Materialising Discourse: The Geosocial Nature of Organizational Change Communication

• In Event: Organizational Change Communication: Materializing the Immaterial

Abstract

Despite ongoing interest among organizational communication scholars in the materiality of organizing and non-human agency (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2004; Putnam & Cooren, 2004), there is much we do not know about how the physical dimension of work shapes collaborative action and contributes to how organizational members make sense of organizational communication. This paper addresses these two considerations, discussing findings from a study of an organizational change in a food processing factory that illustrates how the social and physical landscape are manifested in and supported by concepts that workers use to make sense of collective action, including communication, during change. In particular, it addresses how commonplace concepts such as “getting on with others” and the interpretive discourses in which such concepts are embedded can localize sensemaking about organisational change in the factory geographies in which particular groups of workers work. The paper’s value lies in the way it provides an empirical illustration how the geosocial (Mills, 2002) materiality of a workplace is dialectically coupled to the discursive processes workers engage in to make sense of change and change communication.

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Putnam, L. L., & Cooren, F. (2004). Alternative perspectives on the role of text and agency in constituting organizations. Organization, 11(3), 323-333.

Author

• Colleen Elizabeth Mills, U of Canterbury