Constituting Organizational Rhetoric

• In Event: Constituting Organizations: Scholarship on CCO

Abstract

Cooren’s (2012) response to the rhetorical tradition from a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective opened up new, but as-yet relatively unexplored, avenues for organizational rhetoric research and theorizing. We cultivate a constitutive viewpoint for organizational rhetoric that foregrounds the iterative practices of constitution as delineated in CCO and layers in historical and transhistorical perspectives from rhetorical theories of constitution (Charland, 1987). Our theorizing is built through exercises of comparison and application. Comparative exercises first trace points of convergence and divergence in CCO and rhetorical treatments of the constitutive, then use these findings for application to extant empirical exemplars. Exercises in application surface potential contributions of a constitutive organizational rhetoric, specifically for researching organizational communication’s pressing issues such as inequalities

Authors

• Abigail Selzer King, Texas Tech U

• Patrice M. Buzzanell, Purdue U