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Running Head: ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMA NNIAN PERSPECTIVE
Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective
Dennis Schoeneborn
University of Zurich
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 1
Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective
Abstract
A growing body of literature in organization studies draws on the idea that communication
constitutes organization, often abbreviated to CCO. This paper introduces Luhmann’s theory
of social systems as a prominent example of CCO thinking. I argue that Luhmann’s
perspective contributes to current conceptual debates on how communication constitutes
organization. The theory of social systems highlights that organizations are fundamentally
grounded in paradox because they are built on communicative events that are contingent by
nature. Consequently, organizations are driven by the continuous need to deparadoxify their
inherent contingency. In that respect, Luhmann’s approach fruitfully combines a processual,
communicative conceptualization of organization with the notion of boundary and self-
referentiality. Notwithstanding the merits of Luhmann’s approach, its accessibility tends to be
limited due to the hermetic terminology that it employs and the fact that it neglects the role of
material agency in the communicative construction of organizations.
Keywords: organizational communication; communication constitutes organization
(CCO); Montreal School; theory of social systems
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 2
Author’s Bio
Dennis Schoeneborn (Ph.D., Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany) is a senior lecturer and
researcher for organization studies in the Department of Business Administration at the
University of Zurich, Switzerland. His current research concerns the question how
communicative practices get reproduced in organizational contexts.
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 3
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to Steffen Blaschke, Sue Newell, Alexander T. Nicolai,
Andreas G. Scherer, David Seidl, Paul Spee, and Anna Theis-Berglmair, the anonymous
reviewers, as well as editors Charles Conrad and James R. Barker for their very helpful
comments on earlier versions of this article.
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 4
Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective
Organizing is first and foremost a communicative activity. Weick even concludes that
“the communication activity is the organization” (Weick, 1995, p. 75; emphasis added). A
significant body of literature has emerged in recent years that takes Weick’s claim seriously,
acknowledging the constitutive role of communication for organizations, often abbreviated to
CCO. The CCO perspective originates in the interdisciplinary field of organizational
communication studies (Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). In a recent article, Ashcraft, Kuhn and
Cooren (2009) present a comprehensive overview of the emerging CCO perspective. The
authors argue that apart from rare examples, in particular the work of the “Montreal School”
of organizational communication (e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000; Cooren, Taylor, & van
Every, 2006) or scholars working with structuration theory (e.g., McPhee & Poole, 2001;
McPhee & Zaug, 2008), limited attention has been paid to focus on explicit claims that
communication constitutes organizations.
In this paper, I take this claim forward by drawing upon the work of German
sociologist Niklas Luhmann. I argue that Luhmann’s theory of social systems (Luhmann,
1995, 2000; Seidl & Becker, 2005), a long-reaching theoretical tradition in the German-
speaking social sciences, fundamentally shares with the CCO perspective the explicit
assumption of the communicative constitution of organizations. Nevertheless, so far the
theory of social systems has remained largely isolated and separate from comparable theories
developed by authors of the CCO perspective. This lack of reception can be explained by the
fact that a large part of Luhmann’s work on organizations has not yet been translated from
German into English (Hernes & Bakken, 2003, p. 1513) and is therefore mostly inaccessible
to an international readership. In view of that, this paper’s objective is systematically to
introduce Luhmann’s notion of organization as communication to an international readership
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 5
in the field of organizational communication and to contribute to emergent debates on the
CCO view.
Particularly, I put forward the argument that Luhmann’s theoretical perspective lends
itself to contributing to three current conceptual debates on unresolved questions within the
CCO framework: first, what makes communication organizational (Bisel, 2010; McPhee &
Zaug, 2008)? Second, if organizations are defined as consisting of something as ephemeral as
communication, how are organizations stabilized over time (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008)?
Third, what differentiates organizations from other forms of social phenomena, such as
networks, communities, or social movements (Sillince, 2010)?
With regard to the first question, I suggest drawing on Luhmann’s focus on decisions
as the distinctive feature of organizational communication. In this context, Luhmann’s theory
of social systems highlights that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox, as
they are built on communicative events that are contingent by nature. With regard to the
second question, Luhmann proposes that organizations are driven by the continuous necessity
to deparadoxify their inherent contingency. With regard to the third question, I claim
Luhmann’s framework is helpful in combining a processual, communicative conceptuali-
zation of organization with the notion of boundary and self-referentiality.
This paper is structured as follows: First, I provide a brief overview of the emerging
CCO perspective. Second, I introduce Luhmann’s theory of social systems and especially his
notion of organization as communication. Based on this brief introduction, I relate Luhmann’s
framework to current debates about the CCO view and analyze his potential contributions to
these debates. In order to set these potential contributions into perspective, I thirdly point out
limitations to the transferability of insights from Luhmann’s framework to CCO thinking. The
study concludes with a discussion of how acknowledging Luhmann’s theory of social systems
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 6
as one explicit strain of CCO thinking can inspire future research on organization as
communication.
The Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO)
A growing body of literature applies a constitutive conception of communication, i.e.
the notion that communication fundamentally constitutes social reality (Craig, 1999), to the
study of organizations (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009; Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). As
Castor points out, “organizational communication scholars […] are becoming increasingly
interested in the communication as constitutive of organizations (CCO) perspective that views
organizations as socially constructed through communication” (Castor, 2005, p. 480). The
CCO approach (e.g., Kuhn, 2008; Taylor, 2000) addresses one of the most fundamental
questions in organization studies: What is an organization? In doing so, CCO scholars attempt
a radical shift in perspective: they reject the notion that organizations are constituted by their
members (e.g., March and Simon 1958, p. 110, who maintain that “an organization is, after
all, a collection of people and what the organization does is done by people”). Instead, they
put forward a fluid and processual notion of organizations as being constituted by ephemeral
acts of communication: “An organization is not a physical structure – a collection of people
(or computers), joined by material channels of communication, but a construction made out of
conversation“ (Taylor, 1993, p. 22).
In a recent article, Ashcraft, Kuhn, and Cooren (2009) provide a comprehensive
overview of the current state of research based on the CCO perspective. At the same time, the
authors rely on a rather broad understanding of the CCO approach. Besides discussing
particular strains of CCO thinking which explicitly propagate a constitutive view of the
organization-communication relationship, they also consider strains of embedded CCO
thinking, characterized by the fact that “constitutive claims are not their primary focus”
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 7
(Ashcraft et al., 2009: 9). As examples of such embedded approaches, the authors mention
research on organizational culture (e.g., Eisenberg & Riley, 2001), power (e.g., Deetz, 2005;
Mumby, 2001), or networks (e.g., Monge & Contractor, 2003). In this paper, I use the term
CCO to refer mainly to explicit strains of CCO thinking. The most prominent examples of
these explicit strains, i.e. the work of the Montreal School of organizational communication
(e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000) as well as structuration theory approaches (e.g., McPhee &
Zaug, 2008), are introduced below in their main features.
The Montreal School of organizational communication is represented in particular by
James R. Taylor, François Cooren, and their colleagues (e.g., Cooren, 2004; Cooren et al.,
2006; Robichaud, Giroux, & Taylor, 2004; Taylor & van Every, 2000, 2011). The starting
point of their theorizations is the assumption of an isomorphic or equivalent relationship
between organization and communication (Taylor, 1995): The notion of equivalence “treats
communication and organization as a monastic unity or as the same phenomenon expressed in
different ways. That is, communicating is organizing and organizing is communicating: the
two processes are isomorphic” (Putnam, Philips, & Chapman, 1996, p. 375). The basic
distinction on the communicational side of the equivalency concerns the modalities of text
and conversation: “The textual dimension corresponds with the recurring, fairly stable and
uneventful side of communication (i.e. the organization’s ‘surface’), while the conversational
dimension refers to the lively and evolving co-constructive side of communication (i.e. the
‘site’ of organization)” (Ashcraft et al., 2009, p. 20). In a social-constructivist understanding
of organizations, Taylor and colleagues imagine the organization as the alternate succession
of episodes of conversation (where the organization is accomplished in situ) and
textualization (where the organization is “incarnated” as a recognizable actor by creating
textual representations of itself). In this radical view, the organization’s inception occurs
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 8
exclusively on the level of ongoing text-conversation processes and thus “has no existence
other than in discourse” (Taylor & Cooren, 1997, p. 429).
However, in this conceptualization of organizations, the crucial question remains:
What particular form of communication “makes communication organizational” (Taylor &
Cooren, 1997; emphasis added)? With regard to that question, the Montreal School’s
conceptualization of organization as communication has been subject to criticism for being
too vague. This criticism has been expressed particularly by scholars who primarily follow a
structuration theory perspective (e.g., McPhee & Poole, 2001; McPhee & Zaug, 2008).
Countering the notion of isomorphic equivalency between organization and communication,
these authors draw on the root-metaphor of production, arguing that organizations both
produce communication and are produced by communication (cf. Giddens’s notion of the
duality of structure and agency; Giddens, 1984). For instance, in what is a predominantly
supportive account of Taylor’s work, McPhee and Poole point out:
One limitation of Taylor et al.’s approach is that it attempts to use communication
concepts that apply to all interaction, perhaps influenced by the idea that if
organization and communication are equivalent, all communication should be
organizational. Since these concepts must […] apply to marriages, mobs, and
communities that intercommunicate, they are hindered from finding crucial
explanatory concepts for specifically organizational communication. (McPhee &
Poole, 2001, p. 534; emphasis added)
In a similar vein, McPhee and Zaug (2008) question the idea that every form of com-
munication has the inherent constitutive ability to let an organization emerge. Instead, they
propose distinguishing between four types of communication “flows,” which they assume to
be essential for the constitution of organization. First, organizations tend to draw a clear-cut
distinction between their members and non-members and thus are characterized by con-
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 9
tinuous communicative processes of membership negotiation. Second, organizations entail
communicative processes of reflexive self-structuring, which in turn distinguishes them from
loose forms of social gatherings, such as “lynch mobs or mere neighborhoods” (McPhee &
Zaug, 2008, p. 36). Third, organizations follow at least one manifest purpose, which serves as
a template for communicative processes of activity coordination towards that specific end.
Fourth, organizations do not operate in a vacuum but are embedded into society at large.
Thus, organizations also generate (and in turn are shaped by) complex communicative
processes of institutional positioning, where the organization’s status is continuously
negotiated in interaction with stakeholders and other institutions. These four flows, however,
need to be seen as a soft set of criteria rather than a clear-cut definition of what makes
communication organizational.
Leaning towards the work of the Montreal School, Cooren and Fairhurst (2008)
critically respond to McPhee and Zaug (2008), essentially arguing that their model of four
flows adopts a too reductionist, top-down stance towards organizations:
For example, a group of individuals can organize themselves to accomplish a
common objective (for example, moving) and develop some patterns of
interaction, but this does not necessarily mean that this group constitutes a formal
organization (for example, a moving company). They could just be a bunch of
friends trying to help one of them to move. (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008, p. 121)
Cooren and Fairhurst (2008) instead propose applying a bottom-up perspective, from
which the organization should be conceived as an emergent phenomenon, fundamentally
rooted in local interactions. According to the authors, the key question lies in how local and
ephemeral interactions are scaled up to longer-lasting and stabilized forms of organization: “It
is this source of stability that needs to be unveiled” (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008, p. 123;
emphasis in original). In response, the authors highlight the importance of textual and non-
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 10
human agency for processes of organizing. Non-human entities are seen here as agents
capable to act, i.e. of making a difference, by virtue of their mere presence and particular
configurations; for instance, “the PDA reminded me of the appointment” (Cooren, 2006, pp.
84-85) or a sign at a restaurant’s door where a private party is held is likely to stop you from
entering. This is referred to as the “staying capacity” (Derrida, 1988) or “distanciation”
(Ricœur, 1981) of texts and artifacts, i.e. their ability to transcend time and (in some cases
also) space. While circumstantial factors may vary, such entities remain robust over time, as
they become detached from their authors’ intentions and the context of their creation. With
relation to organization, one could say that, in effect, organizations come into existence by
help of the various forms of non-human agency (cf. Latour, 1994), which allow the
dislocation and consequently the perpetuation of its existence. In that respect, the CCO
perspective directs our attention to sociomateriality as a stabilizing condition for organizing
(Cooren, 2006; Orlikowski, 2007). Consequently, changes in sociomaterial practices, e.g., the
introduction of new media and genres of organizational communication (Yates & Orlikowski,
1992), fundamentally affect the perpetuation of organization. In the same spirit, Cooren
elucidates:
Different types of agencies are typically created and mobilized to fulfill
organizing (to name just a few, organizational charts, contracts, ledgers,
surveillance cameras, statuses, checklists, orders, memos, [etc.]). […] Organizing
can thus be understood as a hybrid phenomenon that requires the mobilization of
entities […] which contribute to the emergence and the enactment of the
organized form. (Cooren, 2006, p. 83)
As I have shown, although the authors who represent the various strands of the CCO
perspective agree on the constitutive role of communication for organization, we can also
perceive ongoing debates on how communication constitutes organization. Most recently, this
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 11
debate has been intensified in a special topic forum on the CCO approach in Management
Communication Quarterly (e.g., Bisel 2010; Putnam & Nicotera, 2010; Sillince, 2010).
Within the current debates on the CCO view, I identify three main unresolved questions. First,
Bisel (2010) – in line with McPhee and Zaug (2008) – suggests conceptualizing
communication as a necessary but ultimately insufficient condition for the emergence of
organization. Of course, this stance raises the question of what else needs to be in place for
organization to emerge or, in other words, what makes communication organizational.
Second, and closely related to this, if organizations are defined as consisting of something as
ephemeral as communication, how are organizations stabilized over time (Cooren &
Fairhurst, 2008)? Sillince (2010) points out a third question; namely, what differentiates
organizations from other forms of social phenomena such as networks, communities, or social
movements? He argues that McPhee and Zaug’s four flows model (2008) could equally apply
to all of these forms. Consequently, Sillince calls for developing more precisely the defining
characteristics that are specific to organizations. In the following section, I present the
argument that Luhmann’s social systems theory framework particularly lends itself to
contributing to these three questions on how communication constitutes organization.
Potential Contributions of the TSS to the CCO Perspective
The CCO perspective’s most fundamental assumption, that organizations are
constituted by communication, matches a central tenet of the theory of social systems (TSS),
as developed by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1995, 2000). Although the TSS
represents one of the most prominent schools of thought within the German-speaking social
sciences (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 8), so far it has remained largely isolated from the ideas
developed by authors of the CCO perspective (for one rare exception, see Taylor, 2001). One
of the main reasons for this may be that Luhmann’s work on organizations, particularly his
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 12
major monograph Organisation und Entscheidung (2000), has not yet been translated into
English and is thus inaccessible to large elements of the international readership. The
reception of Luhmann’s work on organization theory in English-language publications has
begun to grow relatively recently (e.g., Bakken & Hernes, 2003; Hernes & Bakken, 2003;
Nassehi, 2005; Seidl & Becker, 2005, 2006). In view of that, it is my article’s objective to
introduce the TSS, concentrating on its main features, and to highlight its contributions to
understanding organization as communication.
Luhmann’s lifetime project was to develop a universal theoretical framework that can
be applied to all social phenomena and that allows for theory-consistent descriptions.
Expounding his ideas on social systems, Luhmann (1995) starts with communication as the
most basic element of the social domain. In that respect, the TSS leads to the counter-intuitive
notion that human beings are part of the environment of communication processes (Luhmann,
1992, p. 30). In other words, Luhmann theorizes a clear distinction between communication
(“social systems”) and individual human beings (“psychic systems”): “Accordingly, social
systems are not comprised of persons and actions but of communications” (Luhmann, 1989,
p. 145). Despite this rather impersonal notion of social systems as interconnected
communications, Luhmann conceptualizes communication processes and individual thought
processes as mutually dependent on each other (Luhmann, 1992, p. 281).
The key to Luhmann’s understanding of communication is his notion of autopoiesis,
i.e. self-(re)production: Luhmann assumes that the social domain consists of various
autopoietic systems, which reproduce themselves self-referentially on the basis of ongoing
processes of communication: “Social systems use communications as their particular mode of
autopoietic reproduction. Their elements are communications which are recursively produced
and reproduced by a network of communications, and which cannot exist outside the
network” (Luhmann, 1986, p. 174).
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 13
Based on this conception, Luhmann distinguishes three basic types of autopoietic
social systems: (1) interactions, the smallest and most elusive form of social gatherings on the
micro-level; (2) organizations as more formalized and stable social systems on the meso-
level; and finally (3) society as a whole, which encompasses all forms of social systems on the
macro-level, and which can be further differentiated into various functional sub-systems such
as the political system, economic system, legal system, etc. (Luhmann, 1986, p. 173). Thus,
organizations represent a generic social form. Like all social systems, organizations are
assumed to be fundamentally constituted by communication. Accordingly, the organization is
conceptualized as an autopoietic system consisting of interconnected communicative events.
In this view, the organization only exists as long as it manages to produce further
communications, which call forth yet more communications.
The view that organizations consist solely of ephemeral communicative events, which
is central to the processual perspective, directs our attention to a fundamental problem of
organization: How do organizations maintain their existence from one communicative event
to the next? Or, in other words, how do organizations ensure connectivity (in German:
‘Anschlussfähigkeit’; Nassehi, 2005)? Indeed, organizational strategies established to increase
the likelihood of connectivity are a focal point for the TSS. In the following, I will discuss to
what extent Luhmann’s theoretical perspective can contribute fruitfully to the three identified
debates on unresolved questions within CCO thinking. These questions will structure my
analysis.
Organization as Fundamentally Grounded in Paradox
With regard to the first question of current CCO debates, i.e. what is it that makes
communication organizational (Bisel, 2010; McPhee & Zaug, 2008), I turn to Luhmann’s
idea that the decision-communication is the key feature of organizational communication:
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 14
[…] Organised social systems can be understood as systems made up of decisions
[…]. Decision is not understood as a psychological mechanism, but as a matter of
communication, not as a psychological event in the form of an internally
conscious definition of the self, but as a social event. That makes it impossible to
state that decisions already taken still have to be communicated. Decisions are
communications; something that clearly does not preclude that one can
communicate about decisions. (Luhmann, 2003, p. 32)
Luhmann’s focus on decisions as the constitutive element of organization roots in a
long-standing tradition in organization studies (e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Weber, 1958;
Weick, 1979, 1995) as well as organizational communication research (e.g., Tompkins &
Cheney, 1983, 1985). Within existing strains of CCO thinking, however, such focus on
decisions as the key feature of organizing – in the tradition of March and Simon (1958) – is
regarded as old-fashioned and too reductionist (e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000, p. 183). But
in contrast to the work of his predecessors, Luhmann ascribes to decisions a radical
communicative character: “Luhmann suggests conceptualising decision as a specific form of
communication. It is not that decisions are first made and then communicated; decisions are
communications” (Seidl, 2005a, p. 39). According to Luhmann, the organization comes into
being whenever speech acts adopt the form of decisions. As an example for what he means by
decisions, let us consider the most basic type of organizational decisions, that is, decisions on
membership. Communicative acts representative of this type include phrases like, e.g., “We
have hired…” or “Please welcome …, our new colleague.” What counts for the organization,
is the completed decision. Seidl draws on the same example when he explains that what
matters for the organization is the decision as such, rather than the process that has led to that
decision:
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 15
For the organization the decision on the candidate connects directly to the earlier
decision to create the position. […] For the continuation of the decision process
(e.g. further decisions on concrete curricula etc.) it is only relevant which
candidate has been chosen (and which ones have not). It is completely irrelevant
who was for or against the candidate […], how long it took the participants to
reach the decision etc. What counts for the further decision process is the decided
alternative, while the process culminating in the decision, and the uncertainty
involved in it, are irrelevant or absorbed. (Seidl, 2005b, p. 158)
When it comes to decisions, the TSS highlights that organizations are essentially
grounded in paradox (Luhmann, 2000, p. 64). In this context, Luhmann refers to the paradox
of the undecidability of decisions, as expressed by von Foerster (1992, p. 14): “Only questions
that are in principle undecidable, we can decide” (cf. Derrida, 2002; Cooren, 2010). In order
to make this paradoxical statement more comprehensible let us take a closer look at
Luhmann’s notion of the term contingency, as a first step. When Luhmann asserts that
“contingency is the state that is reached if necessity and impossibility are negated” (Luhmann,
1988, p. 183; translated from the original), he is referring to the philosophical definition of the
term (e.g., Rorty, 1989). Here “contingency” means an instance of “it could be otherwise” and
thus represents potentiality as opposed to actuality. In this respect, Luhmann’s notion of the
term “contingency” clearly differs from its usage in “contingency theory” (Lawrence &
Lorsch, 1967) or its common usage (i.e. a future event or circumstance that is difficult to
predict accurately).
Decisions, in turn, are contingent by definition because in a decision, usually “only
one conclusion [is] reached but others could have been chosen” (Andersen, 2003, p. 245). At
the same time, questions that have only one answer, i.e., questions that can only be decided in
one way, and therefore lack the property of “undecidability”, do not allow organizations to
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 16
emerge as interrelated sets of decision-communications: “[I]f a decision can be reached
through absolute deduction, calculation, or argumentation [it leads] to a final closure or
fixation of contingency without simultaneously potentializing alternatives. […] So-called
rational decisions are not decisions at all” (Andersen, 2003, p. 246). In practice, this means
that if, for instance, an organization has established procedures that allow it to determine
deductively the profile of the “optimal” candidate for a job within the organization, e.g., based
on a list of pre-defined criteria, there would be no need to make a decision as such when
choosing among candidates, in the sense that the question of selecting a new member of staff
can be answered solely on the basis of past decisions. Thus, in the TSS the term “decision”
designates only the “pure” form of decisions, which reflects their inherent contingency,
arbitrariness, and undecidability. Consequently, it is in line with Luhmann (2000) to assume
that decision-communications do not necessarily follow a rationalist and deductive pattern
(see also Taylor, 2001). As Nassehi puts it, “Luhmann comes to the conclusion that rationality
is a retrospective scheme of observation, dealing with the contingency and the paradox of
decision-making processes” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186).
One important aspect of decision-communication in organizations is that decisions can
be identified as decisions only if their contingency is made visible in the form of one or more
alternative possibilities, which have been explicitly taken into consideration but are discarded:
[...] What is particular about decisions is that they […] communicate their own
contingency […]. In contrast to an ordinary communication, which only
communicates a specific content that has been selected (e.g. “I love you”), a
decision communication communicates also – explicitly or implicitly – that there
are alternatives that could have been selected instead (e.g. “I am going to employ
candidate A and not candidate B”). (Seidl, 2005a, p. 39)
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 17
Thus, organizations constantly operate in a state of paradox: “The decision must
communicate itself as a decision, but by doing that it also communicates its own alternative.
A decision cannot help but communicate its own self-critique, i.e., communicate that it could
also have been made differently” (Knudsen, 2005, p. 110). Seidl adds that “every decision
communicates that there are alternatives to the decision – otherwise it would not be a decision
– and it simultaneously communicates that since the decision has been made, there are no
alternatives – otherwise, again, it would not be a decision” (Seidl 2005b, p. 146; emphasis in
original). Or, in the words of Luhmann, “Decisions can only be communicated [as decisions]
if the rejected alternatives are also communicated” (Luhmann, 2000, p. 64; translated from the
original). The organization, then, can be described as a communicative entity that is driven by
the continuous need to handle this paradox and thus tends to oscillate between visibilizing and
invisibilizing the alternativity of decisions (Schoeneborn, 2008).
To conclude, Luhmann’s focus on decision-communications is highly pertinent to the
first question of current debates on the CCO perspective, i.e. what makes communication
organizational. In this context, Luhmann proposes focusing on a particular form of
communication, the decision-communication. From the TSS perspective, one could argue that
all four flows that define organization according to McPhee & Zaug (2008), i.e. self-
structuring, membership negotiation, activity coordination, and institutional positioning,
essentially involve explicit or implicit forms of decision-communication. From this point of
view, decision-communications represent the specific type of communication that holds all
four flows together; for example, the process of negotiating whether a job applicant joins an
organization or not may result in a contract being signed by the new recruit. For Luhmann
(2000), this process would essentially consist of a decision-communication, in the sense that
the signing of a contract indicates one option (inclusion), which has been chosen over an
alternative (exclusion) and is communicated in written form. Similarly, the process of activity
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 18
coordination during a team meeting will most likely involve a decision-communication on
which activities to focus on (from among all available options) and on the allocation of tasks
to team members. Authors of the Montreal School would still object to such decision-centered
reductionism, of course, arguing that language per se has the inherent tendency to generate
instances of organizing. Thus, according to these authors, organization can emerge in
principle out of all forms of communication, not only from decision-communication.
Nevertheless, even if one does not agree with Luhmann’s focus on decision-
communication, the TSS yields potentially valuable insights into the communicative
constitution of organization. For instance, the TSS suggests taking a closer look at the form of
communication. In this context, Seidl (2005b, p. 149) distinguishes various layers of
organizational interactions ranging from the pure “deciding interactions” at the organization’s
very core, to “semi-detached interactions” with a merely loose relation to decision-making
(e.g., gossiping) at the organization’s outer layers. Seidl’s distinction implicitly calls for
comparative research on these various layers of organizational communication (cf. Robichaud
et al., 2004). Most importantly, the TSS highlights that organizations consist of an
interrelated, self-referential and autopoietic network of communicative events, which are
fundamentally grounded in paradox and are inherently contingent – an aspect largely missing
in current CCO debates. Accordingly, the question arises, “How do organizations handle their
inherent contingency communicatively and manage to sustain their existence over time?” I
will further elaborate on this question in the following section.
Deparadoxification as the Driving Force of Organizational Self-Reproduction
In answer to the second CCO question, i.e. how organizations become stabilized over
time (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008), the TSS provides a processual model to explain how
organizations come into being and maintain their existence. Starting from the assumption that
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 19
organizations are essentially based on the paradox of the undecidability of decisions,
Luhmann’s framework enables us to observe the organization as a processual entity by
identifying organizational strategies of deparadoxification (cf. Andersen, 2003; Czarniawska,
2005). As Andersen points out,
In relation to decision communication it is important to make decisions look
decidable. Decision communication is able to deparadoxify itself by basically
making freedom look like restraint. In a certain sense, organizational com-
munication through the form of decision consists of nothing but continual
attempts to deparadoxify decisions. The way they do is an empirical question.
(Andersen, 2003, p. 249; emphasis in original)
In other words, reducing the almost infinite number of potential options (“open
contingency”) to a limited set of options (“fixed contingency”; Andersen, 2003) transforms
the undecidability of decisions into decidability. Again, the example of hiring a new
employee helps us to illustrate this relation: In most cases, the decision to create a new
position usually generates a large range of potential candidates. Typically, the hiring process
involves excluding the majority of applicants and compiling a shortlist of likely candidates.
During this process, the initially high number of options is reduced to a much smaller, and
much more manageable, range of options on which the decision will be based.
Likewise, Nassehi (2005) describes organizations as being driven by the continuous
necessity to conceal the fact that their operation is based on a paradox, the undecidability of
decisions: “If there were any secure knowledge on how to decide, there would not be a
choice. To have the choice means not to know what to do. This is the main problem of
organizations as social systems, consisting of the communication of decisions to perform
strategies to make this problem invisible” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186; emphasis in original).
Organizations are then forced to find some way to deparadoxify the undecidability of their
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 20
decisions – otherwise they become paralyzed by the paradoxical character of their basic
operation. Consequently, organizations can be conceptualized as ongoing processes of
transforming open contingency into fixed contingency, i.e. by limiting down the number of
alternatives or even presenting only one inevitable alternative (Luhmann, 2000, p. 170). In
Luhmann’s words, “the paradoxical character needs to be packaged and sealed in
communication” (Luhmann, 2000, p. 142; translated from the original). This is realized, for
example, by constructing “a decider as an accountable address” or by making decision
processes visible: “This means to stage-manage [decisions] in meetings, in special rooms, at
special times, with special rites, and on special documents” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186). Thus,
organizations seem to depend on the creation of a decisional language game in which they
treat communicative events at least as if decisions were made (Ortmann, 2004, p. 208).
In the same context, Andersen (2003) distinguishes three strategies of
deparadoxification. Temporal deparadoxification refers to overcoming the pressure created by
social expectations to make a decision by either tightening (e.g., by setting a deadline) or by
widening the time frame for the decision (e.g., by postponing a decision to the next meeting).
In both cases, the immediate pressure to execute a decision and to face its vast inherent
contingency is alleviated. Luhmann explains that imposing a deadline is a powerful
mechanism of deparadoxification in the sense that it limits the amount of effort that is
invested in the decision to whatever the restricted time frame permits (Luhmann, 2000, p.
176). Nevertheless, we of course also perceive examples of following the opposite strategy of
postponing a decision, on the grounds that the decision needs to “ripen” before it can be
made. Social deparadoxification refers to justifying a decision by relating it to social
expectations. Claims that an “interest analysis” or “stakeholder analysis” must be carried out
in order to fulfill social expectations are empirical instances of this. Such tools are used to
legitimate a decision by creating social imperatives in the environment of the organization.
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 21
Factual deparadoxification involves characterizing a decision as a reaction to the “nature of
the case”; decisions are identified as choices among certain predefined alternatives. Typically
this is achieved by reference to environmental affordances, e.g., the market situation an
organization faces is presented as an imperative that makes a particular choice compulsive.
Because organizations are indeterminate in their complexity and given the large range
of possible connections between communicative events, organizations are driven by the
continuous need to execute selections in the form of decisions (Luhmann, 1988, p. 110). A
characteristic that is inherent in the contingent nature of decisions is that every decision
creates the need for further decisions: “Decisions are attempts at creating certainty […]. But
they also create uncertainty by demonstrating that the future is chosen; so it could be
different. In this way decisions pave the way for contestation” (Ahrne & Brunsson,
forthcoming, p. 17).
It is exactly this interplay of decisions and the inherent necessity to execute follow-up
decisions that reproduce organization in the course of successive communicative events.
Consequently, organizations ensure their performativity by functioning both as the producer
and product of decision necessities (what Luhmann refers to as “Entscheidungs-
notwendigkeiten”; Luhmann, 2000, p. 181). This allows us to provide an answer to the
question raised by Cooren and Fairhurst (2008, p. 121): What distinguishes the organization
from, e.g., a group of friends helping one of them moving into a new apartment? For
Luhmann, an organization comes into being as soon as a self-referential network of decision-
communications emerges, in which a past decision becomes the “decision premise” for
further decisions (Luhmann, 2000, p. 222). Consequently, the friends helping each other to
move may indeed represent the starting point for eventually establishing a more formal
organization but only if a self-referential set of interrelated decisions can be sustained,
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 22
typically starting with the decision on membership: who is part of the moving company and
who is not.
In light of our discussion so far, we can distinguish an important difference and an
important similarity between Luhmann and the authors of the CCO perspective – the
Montreal School in particular – when it comes to tackling the question of organizational
stabilization over time: The proponents of the Montreal School emphasize the importance of
sociomateriality (Orlikowski, 2007) to the process of stabilizing the organization as a
communicative entity over time (e.g., Fairhurst & Cooren, 2008). These authors argue that
communicative practices are fundamentally entangled with material objects (e.g., text, tools,
artifacts of all kinds) that endure and thus allow space and time to be transcended (Cooren,
2006). In contrast, Luhmann (2000) rather tends to neglect the dimension of materiality; his
definition of communication (Luhmann, 1992) primarily centers on face-to-face interactions.
However, when it comes to the aspect of non-human agency, we can perceive striking
parallels between the two approaches: Both the Montreal School and Luhmann downplay the
importance of individual human agency. While authors of the Montreal School ascribe agency
to all kinds of “things” and artifacts, Luhmann conceptualizes the organization as ongoing
processes of communication. In Luhmann’s view, the self-referential communication
processes tend to develop an autopoietic life of their own and thus gain a high degree of
agency themselves. Let us illustrate this again by the example of the recruitment decision:
Luhmann would argue that it is not the individual human agent (e.g., a manager) who can
decide voluntarily and largely independent from particular social circumstances on hiring a
new employee. Instead, the current recruitment decision stands in a tradition of earlier
decision-communications that gain (over-individual or even non-human) agency on the
current decision situation (Seidl, 2005b, p. 158).
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 23
To conclude, when we describe the TSS approach in the categories introduced by Bisel
(2009), the TSS seems to reside in between “acted-in-structure” (prioritizing text over talk)
and “structured in action” (prioritizing talk over text). Luhmann indeed stresses the
importance of non-human agency (in his case, by conceptualizing social systems as consisting
of communication processes) but largely neglects the aspect of materiality (by prioritizing talk
over text in his focus on face-to-face interactions). In his almost “immaterial” understanding
of organization as communication, Luhmann (2000) instead identifies the inherent need for
deparadoxification as the main driving force that triggers the next instance of communication
and thus enables the organization to perpetuate.
A Processual Notion of Organization, But Within Boundaries
The third question of the current CCO debate has been recently raised by Sillince
(2010): What is it that specifically distinguishes organizations from networks, communities,
or social movements? According to Luhmann (2006), social systems such as organizations
fundamentally emerge by the distinction between the system and its environment. As the
system-environment distinction needs to be continually sustained, the existence of
organizations is a precarious one; they tend either to become either lost in pure self-
referentiality or to become absorbed by their environment (Luhmann, 2000, p. 417). Thus, to
maintain its existence, the organization continuously needs to reproduce a boundary that
distinguishes it from its environment. As Luhmann would argue, it is exactly this systemic
and self-referential boundary that distinguishes organizations from networks, communities, or
social movements. In this context, it is important to note that Luhmann (1995) conceptualizes
social systems as both closed and open (or permeable; cf. Cheney & Christensen, 2001) at the
same time. On the one hand, on the level of their most basic operations, i.e. the decision-
communication, organizations are self-referentially closed. On the other hand, however,
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 24
operational closure becomes the precondition for organizations to remain structurally open to
interaction with their environment (cf. Maturana & Varela, 1987).
Although Luhmann’s emphasis on the system-environment distinction and the concept
of the boundary may be misinterpreted as propounding a reified notion of organizations, quite
the opposite is the case. Given that Luhmann (2000) perceives organizations as processual in
nature, i.e. fundamentally constituted by communicative events, the organization’s boundary
is likewise assumed to be formed communicatively. In other words, a boundary has no
existence unless it becomes repeatedly reproduced as a distinction achieved by events of
communication. Every decision-communication – for example, decisions that are made during
an organizational meeting (Boden, 1994; Castor & Cooren, 2006) or a recruitment decision –
reproduces organization and, as a consequence, the boundary to its environment. This is
because decisions are executed for – or in the words of Cooren (2006) on behalf of – the
organization and not for its competitor. For instance, a managerial meeting of Company A
results in the decision to expand into the Chinese market. This decision-communication is part
of a longer history of decision-communications of Company A (e.g., an earlier decision to
expand into the Japanese market), but it is not part of the self-referential network of
comparable decision-communications of Company B, nor would the managerial meeting of
Company A be entitled to make similar decisions for Company B. The organizational
boundary is then stabilized by forming over time a self-referential network of communicative
events, each of which links back to at least one preceding event.
This highlights an important difference from other strains within CCO thinking:
Although the concept of boundary is also emphasized by some authors of the Montreal School
(examples of this include the concepts of metaconversation and narrative closure as discussed
by Robichaud et al., 2004; or the memetic model of organization, in Taylor & Giroux, 2005),
their notion differs from that of Luhmann. For instance, according to Cooren (2006) any
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 25
communicative event that ascribes agency to an organization would equally stabilize the
organization as a collective actor. In this view, a CNN report on the Obama administration
would re-establish the status of the Obama administration as a collective actor. In contrast to
this, Luhmann’s way of theorizing is guided by a clear distinction between the inner and the
outer side of an organization. Luhmann (2000) emphasizes that the organization is primarily
stabilized by self-reference, not by external reference. Accordingly, in the TSS view, as the
hypothetical CNN report would take place in the environment of the organization and
represent an external reference to it, it would not contribute to the perpetuation of the
organizational system as such. Instead, the organizational system would be perpetuated by
ongoing events of decision-communications, e.g., decisions on who is a member of the
Obama Administration and who is not, on health-care policy programs, or on what to address
next on the political agenda.
A legitimate question with regard to the above is whether it makes a positive
difference if the Luhmannian notion of organizational boundary is added to the CCO
perspective. First, in a paper that builds on Luhmann’s ideas (1995), Schreyögg and Sydow
(forthcoming) put forward the argument that conceptualizations of the “boundaryless
organization” (e.g., Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, & Kerr, 2002) displace the fundamentals of theory
development on organizations. They go on to argue that the notion of the organizational
boundary and identity is essential in order to grasp an organization’s inherent historicity. For
Luhmann (2000), it is exactly this maintaining of a self-referential boundary to their
environment that distinguishes organizations from more loose forms of social phenomena
such as networks, communities, or social movements (cf. Sillince, 2010). Second, the TSS,
which combines a communication-centered perspective on organization with the notion of
boundary, allows us to address questions of organizational inclusion and exclusion from a
communicative perspective, in particular, the thin line between who is a member of an
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 26
organization and who is not – and how this distinction is continuously communicatively
constructed and stabilized (cf. the concept of “membership negotiation” by McPhee & Zaug,
2008).
Limitations to the Transferability of Insights
Despite the identified potential, the transferability of contributions from Luhmann’s
TSS framework to current debates within CCO thinking is limited in two respects, first, by the
hermetic terminology of the TSS approach and second, by the fundamental differences
between the TSS and other strains of CCO thinking, particularly with regard to Luhmann’s
neglect of the role of materiality. In the following, I will briefly elaborate on these limitations
to transferability.
Luhmann’s theoretical approach is furthermore characterized by its hermetic
terminology (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 10). In the TSS, all terms are defined in relation to
each other in a self-referential way. It was Luhmann’s objective to create a theory-specific
language that is explicitly distinct from everyday language (Nicolai, 2004). In this view,
drawing a boundary is an essential precondition for self-referentiality as well as for the
possibility of observation. The eye, for instance, can only perceive its surroundings because a
thin line is drawn, so to speak, that distinguishes the eye from its environment. Consequently,
this principle also applies to Luhmann’s general way of theorizing: Only when the theoretical
framework is established as a closed, self-referential language system which sustains a clear
boundary between itself and the environment is it possible to make observations that differ
from observations based on everyday language (cf. Nicolai, 2004, p. 971).
Thus, becoming familiar with Luhmann’s TSS is not merely a matter of translating his
texts from German into English, but also of learning to use his theory-specific language as a
lens with which to perceive the world (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 10). As Blühdorn rightly
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 27
observes, “The particular problem [the TSS] presents is that it defies a pick-and-choose
approach. Because Luhmann was aiming for nothing less than a […] paradigm change, it is
hardly possible to adopt some elements of his thinking and reject the rest. The two options
appear to be either the whole theory package or nothing at all” (Blühdorn, 2000, p. 339). The
inherent hermetism of the TSS is a major weakness that limits greatly its compatibility with
other, even similar, theoretical approaches. It is therefore in the best interest of the current
proponents of the TSS approach to make it more accessible to an international readership that
is not familiar with its theory-specific terminology (examples of recent publications which go
in that direction include Seidl, 2007, or Mohe and Seidl, forthcoming, as well as Schreyögg
and Sydow, forthcoming).
Another limitation in transferability lies in the fact that the TSS (despite efforts from
Luhmann’s followers) remains incomplete in various respects. For instance, Luhmann can
rightly be criticized for having overestimated the role of decisions and having underestimated
the role of materiality in the self-reproduction of organizational practices. However, the rise
of the digital age and, as a result, of all kinds of computer-mediated communication have
created new forms of interaction, which Luhmann’s theories do not address – at least not
during his lifetime (Luhmann died in 1998). For Luhmann, organic systems, artifacts, or
machines do not actively participate in communication, as they lack the capacity to process
meaning (Luhmann, 1995: 37). Because of that, the TSS simply lacks the vocabulary for
appropriately discussing materiality and its role in the self-reproduction of organizational
communication. It will therefore be up to future research to close these theoretical gaps and
connect the TSS properly to current debates on the role of materiality within CCO thinking
(e.g., Ashcraft et al., 2009; Cooren, 2006; Orlikowski, 2007).
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 28
Conclusion and Outlook
This paper contributes to current debates on the emerging CCO perspective
(communication constitutes organization; Ashcraft et al., 2009; Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). In
this paper, I have introduced Luhmann’s theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1995, 2000) as
one explicit strain of CCO thinking. I particularly argue that Luhmann’s perspective
contributes to current conceptual debates on how communication constitutes organization
(Bisel, 2010; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008; McPhee & Zaug, 2008; Sillince, 2010). In response
to this, the TSS highlights that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox, as they
are built on communicative events that are contingent by nature. Consequently, organizations
are driven by the continuous need to deparadoxify their inherent contingency. At this, the TSS
fruitfully combines a processual, communicative conceptualization of organization with the
notion of boundary and self-referentiality. Notwithstanding these potential contributions, the
transferability of insights is limited by the hermetic terminology the TSS employs and the fact
that it neglects the role of material agency in the communicative construction of organization.
Finally, I want to outline some avenues for further research, which may benefit from a
combination of Luhmann’s theory of social systems with other strains of the CCO approach.
First and foremost, the identified strains of the CCO view (Ashcraft, et al., 2009) as well as
Luhmann’s TSS (1995, 2000) allow us to re-address one of the most fundamental questions of
organization studies: What is an organization? The various strains of the CCO perspective
address this question from different theoretical angles but all agree on the constitutive power
of communication for organizations. I therefore believe that engaging in a dialogue on the
minimum conditions of organizing, a question that is raised both in the CCO approach (e.g.,
Bisel, 2010) and the TSS (e.g., Ahrne & Brunsson, forthcoming), can pave the way for a new,
processual understanding of organization.
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 29
Second, the TSS suggests that research should focus on the inherently paradoxical and
contingent character of decision-communication and, with this, organizational communication
in general (Luhmann, 2000). Starting from this assumption, it will be worthwhile to examine
how organizations ensure their perpetuation, although they are based on something as
ephemeral as communication. From the TSS point of view, organizations achieve their
perpetuation by continuously transforming open contingency into fixed contingency, as
described by Andersen (2003) or Czarniawska (2005). From the Montreal School’s point of
view, it can be assumed that the agency by non-human entities (e.g., texts, artifacts,
technologies, etc.; Cooren, 2006) plays a pivotal role in the transformation of open into fixed
contingency, e.g., by limiting the possible range of realizable communicative options. This is
where the CCO perspective and the TSS (as an integral part of it) may mutually inspire each
other by enhancing our understanding of the sociomaterial practices that limit the contingency
of organizing (Orlikowski, 2007; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). These sociomaterial practices
ultimately both stabilize and de-paralyze the processual entity called organization in its
continuous reproduction from one communicative event to the next. In this context, one could
study, for instance, how particular media and genres of organizational communication help to
perpetuate an organization by cloaking the inherent contingency of organizational
communication processes (e.g., software applications like Microsoft’s PowerPoint – cf.
Kaplan, forthcoming; Schoeneborn, 2008).
Third, if the CCO and the TSS approaches become more mutually receptive this could
also contribute to enhancing empirical methodologies. In order to comprehend organization as
communication, so far, authors of the Montreal School have primarily used conversation and
discourse analyses to study the micro level of organizational interactions (Taylor, 1999).
However, these authors also aim at comprehending organizations on a meso or macro level:
“Our theory of communication must be capable of explaining the emergence and
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 30
sustainability of large, complex organizations” (Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud, 1996,
p. 4). The TSS approach exactly matches this claim, aiming at comprehending the
organization as a holistic processual entity. In view of the above, opening up the explicit
strains of the CCO perspective also to TSS-enriched quantitative methodologies such as
agent-based simulations (e.g., Blaschke & Schoeneborn, 2006) or social network analysis
may help us to accomplish a fuller understanding of the organization as a holistic processual
entity.
ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 31
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