ABSTRACT
Recent work by Anderson (2004), Kirsch and Neff (2008), Piette (forthcoming), and Sergi (forthcoming) sheds a new light on the communicational basis of organization, as emerging out of conversation but inscribed in text. Anderson, for example, writes that,
in the translation from oral discussion to written text, individual experiences are converted into public and permanent representations of organizational reality. Writing and the dispersal of writing are actions by which members define the organization and ways in which they sometimes change that definition. (p. 142)
Kuhn (2008) similarly sees communication as “a process in which contextualized actors use symbols and make interpretations to coordinate, and control both their own and others’ activity and knowledge, which are simultaneously mediated by, and productive of, texts” (p. 1232). Writing the text, for Kuhn, now takes on strategic importance. As we did in Chapter 2, Kuhn depicts the construction of the organizational reality as “textual coorientation systems through which actors engage in ‘games’ that serve a variety of purposes” (p. 1228). The ultimate goal, the crucial outcome of the “game,” is, however, control (p. 1234). Authority is at stake: whoever gets to write the map of the organization, or to authorize its writing-“map” it-is the one who can claim to define its purposes and articulate its attitudes.
