Techniques, Forces, and Fractals: A Poststructural CCO Framework

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Organizational Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This essay offers an explicitly poststructural CCO framework based on 5 tenets. 1) Organizations are not collectives of stable people and things, they are collectives of expressions of force arranged in predictable patterns. 2) When forces intersect, techniques arrange them in (un)predictable patterns. 3) Forces and techniques are conceptually distinct, but necessarily mutual. 4) Organizational (in)stability lies in the necessary relationships between forces and techniques, not one or the other. 5) In a network of relatively predictable forces that constitute organization, human beings are unique in that they act as skilled navigators of forces and creative users of techniques. These tenets help to clarify the unique contributions of organizational communication to organizational studies at large. Using the example of diversity consultants, this essay also illustrates the practical use of a Techniques and Forces framework. Ultimately, this framework introduces a new metaphor for organizational analysis, the fractal.

Author

• Jennifer J. Mease, James Madison U