Structurational Agency in Four Flows of Organizational Communication

• In Event: On the Various Ways of Studying Agency in Organizational Communication: A Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

The fecundity of the word “agency” has led to contrasting analyses of organizational communication by different schools. For structuration theory, key tenets are that (1) social processes must be reconceived as flows of practice, by individual human agents, with often unimagined conditions and outcomes (including system reproduction); (2) their “agency” is distinct in being based on irreducible powers like reflexive monitoring and rationalization (and communicating); and (3) other people, resources, constraints, and conditions of action are tacitly sensed, understood, and recognized/drawn on in accomplishing action, in ways that can tempt us to (anthropomorphizingly, erringly) say they are pieces of a larger “agency.” Following these tenets, one can analyze organizational communication to see how (mostly communicative) practice, with its specific resources, constraints, and conditions, can result in organized productive work and various supra-individual systems. The Four Flows model (McPhee & Iverson, 2009) analytically separates four ways individual agency is enabled/constrained to help constitute organizations.

Author

• Robert D. McPhee, Arizona State U