The Three Schools of CCO Thinking: Interactive Dialogue and Systematic Comparison. (May 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schoeneborn, Dennis; Blaschke, Steffen; Cooren, François; McPhee, Robert D.; Seidl, David; Taylor, James R.
• Is Part Of: Management communication quarterly. Volume 28:Number 2(2014:May)
• Page Start: 285
• Page End: 316
• Publication Date: 2014-05
• Subjects: communication as constitutive of organizations -- organizational communication -- organization theory -- paradigms; Communication in management -- Periodicals; Communication in organizations -- Periodicals; 658.4505
• DOI: 10.1177/0893318914527000
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0893-3189

Abstract

The idea of the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) has gained considerable attention in organizational communication studies. This rather heterogeneous theoretical endeavor is driven by three main schools of thought: the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, the Four-Flows Model (based on Giddens's Structuration Theory), and Luhmann's Theory of Social Systems. In this article, we let proponents of all three schools directly speak to each other in form of an interactive dialogue that is structured around guiding questions addressing the epistemological, ontological, and methodological dimension of CCO as a theoretical paradigm. Based on this dialogue, we systematically compare the three schools of CCO thinking and identify common grounds as well as key differences.