at EGOS, then don’t be a stranger, come say ‘Hi.’

New Book on Organizational Memory as a Function

Off-EGOS Workshop on Space, Creativity, and Organizing

I’ve been meaning to link to the Off-EGOS Workshop on Space, Creativity, and Organizing for weeks without getting around to do it. No more excuses to Nicolas about not linking or participating in the workshop. I’ll be attending to casually analyze some data (or so I have been told) with the aid of wine (which certainly helps in terms of creativity) and crackers (which may or may not help with creativity, but they go well with the wine, that’s for sure). Be sure to sign up!

From Membership to Contributorship

Change is the Only Constant

In organizational studies, we frequently say that change is the only constant. I don’t really know who said this to begin with, and it really doesn’t matter, but change really is the only constant, not least because any communication event or episode is new another next first time (Garfinkel, 2002). How, then, do we go about change? From a CCO-friendly perspective, there is conversations of change (Ford & Ford, 1995), organizational becoming (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002), etc. And now there is even a virus to bring about change. Forthcoming in the International Journal of Technology Management (which, to be honest, I never read before) is an article by Steffen Roth on Growth and Function: A Viral Research Program for Next Organizations. It relies heavily on Luhmann, so be careful to put on your thinking cap before immersing yourself in the constructivist thought of viral change.

• Ford, J. D., & Ford, L. W. (1995). The Role of Conversations in Producing Intentional Change in Organizations. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 541–570.
• Garfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Tsoukas, H., & Chia, R. (2002). On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change. Organization Science, 13(5), 567–582.