Organizing Beyond Organization: Branding, Discourse, and Communicative Capitalism

• In Event: Organizational Perspectives on Public Relations, Corporate Communication, and Branding

Abstract

This essay presents an argument for critical organizational communication scholars to more seriously address the phenomenon of corporate branding as a central, constitutive feature of organizing in contemporary capitalism. While brands and branding have historically been the domain of marketing and consumer studies researchers, I argue that a focus on the intersection of branding and organizing enables critical researchers to more effectively address the ways in which neoliberal capitalism and post-Fordist organizational forms mediate processes of meaning construction and human identity formation. Developing the notion of “communicative capitalism” (Dean, 2009), I argue that branding can be explored as a particular case of “organizing beyond organization.” The essay develops four elements of the branding and organizing relationship as an instantiation of communicative capitalism: 1) Floating signifiers and nodal points; 2) Communicative labor; 3) Communication and affect; and 4) Power, politics, and resistance.

Author

• Dennis K. Mumby, U of North Carolina - Chapel Hill