Chapter 20: Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO)
CCO Placement
Interpretive
CCO Tradition
Interpretive
Explain how membership negotiation is an ongoing process.
It doesn't end after accepting a job offer. The next step of membership negotiation is socialization, or learning what it means to be a member of the organization.
What are some examples of activity coordination?
Marketing, sales, shipping, quality control, production, human resources
CCO Theorist
Robert McPhee
Different flows address different audiences
Self-structuring is usually not interesting to people outside of an organization, while activity coordination addresses groups within one. Institutional positioning will focus on external organizations, while membership negotiation targets new members or leaving members.
Summarize how the four flows can be applied to Lutgen-Sandvik's example.
She used the four flows to examine employee-abusive organizations. The four flows constituted a community women's center's abusive climate. By changing the four flows, she changed the organization's culture for the better.
What are critiques of CCO?
Some believe it to be too simplistic. The top-down approach to organizing is wrong. McPhee isn't precise when explaining certain situations and has a vague definition of flow.
The same message can address multiple flows
Sometimes messages are leverage able across multiple flows. It is all situational, so flows can intersect in a single message or across four messages.
Different flows happen in different places
The four flows are usually separated by time and space and do not always occur in the same settings.
What are strengths of CCO?
There is a degree of relative simplicity and aesthetic appeal to CCO. Young theory that is energizing a new generation of organizational communication scholars.
All four flows are necessary for organization
Two or three of the flows are not enough for functional organization. The blending of flows is what makes communication organized.
What is a flow and what assumptions about communication does it reflect?
a circulating field of messages that constitutes organization
What does the self-structuring flow involve?
communication that shapes the relationships among an organization's members. They are communication acts that birth an organization
What talks an organization into being?
flows
How many flows are there?
four
What does the institutional positioning flow involve?
involves communication between an organization and external entities.
What does the activity coordination flow involve?
involves communication that accomplishes the organization's work toward goals, and it presumes the existence of the self-structuring flow.
What does the membership negotiation flow involve?
involves hiring new employees. It is communication that regulates the extent to which a person is an organization member. Examples include interview processes, socialization, recruitment for sororities.
What is an example of institutional positioning?
when a corporation makes their charitable work memorable by partnering with a limited set of nonprofits.
What did Weick theorize about communication?
According to Weick, organizations are like organisms, active beings who must continually process information to survive. He created the information systems approach that uses sensemaking.
What is the distinctive perspective on organizations taken by CCO scholars?
Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) theorists insist any company is what it is because communication brings the organization into existence. They believe that person-in- conversation co-construct their social worlds, and in this case, their worlds are organizations.
What are examples of the many documents that often play a role in the self-structuring of an organization?
Company charter, bylaws, and constitution
