ABSTRACT
Organizational communication scholars have long been fond of claiming that communication is the essence of organization. Influenced by the work of Karl Weick (1969, 1979) to treat the concept of “organization” as a verb and not a noun, scholars have focused on how communication is the means by which human beings coordinate actions, create relationships, and maintain organizations. Thus, for decades, organizational communication scholars have claimed in our scholarship, pedagogy, and practice that organizations are communicatively constituted. This claim appears in a broad multidisciplinary body of work that examines the ways in which communication (often conceptualized and discussed as discourse) constitutes organization (e.g., Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1991; Boden, 1994; Boje, 2001; Bougon, 1992; Bruner, 1991; Czarniawska, 1997; Grant, Keenoy, & Oswick, 1998; Heracleous, 2006; Pentland, 1995; Pentland & Reuter, 1994; Weick, 1995; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Communication scholars have also contributed significantly to the development of these ideas (see, for example, Browning, 1992; Browning, Sitkin, Sutcliffe, Obstfeld, & Greene, 2000; Cooren, 2000; Cooren & Taylor, 1997, 1999; Cooren, Taylor, & Van Every, 2006; Fairhurst, 1993; Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004; Kuhn & Ashcraft, 2003; McPhee & Zaug, 2000; Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001; Putnam, Philips, & Chapman, 1996; Stohl, 1997; Taylor, 1993, 1995,
2000; Taylor & Cooren, 1997; Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud, 1996; Taylor & Van Every, 2000; Van Every & Taylor, 1998).
