Consuelo Vásquez

A humanitarian organization in action: organizational discourse as an immutable mobile

Following Alvesson and Kärremans (2000) influential essay on the modes and interpretation of organizational discourse, this article reports on a longitudinal study of naturally occurring interactions that took place before, during, and after a meeting between representatives of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), a well-known humanitarian organization, and representatives of local health centers in a region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This episode is used to exemplify the fruitfulness of adopting a view that incorporates two dimensions of discourse, that is, what Alvesson and Kärreman identify as its transient (autonomous) and muscular (determining) nature. The longitudinal aspect of our study allows us to show what interactants accomplish in particular settings, while illustrating a crucial aspect of the trans-local dimension of their talk. As shown in this article, a given Discourse must be embodied, materialized or even incarnated in discourses, that is, tokens of text or talk, in order for it to be reproduced, sustained and transported from one point to another, that is, to become what Latour (1987) calls an immutable mobile . A given Discourse can thus maintain its shape across time and space only if a lot of interactive work is done to assure the stability of its associations in the ordinary day-to-day activity of the people who embody it.

Notes from the field on organizational shadowing as framing

Purpose – Shadowing is becoming an increasingly popular method in management and organization studies. While several scholars have reflected on this technique, comparatively few researchers have explicated the specific practices that constitute this method and discussed their implications for research on processes of organizing. The purpose of this article is to address these issues by offering a conceptual toolbox that defines shadowing in terms of a set of framing practices and provides in‐depth insight into the methodological choices and challenges that organizational shadowers may encounter.Design/methodology/approach – In this article, the authors explicate the specific framing practices in which researchers engage when taking an intersubjective approach to organizational shadowing. To demonstrate the value of viewing shadowing as framing, the paper grounds the theoretical discussion in actual fieldwork experiences, taken from three different ethnographic studies.Findings – Based on a systematic and ...

On Shadowing the Hybrid Character of Actions: A Communicational Approach

This article extends the discussion of McDonald (2005) concerning the use of shadowing as a research technique for studying actions in organizational contexts. It addresses McDonalds observation that the few studies that refer to this technique do not make any attempt to discuss their methodological choices or their epistemological standpoints. In this paper, we intend to contribute to this emerging debate in two ways. First, we explore and discuss some contrasting applications of shadowing in the organizational literature in order to render explicit the researchers ontological and epistemological standpoints. Second, we present our own application of shadowing starting with the redefinition of organization as a plenum of agencies (Cooren, 2006) that emerges from communication (Taylor & Van Every, 2000). Considering these theoretical grounds we propose, inspired by Latours (2005) motto “follow the actors,” to shadow the hybrid character actions. This implies, from a methodological point of view: 1) documenting the flows that compose these actions, over the course of which a set of objects are mobilized in series of interactions, (2) applying an equivalent analytical strategy to whatever actor we are studying, and (3) grasping both the material and discursive dimension of communication as action.

Summoning the spirits: Organizational texts and the (dis)ordering properties of communication

This article addresses the question: why does disorder tend to simultaneously accompany efforts to create order when organizing? Adopting a communication-centered perspective, we specifically examine the role of texts in the mutual constitution of order and disorder. Drawing on empirical material from three qualitative case studies on project organizing, we show that attempts of ordering through language use and texts (i.e. by closing and fixing meaning) tend to induce disordering (i.e. by opening the possibility of multiple meanings), at the same time. As we contend, these (dis)ordering dynamics play a key role in the communicative constitution of organization, keeping them in motion by calling forth continuous processes of meaning (re-)negotiation.

Imagining organization through metaphor and metonymy: Unpacking the process-entity paradox

Within organization studies, Morgan’s seminal book Images of Organization has laid the groundwork for an entire research tradition of studying organizational phenomena through metaphorical lenses. Within Morgan’s list of images, that of ‘organization as flux and transformation’ stands out in two important regards. First, it has a strong metonymic dimension, as it implies that organizations consist of and are constituted by processes. Second, the image invites scholars to comprehend organizations as a paradoxical relation between organization (an entity) and process (a non-entity). In this article, we build on Morgan’s work and argue that flux-based images of organization vary in their ability to deal with the process-entity paradox, depending on the degree to which its metaphorical and metonymic dimensions are intertwined. We also examine three offsprings of the flux image: Organization as Becoming, Organization as Practice, and Organization as Communication. We compare these images regarding their metaphor–metonymy dynamics, the directionality of their process of imagination, and their degree of concreteness. We contribute to Morgan’s work, and to organization studies more generally, by offering an analytical grid for unpacking different processes of imagining organization. Moreover, our grid helps explain why images of organization vary in their ability to comprehend organizations in dialectical and paradoxical ways.

Revisiting Autopoiesis: Studying the Constitutive Dynamics of Organization as a System of Narratives

The theory of autopoiesis is based on the work of Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana and his former disciple Francisco Varela (1974/1994). In a nutshell, this theory explains the way live organisms are defined by self-production. The concept of autopoiesis has expanded from biology to other disciplines such as sociology (Luhmann, 1997), literature (Paulson, 1988), and communication (Winnograd & Flores, 1987). In the field of organizational communication (whether in Latin America, North America, or Europe), the concept of autopoiesis has been used mostly to explain the mechanisms that make up organizations as autonomous systems (e.g., Morgan, 1986). However, the notion of autopoiesis in this literature is most often quoted without necessarily referring to the premises of the knowledge theory, upon which it is based (for exception, see Cheong, Hwang, & Brummans, 2014). The present essay postulates that to better understand the autonomy and constitutive mechanisms of organizations, we must study the narrative processes that distinguish the organization as a unit. This statement is based on two premises derived from Maturana and Varela’s knowledge theory: First, the intrinsic link between autopoiesis and the interpretative capacity of living beings, which gives rise to meaning in reference to an identity (the “self” of the autopoietic process). Second, the importance of language in this signification process, which enables to distinguish a system from its environment

Forum Introduction: Organizational Communication in Spanish-Speaking Latin American Countries

The emergence of the organizational communication (OC) field in Latin America is intrinsically related to the development of Latin American communication scholarship. Originally influenced by two paradigms—North American positivism and European critical thinking—Latin American communication scholars have moved beyond these foreign approaches to propose theoretical frameworks that contribute to the uniqueness of Latin American communication scholarship (e.g., Latin American social theory, see Martín Barbero, 1990). Marques de Melo (1999), one of the pioneers and foremost promoters of a distinctive Latin American approach to communication, identifies four features that characterize the field: (a) the fusion of foreign and local theories; (b) the methodological hybridity that derives from a transdisciplinary approach to communication; (c) the ethics and political commitment of the researcher, characterized as an agent of social change; and (d) the extranational dimension of research that addresses regional issues from a critical standpoint. Although the OC field in Latin America is young, we can currently observe signs of expansion and transformation that follow the lines of the aforementioned characteristics of Latin American communication scholarship (Kaplún, 2012).

A spatial grammar of organising: studying the communicative constitution of organisational spaces

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the growing body of literature on organisational spaces by taking a communication-centred approach to organising that stresses a performative view of communication as constitutive of organisation. Based on this constitutive premise, I propose to study the ‘spatial grammar of organising’, which implies (a) describing the spatial imaginary of an organisation: the spatial images that are voiced and embodied, and their effects on the production of organisational spaces; and (b) attending to the processes through which these organisational spaces are performed and to their implications. Applying these analytical steps in the study of an outreach organisation’s development strategy, the article shows that the constitution of organisational spaces is a communicative process of boundary setting in which actors of various ontologies are related. Hence, the spatial imaginary of an organisation is not abstract and neutral: it has concrete organisational and political effects in defining the organisation’s space of action.

O campo da comunicação organizacional na América Latina: uma revisão crítica de sua produção intelectual acadêmica

This paper presents an overview of the Latin American organizational communication field. It is the result of a critical review of the scholarly production of the field from 2010 to 2014. This study shows the main demographic trends and affiliation of those who produce this knowledge as well as the main themes, metatheoretical and methodological trends. These results are contrasted with trends from the Anglo-American field. Although a common ground is found between the two scholarships, the paper highlights the aspects that make the Latin American field a particular academic space.

A Two-Step Teaching Strategy for Coping With Textualization Fever in Ethnography

Ethnography is grounded in the belief that we can produce sensible knowledge about a social collectivity by carefully textualizing its members’ lived experience, which is inextricably linked to our own. Yet how can we teach students the skills necessary to inscribe everyday life without instilling in them an obsession with writing that propels them out of the very life they’re trying to investigate? In this article, we reflect critically on this often unquestioned, but crucial, question and draw on our own teaching experiences to propose a two-step strategy that can help graduate students and faculty cope with the “textualization fever” inherent in the ethnographic enterprise.