[ecrea] Standing Working Group (SWG) "Organization as Communication".

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Dear all,

We are very happy to announce that the European Group of Organizational 
Studies (EGOS) has approved to launch a new Standing Working Group (SWG) 
“Organization as Communication”. The SWG will be coordinated by Dennis 
Schoeneborn (Copenhagen Business School), Consuelo Vasquez (UQAM 
Montréal), Timothy Kuhn (University of Colorado at Boulder), and 
François Cooren (Université de Montréal). The SWG will feature EGOS 
sub-themes from 2015-2018 that each will address the formative and 
constitutive role of communication for organizations and organizing. 
Worth noting, the SWG will provide “Egosians” with a new home for 
anybody interested in organizational communication, discourse, 
narratives, rhetoric, or tropes. For more information on the new SWG – 
see here: http://www.egosnet.org/swgs/current_swgs/swg_16.

At the EGOS 2015 Colloquium in Athens, Greece (July 1-4, 2015), the new 
SWG will start its activities by hosting a sub-theme entitled 
“Organization as Communication: The Performative Power of Talk” 
(convenors: François Cooren, Lars Thøger Christensen, and Dennis 
Schoeneborn). While the this sub-theme places a special focus on talk, 
we also invite conceptual or empirical papers that, more generally, 
apply a communication-centered lens to study organizational phenomena 
(for more details, see the Call for Papers below or on the EGOS website: 
http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1392376003637&subtheme_id=1368705980214).

We are very much looking forward to your submissions (short papers of 
max. 3,000 words) by January 12, 2015!

With kind regards,


Consuelo, François, Lars, Tim, and Dennis

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EGOS 2015 in Athens (Greece), July 1-4, 2015

Sub-theme 16: (SWG) Organization as Communication: The Performative 
Power of Talk

Convenors
·         François Cooren, Université de Montréal, Canada, 
(f.cooren /at/ umontreal.ca)
·         Lars Thøger Christensen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, 
(ltc.ikl /at/ cbs.dk)
·         Dennis Schoeneborn, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, 
(dsc.ikl /at/ cbs.dk)

Please submit your short papers (3,000 words max.) by January 12, 2015 
via: www.egosnet.org

Call for Papers

This sub-theme is concerned with the fundamental, constitutive, and 
formative role of communication for organizations. One way to reflect on 
this constitutive role is to focus on the relation between talk and 
action. In organization and management studies scholars traditionally 
tend to clearly distinguish between "talk" and "action" (e.g., Brunsson, 
1989) – a distinction that is found in colloquial use, too (Grant et 
al., 1998). The basic assumption is that "talk is cheap" and easy to do, 
since it oftentimes lacks alignment with action, i.e. the "real" and 
hands-on accomplishments.

Regarded as a source of hypocrisy, the decoupling or misalignment of 
talk and action (inc. the mere ceremonial compliance with stakeholder 
expectations) is seen as a threat to both an organization's efficiency 
and legitimacy. However, as recent works from organizational 
communication studies remind us, a clear-cut distinction between "talk" 
and "action" is problematic, given that talk is an action in its own 
right (e.g., Ashcraft et al., 2009). This is because language and 
communication not only reflect, but also reflexively participate in the 
constitution of reality (Robichaud & Cooren, 2013). Proponents of this 
perspective argue that language use always has a "performative 
character", i.e. by talking a reality into being that would not exist if 
the interaction had not taken place. For instance, in a recent paper, 
Christensen, Morsing, & Thyssen (2013) apply the idea of the 
performative nature of language use to the context of corporate social 
responsibility (CSR). The authors argue that although differences 
between "talk" and "action" in the CSR arena are usually seen as 
hypocritical, such differences can be part of an organization's 
"aspirational talk", which represents an important resource for 
organizational and social change (see also Haack et al., 2012).

In this sub-theme, we invite papers that help reflect upon and go beyond 
oversimplified distinctions between talk and action, that seek to 
further explore the performative dimension of language use in 
organizational contexts, or that aim to address the relations between 
communication and organization more generally.

Below is a list of indicative, but not exhaustive, topics and questions 
related to the sub-theme:

    * What are the implications for organization theory if the 
distinction between talk and action is problematized?
    * What role does talk (or other forms of communication, e.g., 
textual, architectural, technological, etc.) play in the constitution of 
organizations?
    * What forms of talk do we find in organizational practice – and 
how do they differ in shaping and constituting organizational phenomena?
    * How does talk get “materialized” in organizational practice 
(e.g., through texts) and can gain more stable character?
    * Under which boundary conditions is it likely that "aspirational 
talk" (Christensen et al., 2013) paves the way for its own fulfillment?
    * What methodologies are best suited to study the formative role of 
communication for organizations?

References

    * Ashcraft, K.L., Kuhn, T.R., & Cooren, F. (2009): "Constitutional 
amendments: 'Materializing' organizational communication." Academy of 
Management Annals, 3 (1), 1–64.
    * Brunsson, N. (1989): The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, 
Decisions, and Actions in Organizations. New York, NY: Wiley.
    * Christensen, L.T., Morsing, M., & Thyssen, O. (2013): "CSR as 
aspirational talk." Organization, 20 (3), 372–393.
    * Grant, D., Keenoy, T.W., & Oswick, C. (eds.) (1998): Discourse 
and Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
    * Haack, P., Schoeneborn, D., & Wickert, C. (2012): "Talking the 
talk, moral entrapment, creeping commitment? Exploring narrative 
dynamics in corporate responsibility standardization." Organization 
Studies, 33 (5-6), 813–845.
    * Robichaud, D., & Cooren, F. (eds.) (2013): Organization and 
Organizing: Materiality, Agency and Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.


François Cooren is Professor and Chair of the Department of 
Communication at the Université de Montréal, Canada. His work has been 
published in the 'Academy of Management Annals', 'Communication Theory', 
'Human Relations', 'Management Communication Quarterly', 'Organization', 
and 'Organization Studies', amongst others. His research interests lie 
in the study of organizational communication, language and social 
interaction, and communication theory.

Lars Thøger Christensen is Professor at the Department of Intercultural 
Communication and Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His 
work has been published in 'Organization Studies', 'Human Relations', 
'Management Communication Quarterly', and 'Organization', amongst 
others. His research interests circle around the question of how 
organizations deliberately (or otherwise) construct significant 
realities for themselves and others through communication, in areas such 
as CSR, transparency and organizational identity.

Dennis Schoeneborn is Professor (MSO) at the Department of Intercultural 
Communication and Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His 
work has been published in 'Organization Studies', 'Management 
Communication Quarterly', and the 'Journal of Management Inquiry', 
amongst others. His current research concerns the question how 
communication constitutes rudimentary and partial organizational phenomena.





Lars Thøger Christensen, Ph.d.

Professor

Department of Intercultural Communication and Management

Copenhagen Business School
Porcelænshaven 18A
2000 Frederiksberg
Danmark

E-mail: (ltc.ikl /at/ cbs.dk)

Phone: (+45) 38153299

Cell: (+45) 60112122



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