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COORDINATION AS ENERGY-IN-CONVERSATION

RYAN W. QUINNWashington University in St. Louis

JANE E. DUTTONUniversity of Michigan Business School

Coordination is the process people use to create, adapt, and re-create organizations.We propose a theory of coordination as energy-in-conversation to help organizationalscholars comprehend the emotional and motivational dynamics of coordination. Ourmodel describes how people generate and diminish their energy in their attempts tocoordinate, how this energy affects attempts to coordinate, and how coordinatingaffects the effort devoted to the activities in the process. This account of the coordi-nation process presents a new approach for understanding performance in interde-pendent situations.

Organizations are recurring achievements ofhuman coordination (Barnard, 1968), whichmakes coordination one of the central problemsof organizational research (Follett, 1949; Heath &Staudenmayer, 2000; March & Simon, 1958;Thompson, 1967). Coordination is the processthrough which people arrange actions in waysthat they believe1 will enable them to accom-plish their goals (Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum,

Salas, & Volpe, 1995; Weick, 1979)—goals being“ideas of future, desired, end states” that may ormay not be conscious (Locke & Latham, 1990: 2)and that may or may not be shared (Weick, 1979).Coordination is often a conversational experi-ence (Boden, 1994), where conversations are ver-bal and/or written interchanges that occur be-tween two or more people (Capella & Street,1985; Ford & Ford, 1995). Because coordinationinvolves arranging activities in ways that en-able goal accomplishment, it is also an emo-tional experience (see Frijda, 1988), which canoscillate between energizing and deenergizing.We propose that the energy that people gener-ate and deplete as they coordinate affects bothhow conversations unfold and the effort thatpeople devote to coordinated activities.

Energy— or energetic arousal (Thayer,1989)—is the feeling that one is eager to act andcapable of acting. It is a construct that organi-zational scholars use but seldom define. Energyis an affective experience similar to Watson,Clark, and Tellegen’s (1988) “positive affect.” Af-fect is an umbrella term that includes emotions,moods, and dispositions. Energy is a type ofpositive affective arousal, which people can ex-perience as emotion—short responses to spe-cific events—or mood—longer-lasting affectivestates that need not be responses to specificevents. A person’s level of energetic arousal canchange in response to each conversationalevent (emotion), but a person can also experi-ence a relatively consistent level of energy

We thank Martha Feldman, Jody Hoffer Gittell, HakanOzcelik, Leslie Perlow, Mike Pratt, Nelson Repenning, EdRosch, Leslie Sekerka, Monica Worline, Joana Young, theparticipants in the University of Michigan Business School’sOrganizational Behavior and Human Resource Managementbrown bag, Dev Jennings, and the anonymous reviewersfrom AMR for their helpful comments and feedback. We alsoappreciate the help of Wayne Baker, Robert Cross, Bill McK-eachie, and Nancy Rothbard, who pointed out literature thathelped us develop this paper.

1 Our definition of coordination may seem odd to somereaders because of our use of the phrase “that they believewill,” which may make it seem like the definition is aboutthe expectation of coordination rather than the realization ofcoordination. This is not the case. Coordination is a processof arranging activities. When people complete this process,the activities are arranged—not expected to be arranged.However, even though the arrangement of activities is com-plete, this completion does not mean that the people whoarranged the activities will necessarily achieve their goalsor perform well. For example, Heath and Staudenmayer(2000) provide a number of examples of cases in which peo-ple arrange their activities but do so poorly and, thus, per-form poorly. Therefore, people try to arrange activities inways that will enable them to accomplish their goals, butthey do not always accomplish them—even though theycomplete the arranging of their activities.

� Academy of Management Review2005, Vol. 30, No. 1, 36–57.

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throughout a conversation (mood). Energy isalso distinct from negative affect (Watson et al.,1998) or tension (Thayer, 1989), which is a type ofaffective arousal that involves a negative feel-ing of wariness or anxiety.

We focus on energy because it is a pivotalexperience in the coordination process (Collins,1981). The energy that people feel in the ebb andflow of coordination provides cues that affecthow conversations unfold (Burgoon, 1994). In ad-dition, energy “is the common denominator de-ciding the attractiveness of various alternatives,as well as a predictor of whether an individualwill actually attain any of them” (Collins, 1981:1005). In other words, energy has motivationaleffects: it affects the direction a person choosesto act in, because positive feelings indicate theattractiveness of alternatives, and the effort aperson invests, because people tend to invest asmuch effort into activities as they feel they haveenergy to invest (Marks, 1977).

We describe how the energy that people gen-erate and deplete in their efforts to coordinateaffects both how conversations unfold and theeffort that people devote to coordinated activi-ties—a model of coordination as energy-in-conversation. There is some precedent for thismodel. For example, researchers recognize thataffect plays a role in conversation (e.g., Capella& Street, 1985), communication scholars arguethat communication is coordination (Fairhurst &Putnam, 1999), and social psychologists explorethe role that affect plays in the coordinationprocess (Keltner & Kring, 1998). Despite thesedevelopments, organization scholars have notexplored these research areas. While they rec-ognize the importance of affect in organizations(e.g., Fineman, 1993a, 2000; Hochschild, 1983;Mumby & Putnam, 1992), we know of no re-searchers who have examined the interplay ofaffect and conversation in the coordination pro-cess.

Organizational scholars note this omission.Hatch argues that affective experiences are “thebiggest empty space in our prior conceptualiza-tions of organizing” (1999: 88), and Finemanargues that “strictly cognitive categories areinsufficient” for understanding organizing pro-cesses (1993b: 30). We enrich our theories of co-ordination by describing affective arousal inconversation to illuminate how it affects motiva-tion. Coordination and motivation are processesthat were once studied together (e.g., Barnard,

1968; March & Simon, 1958) but have since beenestranged (Heath & Staudenmayer, 2000). By re-integrating these processes, we illuminate howthe simultaneous arrangement of activities andmodulation of affective arousal work together toenhance or detract from the direction taken inarranging activities, the effort people put intoactivities, and the accomplishment of partici-pants’ goals.

There are practical reasons for studying coor-dination as a process that involves affectivearousal. Increased information volume andtechnological complexity, expanded employeeautonomy, and more mergers, acquisitions, andlayoffs put increased demands on people in or-ganizations to coordinate activities. These de-mands can deplete people’s energy. Given thatenergy is an indicator of how positive a person’scurrent subjective experience and well-beingare (Ryan & Frederick, 1997; Thayer, 1989), aswell as how much effort someone might expend(Marks, 1977), a theory of coordination as energy-in-conversation reveals insights on how to makecoordination a positive experience, as well asan opportunity to improve performance.

The foundation of our model of coordinationas energy-in-conversation is Francois Cooren’s(2000) book, The Organizing Property of Commu-nication. Here, Cooren, following precedents incommunications research (Fairhurst & Putnam,1999), presents a theory of communication ascoordination by integrating research on speechacts and on narratives. We rely on Cooren’s the-ory for three reasons. First, his idea that narra-tives are embedded in other narratives providesa useful structure for examining both the contextand the text of conversations (see Fairclough,1992), revealing how and why coordination isaccomplished. Second, Cooren accounts for twocharacteristics of communication that are nec-essary to explain coordination: the sequentialnature of coordination and the transsituationalnature of texts (Fairhurst & Putnam, 1999). Third,Cooren’s theory achieves a delicate balance be-tween subjectivism and objectivism; he ac-knowledges that individuals interpret2 commu-

2 Although some cognitive interpretation of conversa-tional texts involves conscious (i.e., controlled) cognitive pro-cessing, we follow Bargh and Chartrand (1999) in arguingthat much of the cognitive processing involved with inter-pretation is unconscious (i.e., automatic) and that, in conver-sation, interpretation often occurs as a person speaks.

2005 37Quinn and Dutton

nicative texts independently but also arguesthat, once created, texts exist and can be re-ferred to again in subsequent situations, con-straining some actions and enabling others.This idea explains how people re-create organi-zations each day and how organizations act asindependent entities (Fairhurst & Putnam, 1999).

By using Cooren’s (2000) theory as a new lensthrough which to view coordination in organiza-tion studies, and then introducing energy—including energy “texts”—into his theory, we de-scribe how affective experiences such as energycan affect immediate conversations, as well asthe arrangement and execution of organiza-tional activities. This also explains how energycan be both a part of the conversation itself (onetype of text) and an individual, subjective expe-rience.

We develop our model first by reviewing theliterature on coordination and by describing Co-oren’s (2000) theory. We use a conversation be-tween two people in a software company to il-lustrate the elements of his theory as we introduceeach concept. Next, we introduce energy into ourmodel and use the same software developmentconversation as a way to illustrate the value ofan energy-in-conversation lens. We conclude bysummarizing our model, discussing the affectivenature of coordination, and integrating ourmodel with performance-based research.

COORDINATION AND CONVERSATION

Coordination takes place in conversations(e.g., Boden, 1994). The way conversations unfoldand the effort that people invest in coordinatedactivities depend, in part, on the energy peoplegenerate or deplete as they converse. However,to understand the role that energy plays, wemust first understand how conversations coordi-nate.

Coordination and Communication: A Review

A common way of studying coordination is bystudying performance in interdependent situa-tions. Researchers either assume coordinationoccurs because people complete interdependenttasks (e.g., Saavedra, Earley, & Van Dyne, 1993;Wageman, 1995), or they measure coordinationwith one or a few variables (e.g., O’Reilly &Roberts, 1977; Van de Ven, Delbecq, & Koenig,1976). Coordination is often measured as a di-

mension of communication. For example, schol-ars use the amount of communication (Van deVen et al., 1976), its frequency (Argote, 1982), itsaccuracy (O’Reilly & Roberts, 1977), or its timeli-ness (Waller, 1999).

Typically, research in this vein does little tocapture the dynamism and affect of coordina-tion—with some exceptions. For example, Weickand Roberts (1993) use Asch’s (1952) ideas aboutgroups to describe coordination on a aircraftcarrier flight deck and argue that the quality ofcoordination depends on how heedfully deckpersonnel subordinate their contributions totheir personal representations of the collectivesystem. Also, Gittell (2003) provides a dynamicdescription of “relational coordination” in docu-menting the reciprocal influence of communica-tion and relationships among airline groundcrews. We describe the dynamism and affect incoordination by integrating communication re-search and research on energy.

Some scholars who study organizational com-munication argue that communication is coordi-nation (e.g., Boden, 1994; Fairhurst & Putnam,1999). Barnard (1968) saw communication andcoordination as equivalent, but organizationalscholars did little with this observation until the1980s (Tompkins, Tompkins, & Cheney, 1989).Mintzberg observed in 1973 that most of the workthat managers do is talk, and in 1983 began theanalysis of “talk as work” in organization stud-ies. But it was only in the late 1980s that scholarsbegan to examine the question of how commu-nication organizes activities, structures, andeven societies.

Communication scholars address how com-munication coordinates. This research is thefoundation for our theory of coordination as en-ergy-in-conversation. Within communication re-search, Cooren’s (2000) perspective represents atype of discourse analysis. “Discourse” is writ-ten or spoken language, larger than a sentenceor clause, used to describe language that a per-son or people use to accomplish a purpose (Ellis,1992). As a subdomain of communication re-search, discourse analysis is historically rootedin sociolinguistics (e.g., Barley, 1986; Brown &Ford, 1961) and consists of the subdomains ofsociolinguistics, conversation analysis, cogni-tive linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, literaryand rhetorical language analysis, critical lan-guage studies, and postmodern language anal-ysis (see Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001, for a review

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of discourse analysis). Cooren’s (2000) theorydraws from two subdomains of discourse anal-ysis: speech act theory (Austin, 1975; Searle,1969) and semionarrative theory (Greimas, 1988).

The Organizing Property of Communication

Cooren (2000) asserts that coordination is aprocess of using speech acts to impose narrativestructures onto situations in order to make senseof those situations. Cooren’s theory draws onand integrates the strengths of speech act the-ory and semionarrative theory to explain howcommunication coordinates. To understand thisapproach, we must understand Cooren’s use ofspeech acts and narratives, how speech actstransfer discursive “objects,” how the exchangeof objects constitutes narratives, and how nar-rative forms help people make sense of theirsituations.

We abridge Cooren’s complex theory and il-lustrate its power using a conversation from asoftware company (Table 1). This conversationexample occurs between a manager and an in-terface designer in the software company. Whilebased on an actual event, we use it only forillustration. The conversation begins whenTony, the interface designer, realizes that, tomake the interface user friendly, the softwarecode must be changed. However, he is not surewhat changes should be made and does nothave the authority to require them. Therefore, heasks the project manager, Theresa, for help. Ta-ble 1 contains speech acts uttered by Tony andTheresa.

Speech acts. A speech act is an action in lan-guage that creates a social reality that does notexist before the speech act is uttered (Austin,1975; Searle, 1969). Cooren (2000) agrees thatspeech acts create social realities but disagreeswith the idea that people can correctly interpretthe intent of the speaker from the rules of lan-guage (Austin, 1975; Searle, 1969). He sees com-munication not as a “conduit” that transfersmeaning from a sender to a receiver but as aprocess in which a sender creates a text fromwhich a receiver infers meaning (Axley, 1984). Infact, speech acts are “the product of multipletexts”—where “texts” include physical objects,nonverbal expressions, and previously utteredtexts, as well as the current, spoken text—“that‘speak on behalf’ of their producer, creating one

or several different situations which may becongruent or may not” (Cooren, 2000: 87).

Speech acts occur when a person interpretsequivalence between what a text says and whata text performs. Thus, Tony’s question in row 1 ofTable 1 is a speech act to Tony and Theresa ifboth interpret (1) that Tony uttered the words,“Theresa, when you get a minute could youcome here?” (what the text says) and (2) that thistext directed Theresa to come (what the text per-forms), making Tony’s utterance a speech actwith the form “this utterance asks Theresa tocome to Tony’s physical location.”

Speech acts create new social realitiesthrough a process in which a person perceivesthat a subject is giving a discursive object. Anobject is a noun or noun equivalent in a prepo-sitional phrase that can refer to a physical entity(e.g., a car) or a discursive (i.e., symbolic) entity(e.g., a role). People use seven types of speechacts to give four types of discursive objects (Co-oren, 2000), as follows.

An assertive is a speech act in which peopleinterpret that propositional content has beentransferred, even if nobody is informed (e.g., if aperson places a sign that says “1300” on a door,the room that the door leads to is now room 1300,even if nobody has seen the sign). Informativesare assertives that not only give propositionalcontent but also change realities for the personto whom the informative is addressed. Expres-sives are speech acts that people use to giveobjects of sanction, which add or subtract valuefrom someone or something (e.g., thanks or dis-approval). Declaratives are speech acts thatpeople can use to give institutional objects. In-stitutional objects, such as a title or a position,alter identities. The ability to use declaratives togive institutional objects requires the appropri-ate context (con-texts—often other institutionalobjects), such as a position of authority, in orderfor other people to accept that such an objecthas been given. Expressives and declarativesdo not need to be attributed to anyone or any-thing in particular.

The final three speech acts—directives, ac-creditives, and commissives— can only occurwhen the speaker or writer attributes them tosomeone or something else. This limit existsbecause speech acts involve giving the modalobjects of a “having to do” (e.g., requests), a“being able to do” (e.g., authorizations), and aguarantee (e.g., promises), respectively, which


have no meaning without an attributive dimen-sion. When a directive is given, for example, ifthere is no subject to whom that directive is attrib-uted, then no one (or no thing) will perform (orrefuse to perform) that directive. Also, Cooren’stheory assumes that the objects transferred implysubsequent actions, either because one is di-rected to, one has committed to, or one is able to.

By claiming that speech acts transfer discur-sive objects, Cooren (2000) provides a mecha-nism for explaining how people maintain or re-coordinate arrangements of activities. Thephysical and discursive objects that peoplehave, encounter, and transfer in their conversa-tions are “texts” that people can refer to againand again, and people interpret these texts in

TABLE 1Conversation in a Software Company

Row Speaker Speech Acts Narrative Phase

1 Tony Theresa, when you get a minute could you come here? Manipulation

2 Theresa Sure. Just a sec.

3 Theresa What’s the problem? Competence

4 Tony The problem is that some of the files need to go on the web server, and some on thevideo server. On the web, these files [draws on the white board], on the video, thesefiles.

5 Theresa It used to be on one server.

6 Tony Yeah, but how do you make it simple for the users? This has to go on this server[points], this on that server [points again].

7 Theresa But even here [pointing] you may have these types of files.

8 Tony Well, we may at some point, for tech support purposes, have to allow them to havethis list [pointing]—or separate GIF and HTML folders. [Pause, both of them staringat the white board.] Here is the problem I see—the folders have to have differentnames, but you need a folder for each presentation to not override other types offiles.

9 Theresa We need to have it ask the users to give the presentation a name—we need to haveJim add some code that gives it a name. Devin [turning to face Devin]—does it makeit easier for you if it has the same or separate folders?

10 Devin Separate.

11 Theresa There’s your answer. [Points at Devin.]

12 Tony Okay. Then here are the folders. [Points at picture on the white board.]

13 Theresa Is index.html your javascript?

14 Tony No.

15 Theresa I’ve got it! Make two starts! This will create two folders.

16 Tony So that loads start and that loads index?

17 Theresa You may want to not make it index, because that’s the default presentation.

18 Tony Having it up here screws you up either way.

19 Theresa The problem is if you’re doing many presentations . . . [pauses]. I’m not sure Iunderstand the main issue anymore.

20 Tony There’s a lot of naming issues and overriding issues that need to be addressed.

21 Theresa Let’s name the issues. Folders need titles for the name of presentation to reduceerroneous overrides.

22 Tony Plus ease of use for uploading stuff. So, rather than having fifteen folders . . . [drawson the white board].

Performance

23 Theresa The options for multiple presentations are . . . [adds to the drawing].

24 Tony Okay. So that would have a link to the presentation and the images!

25 Theresa Great. Then Devin could point users here [pointing], and Jim could add the codethat names the presentation.

26 Tony Cool. Sanction


ways that enable and constrain the activitiesthat people can do (Goffman, 1974). For example,in the case of Tony and Theresa, objects such asthe software code, the positions the two people“hold,” the propositional content (rows 4, 6, 8, 10,12, 14, 17–19, and 25), and the institutional ob-jects drawn on the whiteboard (rows 22 and 23)can increase the likelihood of some behaviors(e.g., Theresa offering solutions), can decreasethe likelihood of other behaviors (e.g., Tony sing-ing), and can give people reasons to behave insimilar ways each time they refer to or interactwith these objects (or texts). And new texts, likethe speech act that Theresa utters in row 25, canrearrange activities by transferring discursiveobjects that require new arrangements of activ-ities.

The process of transferring discursive objectscan be difficult. Speech acts are not always per-formed and interpreted clearly. Once speechacts are produced, the producer, the receiver,and other participants interpret their meaningsindividually (Axley, 1984). Interpreters are oftenable to come close to inferring the “true” inten-tion of the sender (if a true intention exists) be-cause of the other texts available, but differentinterpretations are always possible. We cannever know that a receiver has interpreted aspeech act in the same way as the producer(Cooren, 2000).

Row 12 of Table 1 is an example of ambiguity.Theresa appears, in row 11, to be claiming tohave found a solution. Rather than saying, “Weneed a more complex solution,” however, Tonypresents the implication of Theresa’s “solution”in row 12 by saying, “Then here are the folders.”It is technically impossible to achieve the team’sgoals and have the folders Tony is pointingto be “the” folders unless other, more complexchanges are also made in the software. WhileTony does not say this, Theresa can infer, fromthe fact that he waits for her to respond, from thegoal of the team, and from the nature of thesoftware (additional texts), that Tony expectsher to understand that they need a more com-plex solution. Theresa receives a reminder of thenature of the software in rows 13 and 14, using itto understand the implications of Tony’s state-ment.

In practice, speech acts often involve conver-sational gaps, overlaps, interruptions, preventa-tives, and repairs. We acknowledge that theseelements of conversation analysis affect com-

munication and coordination (McLaughlin,1984), but they are beyond the scope of this pa-per. Also, while we do not address the rules ofturn taking and the adjacency pairs of conver-sation analysis, Cooren (2000) captures the im-portance of sequencing by introducing Grei-mas’s (1988) semionarrative analysis into histheory.

Narrative. People use speech acts to transferdiscursive objects in ways that transform real-ity. Coordination is a process of arranging ac-tivities—including speech acts and physicalacts—between people (and their instruments)and across time into a sequence that they be-lieve will enable them to accomplish their goals.Narratives provide this sequence.

Narratives—stories—are thematic, sequencedtexts (Barry & Elmes, 1997), structured by a ten-sion between subject3 and object, in which thesubject desires the object (i.e., the goal; Gre-imas, 1988). This tension—where the subjecttries to achieve the goal—can be found in everymeaningful discourse. In fact, this tension en-ables people to use narrative to make actionmeaningful and explains why people behave inparticular ways.

Narratives consist of four phases: manipula-tion, competence, performance, and sanction(Greimas, 1988). People use this structure tomake sense of situations (hence, Boje’s claimthat “storytelling is the preferred sensemakingcurrency of human relationships” [1991: 106]) byimposing these phases onto the “ongoingstream” (Weick, 1995) of daily experience. Peo-ple can use narratives to bracket their experi-ence, because conversation enacts narrativestructure onto situations (Cooren, 2000) and be-cause the universal structure of narratives (Gre-imas, 1988) makes these conversations easy tounderstand. Thus, people converse by usingspeech acts and physical acts to enact narrativestructures. Without structure to sequence the ac-tions and texts to endow physicality on the se-quence, there can be no coordination (Cooren,2000).

The conversation in Table 1 illustrates howpeople use speech acts to enact a narrative andgive it physicality. We note the narrative phases

3 We use the term subject to refer to the “main character”in any given narrative. This main character often is, butneed not be, one person. For example, it could also be aninanimate object or group of people.


of the conversation in the far right column. Thenarrative begins with the manipulation phase,in which Tony asks Theresa to come over—a di-rective (row 1)—and Theresa agrees to come—acommissive (row 2). The manipulation phase ofa narrative often begins with the directive-commissive pair (Cooren, 2000), providing thesubject with a reason to seek the object. Here,the object is a solution to Tony’s problem. This“manipulation” creates an imbalance, and thisimbalance must be restored to complete thestory.

Once Theresa commits to come, the compe-tence phase begins. In this phase the subjectencounters “tests” and receives “gifts” that af-fect the subject’s ability to obtain the desiredobject. The subject appears to be Theresa. How-ever, even though the manipulation phase in-volves a directive from Tony (row 1) and a com-missive from Theresa (row 2), the narratives inwhich this conversation is embedded (their com-mon goal as members of a team) and the subse-quent texts (e.g., the use of “we” rather than “I”)suggest that Tony and Theresa act as a unit,making the unit of Tony and Theresa the subjectof the story—a collective subject.

The competence phase involves a series ofmutual adjustments (Thompson, 1967), as Tony,Theresa, and Devin use primarily informatives(rows 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, and 18) and directives(i.e., questions: rows 3, 5, 7, 9, and 13) to ex-change information. Tony gives “gifts” of prop-ositional content to Theresa through informa-tives, which also “tests” Theresa’s ability to helpfind a solution. Theresa “tests” the legitimacy ofTony’s concerns with the design of the software,giving him the use of her authority in return forpassing that test.

For a short period of time—see Theresa’s ap-parent confusion in row 19—it seems that Tonyand Theresa may not come up with a solution.However, when Theresa directs the two of themto “name the issues” and then begins to declarethe first issue, she gives them the final gift theyneed to obtain the desired solution. This is whenthe performance phase begins.

Performance is the phase in which the subjectobtains (or fails to obtain) the desired object.Tony and Theresa obtain their desired object—asolution—through a series of declaratives (rows22–25). They declare the components and fea-tures the program must have, altering the iden-tity or function of the program. This transforma-

tion is the solution, and because they haveobtained this object (the solution) successfully,Tony concludes the narrative with an expres-sion: “Cool.” Expressions can be interpreted totransfer objects of sanction, restoring the “debt”that Tony created when he asked Theresa tocome in the manipulation phase. Theresa andTony can interpret Tony’s utterance as givingsanction to their solution, rewarding them withpraise.

The conversation illustrates how narrativesare structures of exchange, in which people cre-ate and eliminate imbalances and transformthemselves—and other, relevant objects—by ut-tering speech acts that can be interpreted totransfer discursive objects. It also illustratesthat specific speech acts tend to occur in specificnarrative phases (e.g., the directive-commissivepair in the manipulation phase, or the expres-sive in the sanction phase; Cooren, 2000). Speechacts are not exclusive to phases; they are justmore likely to occur in these phases. However,because they are likely to occur in specificphases, they coordinate activities by arrangingthem into an appropriate sequence (similar tothe turn taking and adjacency pairs of conver-sation analysis; see Boden, 1994). Thus, peopleuse the narrative’s sequencing structure to ar-range their acts (both speech acts and physicalacts). People can judge how appropriate a spe-cific act is at a specific point in time based onwhere these acts occur in a narrative, relative toother acts.

Narratives also contain subnarratives (Cooren,2000). For example, each of the directive-informative pairs in the competence phasecould be considered to be a subnarrative:Theresa “manipulates” Tony by asking him aquestion, and Tony “performs” by giving her thepropositional content Theresa directs him togive. In these subnarratives Tony does not needto go through a competence phase, since he isalready competent, and Theresa’s sanctioncomes when she uses her authority to declarethe changes (row 25). Further, the conversationis also a subnarrative to another narrative: thestory of the software development, which is alsoembedded in other narratives, like the organiza-tion’s story. Discourse analysts need to examinethe narratives that a discourse is embedded in—context—as well as the discourse itself—text(Fairclough, 1992).


Conversations affect and are affected by thenarratives in which they are embedded. For ex-ample, the problem that initiated the conversa-tion was a “test” in the competence phase of thestory of the software development. Thus, Tonybegan speaking with Theresa because he wasworking on the software development team andshe was the project leader. The fact that he andTheresa “passed” the test (i.e., obtained a solu-tion) in a way that transformed the software alsobegan a process of renarrating the software de-velopment story. Prior to their conversation, ac-tivities were arranged in a way that was condu-cive to the previous software design. OnceTheresa and Tony agreed that they needed tochange the design, Theresa also needed to re-arrange—that is, renarrate—the software devel-opment story, altering Devin and Jim’s assign-ments as well (row 25).

Finally, people can tell stories from the pointof view of any person or object in a narrative,meaning that there are at least as many poten-tial subjects and narratives as there are mem-bers of an organization. However, because peo-ple tend to focus on only one subject at a time asthey “tell” stories, the other “characters” in thestory (members in the organization) generallyhave to submit themselves to subordinate roles(Cooren, 2000). This puts the subject in a power-ful position and produces hierarchy as well ascoordination. There is flexibility for people tointerpret their roles in the story (or the storyitself) differently, but it is important to note thatscholars can detect power by analyzing who thesubject is in the stories being told.

ENERGY-IN-CONVERSATION

Cooren’s (2000) theory describes, and our storyillustrates, how people arrange actions to en-able them to accomplish their goals. What ismissing from this description is how affect in-fluences and is influenced by the coordinationprocess. We develop theory in this area by de-scribing energy and introducing it into Cooren’stheory.

Energy

“Energy” is an affective experience, describedvariously as energetic arousal (Thayer, 1989),emotional energy (Collins, 1993), subjective en-ergy (Marks, 1977), positive affect (Watson et al.,

1988), vitality (Ryan & Frederick, 1997), and zest(Miller & Stiver, 1997). Energy is a reinforcingexperience; people try to enhance, prolong, orrepeat the circumstances they perceive as in-creasing their energy, and they try to diminishor avoid the circumstances that they perceive asdecreasing their energy (Collins, 1993). Becauseenergy is a positive affect, people who feel highlevels of energy tend to view events positivelyand to expect that positive events will occur(Arkes, Herren, & Isen, 1988). Energy can in-crease a person’s expectancy (Vroom, 1964), butexpectancy is a type of cognition and energy atype of affect. Energy, in conjunction with ex-pectancy, affects the effort that people invest inactivities, but energy also indicates how posi-tive an experience people are having and theirpersonal well-being (Ryan & Frederick, 1997).

Changes in the energy a person feels involvean automatic appraisal of one’s situation, phys-iological changes, and expressive gestures(Thoits, 1989). When someone experiences an in-crease or decrease in energetic arousal, thatchange creates two “texts” that people can“read” as a conversation unfolds. By referring toenergy as “texts,” we mean that (1) a person canread his or her own energy as a bodily signalthat summarizes how desirable he or she per-ceives a situation to be (Thayer, 1989) and that (2)people can read another person’s expressions tointerpret how much energy that person feels.Thus, energy-in-conversation is (1) a person’senergy level, which that person interprets auto-matically as a reflection of how desirable a sit-uation is, (2) a person’s interpretation of a con-versational partner’s energy from his or herexpressive gestures, and (3) a feeling of beingeager to act and capable of acting, which affectshow much effort a person will invest into theconversation and into subsequent, related activ-ities (Marks, 1977).

People interpret felt energy and expressivegestures as texts and experience changes intheir energy based on their interpretation oftexts. When people write or utter speech acts,other conversational participants interpretthose speech acts and experience a change inenergy. We propose, drawing on self-determina-tion theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), that energy in-creases when people interpret speech acts toincrease their autonomy, competence, or relat-edness, and it decreases if they interpret aspeech act to decrease their autonomy, compe-


tence, or relatedness. Changes in autonomy,competence, and relatedness change a person’senergy because they imply the meeting of basichuman needs.4 Presumably, it is adaptive forsomeone to have reinforcing experiences likeincreased energy when basic needs are met and“punishing” experiences like decreased energywhen basic needs are not met. Whatever themechanism, evidence suggests that there is arelationship between these three constructs andenergy (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Coordination As Energy-in-Conversation

Our model of coordination as energy-in-conversation incorporates energy into Cooren’s(2000) theory. It articulates how people’s inter-pretations of speech acts and narratives affecttheir energy, how interpretations of energy af-fect speech acts, and how these reciprocal ef-

fects can be modeled as “coordination as ener-gy-in-conversation.”

Figure 1 is a simplified illustration of theserelationships. It does not depict the narrativestructure, nor does it depict which conversa-tional participants utter which speech acts orthe conversational features of the relationships,such as gaps, overlaps, and repairs. Instead, itillustrates three assertions.

First, it illustrates how coordination is bothan affective and dynamic experience. Second,it distinguishes our model from interdepen-dence research (using solid versus dotted ar-rows), illustrating our contribution to this lit-erature. Third, it illustrates our three-pointthesis: (1) people interpret speech acts andnarrative roles in ways that affect their en-ergy; (2) energy is a text that people interpret,affecting subsequent speech acts; and (3) en-ergy also affects the amount of effort peopledevote to coordinated activities. We now ex-plain the points of our thesis and illustratethese points with our software developmentconversation.

4 White (1963), deCharms (1968), and Baumeister andLeary (1995) provide arguments for why autonomy, compe-tence, and relatedness are basic needs.

FIGURE 1A Model of Coordination As Energy-in-Conversation


How interpretations of speech acts affect en-ergy. Table 2 identifies ways in which conver-sational participants could interpret each typeof speech act such that it would increase ordecrease the participants’ energy. Each cellillustrates how energy could change, depend-ing on how a person perceives that the realitypresented by the speech act would affect his orher autonomy, competence, and relatedness(Ryan & Deci, 2000). For example, when a per-son utters an informative (row 1), the speakerproposes a description that he or she may ormay not believe is true; likewise, those hear-ing the speech act may or may not believe it istrue (Cooren, 2000). If the person who utters thespeech act believes that the propositional con-tent is true, then the change in the speaker’senergy will depend on the speaker’s new in-terpretation of his or her autonomy, compe-tence, and relatedness. We propose that thespeaker’s energy will increase to the extentthat he or she interprets the speech act asdescribed in the second cell in the “Informa-tives. . .” row (i.e., the speaker offers the infor-mation freely, perceives that the hearers be-lieve the propositional content, or perceivesthat the hearers are grateful for the informa-tion). In contrast, we propose that the speakerwill experience decreased energy if he or shefeels forced to share the information, per-ceives that the hearers do not believe thepropositional content, or perceives that thehearers are not grateful for the information.

Table 2 works the same way in describinghow interpretations of speech acts affect theenergy of the person a speech act is attributedto (see column 3). Again, using informatives asan example, we propose that when a personhas an informative attributed to them, thatperson is likely to feel an increase in energy ifhe or she perceives new opportunities (in-creased autonomy), believes he or she is moreable to accomplish the goal(s) relevant to thisconversation (increased competence), or per-ceives that the speaker gave this informationwith the intent of being helpful (increased re-latedness). And, in contrast, we propose thatthis person will experience a decrease in en-ergy if he or she perceives fewer opportunities,believes he or she is less able to accomplishthe relevant goal, or perceives that thespeaker gave the information with the intentof hindering.

Table 2 contains autonomy, competence,and relatedness interpretations for each typeof speech act. We should also note, however,that when a conversational participant is nei-ther the producer nor the receiver of a partic-ular speech act, that person is still able tointerpret the speech act and to feel a change inenergy. We propose that such a person willappraise how speech acts affect his or herautonomy, competence, and relatedness inways that are similar to receivers of a speechact.

For example, in the software developmentstory, the bulk of the conversation occurred be-tween Tony and Theresa, each attributing theirspeech acts to the other. However, Devin, thetech support specialist, also heard the conver-sation. We propose that if a third party likeDevin listens to a conversation, that person willinterpret the speech acts that apply to him or herin a similar way to the person receiving thespeech acts (Table 2, column 3).

Table 3 presents the software developmentconversation again, but it includes Tony’s andTheresa’s nonverbal expressions and their re-ports of energy felt during the conversation. Weuse Table 2 to propose explanations for whyTony and Theresa report feeling the reportedlevels of energy. This illustrates our integrationof Cooren’s (2000) theory with self-determinationtheory (Ryan & Deci, 2000)—not conclusionsdrawn from data.

An example of how interpretations of speechacts affect energy is displayed in row 1 ofTable 3—Tony’s directive for Theresa to “comehere.” Theresa said she felt a “moderate/high”level of energy in response to this directive.We can use the interpretations proposed in thethird column of the “Directives. . .” row of Ta-ble 2 to explain why Theresa felt this way.First, Theresa could interpret that she was ca-pable of accepting or rejecting Tony’s direc-tive with no adverse consequences (auton-omy). She could interpret this from Tony’s text,because he softened the directive “come here”by adding “when you get a minute” and byphrasing it as a question. Theresa also reliedon the previously existing texts that “made”her Tony’s boss. She could appraise her com-petence from her ability to join Tony. And shecould appraise Tony’s respect from Tony’s de-


TABLE 2How Interpretations of Speech Acts Can Increase (or Decrease) Energya

Speech ActsCan increase the energy of the person whoproduces them if. . .

Can increase the energy of the person they areattributed to if. . .

Informatives . . .(speech acts inwhich oneperson givespropositionalcontent toanother)

A. They are offered freely,C. the producer appraises that the

intended receiver believes thepropositional content, and/or

R. the producer appraises that theintended receiver is grateful for theinformation

A. The receiver perceives new opportunitiesbecause of the information,

C. the receiver appraises that he or she ismore able to accomplish the goal relevantto this narrative because of the information,and/or

R. the receiver appraises that the producergave the information to help the receiver.

Directives . . .(speech acts inwhich a persongives a “havingto do” to anotherperson)

A. The producer issues the directive as ameans to accomplish a goal he or she isintrinsically motivated to accomplish,

C. the receiver complies or commits tocomply, and/or

R. the producer appraises that the receiveris willing to comply.

A. The receiver believes that he or she is freeto accept or reject the directive withoutworrying about the consequences,

C. the receiver appraises that he or she is ableto fulfill the request, and/or

R. the receiver appraises that the producermade the request in a respectful way.

Accreditives . .(speech acts inwhich a persongives a “beingable to do” toanother person)

A. The producer offers the “being able todo” freely,

C. the producer appraises that giving a“being able to do” to the receiver makesthe producer more likely to accomplishhis/her goal, and/or

R. the producer appraises that the receiveris grateful for the “being able to do.”

A. The receiver appraises that he or she hasthe discretion to pursue a desired goal,

C. the receiver appraises that he or she will bemore capable of accomplishing the goalrelevant to this narrative, and/or

R. the receiver appraises that the “being ableto do” was given willingly.

Commissives. . . .(speech acts inwhich a persongives aguarantee toanother person)

A. The producer perceives that he or she isoffering the commitment freely,

C. the producer believes that he or she isable to accomplish what he or she iscommitting to, and/or

R. the producer appraises that the receiverappreciates the commitment.

A. The receiver believes that the activity thatthe producer is committing to do willcontribute to a goal that the receiver isintrinsically motivated to accomplish,

C. the receiver believes that the completion ofthe activity makes him/her more likely toaccomplish the goal, and/or

R. the receiver appraises that the commissivewas offered willingly.

Declaratives . . .(speech acts inwhich a persontransfers aninstitutionalobject)

A. The producer offers the institutionalobject freely,

C. the producer appraises that giving theinstitutional object to the receivermakes the producer more likely toaccomplish his/her goal, and/or

R. the producer appraises that the receiverappreciates the institutional object.

A. The receiver believes that he or she is moreable to act autonomously because of his/hernew identity,

C. the receiver believes that his/her newidentity makes him/her more able toaccomplish the goals of the narratives he/she is currently embedded in, and/or

R. the receiver wants to belong in the socialgroups that his/her new identity includeshim/her in.

Expressives . . .(speech acts inwhich a persontransfers anobject ofsanction)

A. The producer appraises that he or she isable to give the object of sanctionfreely,

C. the producer believes that he or she isable to express him/herself competently,and/or

R. the producer believes that he or she isexpressing something that willstrengthen his/her relationship with theintended receiver.

A. The receiver does not appraise that theproducer’s expression puts him/her in anawkward social situation,

C. the receiver appraises that the producer’ssanction makes him/her more able toaccomplish the goals of the narratives he/she is currently embedded in, and/or

R. the receiver appraises the object of sanctionto strengthen his/her relationship with theproducer and/or other relevant groupmembers.

a A � autonomy; C � competence; R � relatedness.


TABLE 3Conversation in a Software Company with Emotional Indicators

Row Speaker Speech Acts

ReportedEnergy—Tony

ReportedEnergy—Theresa

NarrativePhase

1 Tony Theresa, when you get a minute could you come here? Moderate Moderate/high

Manipulation

2 Theresa Sure. Just a sec.

3 Theresa What’s the problem? [Smiling, walking toward Tony.] Competence

4 Tony [Brow furrowed, lips tight.] The problem is that some of the files need togo on the web server, and some on the video server. On the web, thesefiles [draws on the white board], on the video, these files.

Moderate

5 Theresa [Brow furrowed.] It used to be on one server.

6 Tony Yeah, but how do you make it simple for the users? This has to go onthis server [points], this on that server [points again].

7 Theresa But even here [pointing] you may have these types of files.

8 Tony Well, we may at some point, for tech support purposes, have to allow themto have this list [pointing]—or separate GIF and HTML folders. [Pause, bothof them staring at the white board, with brows furrowed.] Here is theproblem I see—the folders have to have different names, but you need afolder for each presentation to not override other types of files.

9 Theresa We need to have it ask the users to give the presentation a name [raisesboth hands in an open gesture]—we need to have Jim add some codethat gives it a name. Devin [turning to face Devin]—does it make iteasier for you if it has the same or separate folders?

Moderate/high

10 Devin Separate.

11 Theresa There’s your answer. [Points at Devin.]

12 Tony Okay. Then here are the folders. [Points at picture on the white board.] Moderate

13 Theresa [Brow furrowed.] Is index.html your javascript?

14 Tony No. [Lips tight, shaking his head.]

15 Theresa I’ve got it! [Eyes widen, smiling.] Make two starts! [Holds up two fingers.]This will create two folders. [Moves two fingers back and pushes themforward again.]

High

16 Tony [Raises eyebrows.] So that loads start and that loads index? Moderate/high

17 Theresa You may want to not make it index, because that’s the defaultpresentation. [Holds up hands in a “stop” formation.]

Moderate

18 Tony [Shoulders drop.] Having it up here screws you up either way. Moderate/high

19 Theresa The problem is if you’re doing many presentations . . . [pauses, furrowsbrow]. I’m not sure I understand the main issue anymore.

Moderate

20 Tony There’s a lot of naming issues and overriding issues that need to beaddressed. [Hands are forward in an open gesture.]

21 Theresa Let’s name the issues. [Lips tighten.] Folders need titles for the name ofpresentation to reduce erroneous overrides.

22 Tony Plus ease of use for uploading stuff. [Eyes get wide, arms start movingquickly and pointing, voice raises.] So, rather than having fifteenfolders . . . [draws on the white board].

High High Performance

23 Theresa [Eyes get wide, arms start moving quickly, voice rises.] The options formultiple presentations are . . . [adds to the drawing].

24 Tony Okay. So that would have a link to the presentation and the images![Eyes get wide, arms move quickly again, volume rises again.]

25 Theresa Great. [Smiling.] Then Devin could point users here [pointing], and Jimcould add the code that names the presentation. [Palms outward and up.]

26 Tony Cool. Sanction


cision to soften the directive and from her past,positive experiences with Tony.5

Theresa may have felt “moderate/high” ratherthan “high” energy, however, because Tony hada puzzled expression. Theresa might interpretthis text as suggesting that Tony was going toask her for help. Because she did not know whatTony’s request would be, she could not know ifshe was competent to perform the implied task.However, Tony’s request for her to come was alsoa text that she could interpret to mean that Tonythought that she was competent enough to help.

How interpretations of the narrative structureaffect energy. We also propose that conversa-tional participants experience changes in theenergy they feel based on how they interpret thenarrative structure in which they are participat-ing. Two narrative characteristics that can affectenergy involve the perspective from which thenarrative is “told” and the narrative’s goal.

Stories are usually told from only one point ofview at a time—making only one subject. Sub-jects structure their narratives around theirquest for a desired object (Greimas, 1988). Whenone person takes the subject role, other people(characters) in the story (organization) play sup-porting or subordinate roles (Cooren, 2000). Peo-ple who perceive themselves to be adopting asubordinate role in a conversation tend to expe-rience decreased energy (Collins, 1990). In con-trast, people who perceive themselves to beadopting the role of the subject—a superordinaterole—often experience increased energy (Collins,1990). We propose that this is because peopleperceive that power increases (and dependencedecreases) their autonomy and competence.Thus, we expect that people playing the role ofthe subject in organizational narratives havemore energy than those playing supportingroles.

We also expect, however, that when peoplecreate collective subjects (as Tony and Theresadid in the software development conversation),the level of energy they feel will depend on how

autonomous and capable they perceive the col-lective to be, as well as on how much the par-ticipants feel they belong (relatedness). In addi-tion, we propose that when people act ascollective subjects, their energy will show in theirfacial expressions, postures, tone of voice, andother nonverbal expressions, as well as in words,and these “energy texts” act as feedback. Thiscreates a dynamic in which people can generatehigh—and even exhilarating—levels of energy.

Tony and Theresa have this kind of experi-ence, as suggested by their animated behaviorand their reports of high levels of energy in rows22 through 25. The experience begins when theyfind a solution—which can be energizing be-cause it makes people feel competent—but thatenergy is also reinforced by the experience ofcocreating the solution and of reinforcing eachother’s affective state (see Kelly & Barsade, 2001).

We propose that people are likely to createcollective subjects when they perceive thatmembers of the collective are willing to makecollective goals a higher priority than individ-ual goals. Individuals are often tempted to seekindividual goals because others often have toinvest effort and resources in their goals, butthese individuals do not have to invest effortand resources in others’ goals. In other words,they gain power from other people’s submissionto their goals (Cooren, 2000). Such people are thesubjects of organizational narratives, and thosewho help them achieve their roles become “sup-porting characters” (Greimas, 1988). When peo-ple perform actions that further collectivegoals—particularly at the expense of personalgoals—others are likely to interpret their inten-tions as sincere. For example, Tony could interpretTheresa’s desire to put the collective goal firstfrom her willingness to come at his request or fromher apparent lack of anger when he corrects her(row 12). We also propose that the more sincereother members of the collective subject perceive aperson to be, the more likely they are to recipro-cate, beginning a positive feedback cycle thatgenerates high levels of energy.

Goals are as useful for explaining people’senergy in less dramatic situations as they arefor explaining dramatic, high-energy “interac-tion rituals” (Collins, 1993). Whether the subjectof the narrative is individual or collective, thedegree to which the subject feels energy de-pends, at least in part, on the degree to which

5 Because conversational narratives are often embeddedin larger relational narratives, people tend to “smooth out”aberrations from typical behavior—forgiving negatively ap-praised speech acts in generally positive relationships ordiminishing the value attributed to positively appraisedspeech acts that occur in generally negative relationships(e.g., Murray & Holmes, 1996).


the subject appraises the goal to be autono-mously chosen and appraises himself, herself,or themselves to be able to accomplish the goal.Theresa and Tony enjoyed working together, asan autonomous unit, on a goal they felt capableof accomplishing—even though they faced aproblem they did not know the solution to.Hence, they maintained at least a moderatelevel of energy throughout the conversation.Thus, both the narrative’s goal and the perspec-tive from which the narrative is “told” affect theenergy people feel and the degree to which peo-ple create collective subjects that generatehigh-energy interactions.

How the interpretation of energy “texts” af-fects speech acts. We have proposed that inter-pretations of speech acts and narratives affectthe energy people feel. We also propose that theenergy people feel creates “texts” that supple-ment speech acts and that can affect the contentof subsequent speech acts. These texts includean individual’s own physiological changes andsubjective feeling (e.g., “Reported Energy” col-umns in Table 3) and other people’s expressions(e.g., facial expressions or gestures, as in the“Speech Acts” column of Table 3). By interpret-ing these texts, individuals can get a sense ofhow positively people in the conversation—including themselves—interpret the circum-stances (Arkes et al., 1988) and how much energypeople are likely to invest in the proposed ar-rangement of activities (Marks, 1977).

The way a conversational participant inter-prets energy texts is likely to affect the contentof subsequent speech acts produced by that par-ticipant. If a person deems it worth the effort tocreate a more energizing arrangement of activ-ities (for self or for others), that person will pro-duce a speech act that he or she believes willincrease the autonomy, competence, and/or re-latedness of the person or people whose energythe producer is trying to increase. Thus, narra-tives and speech acts affect the energy that con-versational participants feel, which affects thespeech acts they produce. The cumulative effectof this interplay among speech acts, narrative,interpretation, and energy is an arrangement ofactivities that participants feel more or less en-ergized about performing and in which they in-vest more or less effort (Marks, 1977).

Coordination as energy-in-conversation. Wenow use our software development conversation

as an illustration of coordination as energy-in-conversation. Our purpose in reviewing thisconversation is to illustrate how incorporatingenergy and energy texts into Cooren’s (2000) the-ory of coordination enriches our descriptions ofcoordination, explaining why conversations un-fold in particular ways, and integrating motiva-tional and coordination processes. We focus onparts of the conversation that illustrate thesepoints.

When Tony asked Theresa to come help himout, the energy that Theresa felt was affected byher interpretation of both what he said and hisnonverbal expressions. We propose that theseinterpretations, the energy felt, and the stage ofthe narratives that she was playing a part in allaffected her response. Theresa’s response wasan enthusiastic but conditional commissive. Hercommissive was enthusiastic, we suggest, be-cause she was largely able to interpret Tony’sspeech act and expressions as increasing or re-inforcing her autonomy, competence, and relat-edness. However, her commissive was also con-ditional. Theresa was participating in anothernarrative when Tony asked her to come. Wepropose that she added “Just a sec” to her com-missive in order to finish the other narrative, orat least to come to a natural break.

Theresa’s request for Tony to wait for a mo-ment for her to follow his directive highlights animportant point about motivation. Motivation isa “meta” construct that includes other con-structs, such as initiation, direction, effort, andperseverance (Landy & Becker, 1987). Theamount of effort people expend is proportionalto the energy they feel6 (Marks, 1977). Direction isdetermined by the way people interpret speechacts uttered in the conversation. Whether or notpeople initiate action in the first place (such asthe act of committing in response to a directive),however, also depends on their perceived rolesin other narratives.

For example, Theresa could initiate her con-versation with Tony, since it would not impedethe goals of the other narratives she was partic-

6 Energetic arousal is a biopsychological mechanism fortranslating interests into action (Marks, 1977; cf. Brehm &Self, 1989), and people are interested in activities to theextent that they perceive those activities will fulfill theirbasic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness(Ryan & Deci, 2000).


ipating in and because she could appraise theactivity as something that she was free to do,able to accomplish, and was asked to do in arespectful way. However, if she considered her-self to be autonomous, competent, and relatedbut her role in another narrative suggested thatshe should not commit, then we propose that shewould probably express a reluctant rejection—feeling energy for doing it but constrained to sayno. If she did not feel autonomous, competent,and/or related but believed that she was boundto commit because of the importance of Tony’snew narrative, then we propose that she wouldbe likely to commit reluctantly and hesitantly.And we propose that if she felt no energy andhad no reason in the larger narrative for com-mitting, then she would likely refuse. Thus, aperson’s interpretation of a speech act and theaccompanying changes in energy that personfeels both affect the content of that person’s nextspeech act.

Theresa joined Tony and began to exchange aseries of questions (directives) and answers (in-formatives), each interpreting and appraisingeach speech act, his or her own energy, theother’s expressions, and his or her other narra-tives. These elements each affected subsequentspeech acts. Thus, the pattern described in theprevious paragraph continued with each speechact. Eventually, Theresa began to suggest po-tential solutions and reported experiencingbrief increases in energy with each solution shesubmitted—perhaps because she was hopefulthat this would be the ultimate solution. Tony,having more knowledge about the problem, onlyreported experiencing an increase in his energywhen he did not express problems with There-sa’s suggestions. This is probably why There-sa’s energy fluctuated more than Tony’s duringthe competence phase.

The performance phase of Tony and Theresa’sconversation is an example of a high-energyinteraction (Collins, 1993). After Tony identifiedthe uploading issue in row 22 of Table 3 andbegan to declare a solution, he reported feelingmore energy. We propose that Tony felt his en-ergy jump because he perceived new opportuni-ties (autonomy) that he was able (competent) toaccomplish. Theresa, seeing Tony’s physicalanimation and hearing his declarations, alsoreported feeling an increase in energy, presum-ably because of a sense of increased compe-

tence. She added her own ideas (row 23). Tonycould interpret Theresa’s speech acts and phys-ical animation as positive feedback, which, wepropose, could be interpreted as a confirmationof their collective competence in solving thisproblem, as well as a sign of respect and appre-ciation.

The perception that people in a group feel thesame way about the same topic generates soli-darity and energy (Collins, 1993). Also, becauseenergy is a positive feeling (Watson et al., 1988),it makes people more likely to appraise subse-quent events positively (Arkes et al., 1988)—energy often begets more energy. Tony andTheresa built on each other’s ideas and excite-ment, and also declared (in row 25), based ontheir redesign of the software, new assignmentsfor other developers.

Organizational participants, like Tony andTheresa, use speech acts to construct an organi-zational reality (Austin, 1975; Cooren, 2000;Searle, 1969), and we propose that the energythat people feel for each reality affects howmuch effort they invest in enacting that reality.For example, when Tony finished his conversa-tion with Theresa, he returned to work and re-ported feeling confident both in his ability andin knowing that his work would contribute totheir overall goal (rather than become only amoderately useful add-on). Theresa let Devinand Jim know about the changes they wouldneed to make. She began those conversationsenthusiastically—even if the energy she (andthey) felt oscillated somewhat during those sub-sequent conversations.

The energy that people feel about a particularreality—along with the effort that they put intoenacting it—is not necessarily limited to the im-mediate speech act or narrative. Speech actsuttered in one narrative can lead people to re-narrate (i.e., reorganize) other organizational ac-tivities as well (e.g., see row 25). We propose thatthe level of energy people feel for a reality cre-ated in one narrative will significantly affect theenergy people feel (and the effort they invest) ina subsequent, related narrative (see Rothbard,2001), at least until the actions of the subsequentnarrative alter reality in a way that increases ordecreases participants’ energy. The energy gen-erated (or diminished) in one narrative may notbe permanent, but we propose that people will


begin the subsequent narrative feeling a similarlevel of energy.

Our software development example illus-trates key points about our model of coordina-tion as energy-in-conversation. It illustrates thereciprocal relationships among interpretation,speech acts, and energy. It also illustrates ourpropositions about the effect of narrative struc-tures on speech acts and energy; the interplay ofconversations with initiation, direction, and effort;the dynamics of affective contagion; and the inter-connectedness of organizational narratives.

DISCUSSION

We offer three contributions to the study ofcoordination, conversation, and affect in ourmodel and example of coordination as energy-in-conversation. Our model integrates theoreti-cal perspectives such that research on theequivalency of communication and coordination(e.g., Fairhurst & Putnam, 1999) is enlivened withenergy, research on the coordinating property ofaffect (e.g., Keltner & Kring, 1998) is enrichedwith interpretation and texts, and the structuresimposed by communicative acts are revealed inresearch on conversations (e.g., Capella &Street, 1985). These contributions, in turn, affecthow organization scholars conceptualize basicconstructs, such as coordination, motivation,and goal accomplishment.

Energy in Speech Acts and Narrative

Our model of coordination as energy-in-conversation highlights Cooren’s (2000) theory ofthe organizing property of communication asimportant work for organizational scholars toconsider, and it enlivens his theory by integrat-ing energy. Energy enlivens Cooren’s theory be-cause it leads researchers to consider the indi-vidual and collective experience of coordinating(i.e., how energizing the experience is) and howthis experience affects the coordination process.Energy indicates the quality of a person’s expe-rience (Collins, 1981) and well-being (Ryan &Frederick, 1997), the effort a person is likely toinvest in an activity (Marks, 1977), and how at-tractive a person considers alternatives to be(Collins, 1981). Researchers who pay attention tothe energy that people feel as they communicate

with others can improve their ability to under-stand how individuals choose among alterna-tives, how much energy individuals invest incoordinated activities, and how positive the ex-perience of coordinating is for the people in-volved.

Energy also involves the experience of bodilymovements from quiescence to activation, in-cluding expressions, posture, body movement,and prosody, as well as internal somaticchanges (Thayer, 1989). This means that peopleare more than just thinkers; they are humanbeings whose hearts race, palms sweat, andmouths grin and whose conversations enrich ordeplete “relations between bodies” (Game,1997). Relations between bodies are feedbackprocesses, suggesting that the energy felt inconversation can escalate or de-escalate dra-matically, igniting highly charged interactionsthat create eager coordination or draining con-versations that spiral into depleted people anddysfunctional arrangements. We would do wellto pay more attention to organizations as bodilyexperiences and to the nonlinear effects of theseexperiences on patterns of coordination.

Affective experiences like energy are also col-lective experiences. It is only possible to commu-nicate with speech acts because other “texts”—like energy—are also available (Cooren, 2000).Energy enhances the communication processbecause it produces subjective physiologicaltexts and expressive texts that people can inter-pret in conjunction with speech acts. Thus, re-searchers who pay attention to the energy peo-ple feel in their conversations can also use thesetexts to understand how people make sense oftheir situations and coordinate their activities.

Energy is also a collective experience be-cause affect tends to converge among peoplewho interact with each other (Kelly & Barsade,2001). For example, if we were to plot the energythat Tony and Theresa reported feeling acrosstime and side by side, Tony’s side of the “land-scape” would be mostly flat, with one bump andthen an abrupt, steep rise at the end. Theresa’sside would be much bumpier than Tony’s butwould have the same abrupt, steep rise at theend. Researchers who examine these plots couldsee where Tony and Theresa began to convergeaffectively and could compare this observationwith the speech acts (and perhaps even the in-terpretations) that occurred at this point.


By associating speech acts and interpretationwith affective convergence, we may be able topredict what arrangements of activities arelikely to have a significant continuing impact ongroup behavior. For example, if activities getarranged but energy does not converge, thensome of the people may not be energized aboutthe way activities were arranged and may notput as much effort into accomplishing the goalsthat they coordinated to achieve. Thus, we pro-pose that the energy that people feel as theycoordinate indicates the degree to which thosepeople will accomplish their intended goals.

Scholars who examine coordination as ener-gy-in-conversation can gain new insights intothe choices, effort, well-being, physiological ex-perience, feedback processes, expressive cues,and affective convergence of people who coor-dinate. However, energy is just one of two majordimensions of affect. The other is tension(Thayer, 1989). Future theoretical developmentthat considers the role of tension in conversationwould help us to explain the role of negativeaffective experiences, such as anger, in the co-ordination process. Some people suggest thatanger is an energizing experience and that it iswrong to treat energy only as positive. While weacknowledge that anger could increase ener-getic arousal, we believe it is more likely to beassociated with tense arousal and to be lessenergizing than it is arousing (i.e., it involvesactivation of bodily subsystems). Whether ener-gizing or arousing, however, anger and othernegative affective experiences can play impor-tant roles in the coordination process, and infuture research scholars should address thesepossibilities.

Complementing Affect with Interpretations andText

Our model also contributes to the work of so-cial psychologists who have identified the coor-dinating properties of affective experiences. Forexample, scholars such as Keltner and Kringargue that emotions coordinate by “signal[ing]socially relevant information,” “evok[ing] emo-tional responses in others,” and “serv[ing] asincentives” (1998: 322). We agree with these ob-servations. However, by incorporating affect (inparticular, energy) into a (largely linguistic)communication-based theory of coordination,

we learn how affect signals, evokes, and servesas an incentive. By treating energy as text, we cansee how people interpret (or misinterpret) energytexts and speech acts, how these interpretationsaffect subsequent energy texts and speech acts,how energy and speech acts contribute to the or-der and meaning of narratives, and how peoplecan interpret these texts again and again.

Interpretation plays a key role in our model ofcoordination as energy-in-conversation and af-fects how well people can use energy andspeech acts to coordinate. This is an importantdifference between Cooren’s (2000) theory andearlier theory on speech acts. In earlier theoryon speech acts, Searle (1969) and Austin (1975)argued that people understand speech acts be-cause they understand the rules of language.We, however, argue, in agreement with Cooren,that when people generate energy or speechacts, they generate texts that others interpret,and those interpretations may or may not be thesame as the interpretations of the person whogenerated the energy and speech acts. This in-terpretive perspective offers two theoretical de-velopments to research on the coordinatingproperties of affect and suggests new avenuesfor research.

The first contribution that comes from treatingcoordination through speech acts and energy asan interpretive process is a model of coordina-tion that is both subjective and objective. AsCooren (2000) points out, a physical or discursiveobject (such as those transferred in speech acts)is an “agent or agency of some subject’s action(the subjective component) [which a subjectputs] into material form or text (the objectivecomponent)” (Fairhurst & Putnam, 1999: 11). Thisbalance between subjectivity and objectivity isimportant, because speech acts and energy areboth subjective and both objective, making itpossible to integrate them into our model. Thus,when people experience energetic arousal, theynot only experience a feeling of energy but alsoexperience subsystems of their body movingfrom quiescence to activation, which is ex-pressed in their facial expressions, posture,body movement, prosody, and even in the effortthey exert in activities (Thayer, 1989). These ex-pressions and felt changes in the physical bodyare “material forms” or texts (objective compo-nent), which act as the agent of that person’saction (subjective component).


Thus, by incorporating energy into Cooren’stheory, we are able to treat energy both as a partof conversations themselves and as a personal,physical experience. Objective texts can influ-ence situations beyond those they are generatedin because they can be reinvoked and reinter-preted at later dates (Cooren, 2000), and they canenable groups or organizations to act as inde-pendent entities because organizations are thetexts that comprise them (Fairhurst & Putnam,1999). This objective property of “energy as text,”we propose, enables momentary or short-livedaffective experiences to continue having impactlong after the experience has ended.

The second contribution from treating coordi-nation through speech acts and energy as aninterpretive process is that we can see the pathsthat people use to generate energy for their or-ganizational activities: interpretations of narra-tives and speech acts that increase or decreasepeople’s autonomy, competence, and related-ness. By identifying these paths, we ground thisprocess in knowable conditions for energy gen-eration. Also, by identifying these paths, we re-veal at least one means to begin studying therelationships among energy, narratives, andtexts: researchers can use energy and speechact texts, in conjunction with reports of auton-omy, competence, and relatedness, to test therelationships we propose.

Coordination in Energized Conversations

We also contribute to the work of conversationanalysts. Conversation analysts recognize thataffective expression plays a role in how conver-sations unfold (Capella & Street, 1985) and thatthe sequencing of turn taking in conversationsaffects the structure of social arrangements(Boden, 1994). Our model adds to this work be-cause of our consideration of the objective na-ture of texts and because of our narrative ap-proach to the understanding of conversationalstructures. We discussed the benefit of a subjec-tive-objective approach to understanding coor-dination, conversation, and energy above.Therefore, we focus primarily on narrative here.

Narratives provide a sequencing structure forconversations and for the activities that conver-sations arrange (Cooren, 2000). The narrative se-quence is based on a goal, in which the subject

seeks to acquire an object, as follows. A manip-ulation occurs that makes the subject desire theobject. The subject engages in tests and receivesgifts that give the subject the competence toacquire the object. The subject performs the actof acquiring the object. And the subject receivessanction for acquiring the object (Greimas, 1988).

Researchers who examine conversations withthis narrative structure can uncover power dy-namics. For example, when a person uses a di-rective to manipulate others, that person is us-ing a speech act to impose a goal (narrativestructure) on others—that is, telling them whatrole they have to play in what narrative or sub-narrative (Cooren, 2000). A person who receivesa directive can challenge the directive (a contestof power), accept the subordinate role and sub-mit to the directive (obey those with power), sub-mit to the directive but interpret it as “doing afavor” for the person who utters the directive(give up power temporarily), or submit to thedirective as a way of putting collective goalsahead of individual goals and making a collec-tive subject (share power). All of these actions canhave a significant effect on the energy people feel,because people are likely to interpret their powerin ways that have a significant impact on howautonomous, competent, and related they feel.

Sequential structures and power dynamicsare only two of the many advantages we obtainby viewing conversations and coordinationthrough a narrative lens. People use narrativesand narrative structures to solve problems, sus-pend irreconcilable alternatives, socialize, gen-erate commitment, learn, make sense, symbol-ize, control, and create meaning (see Boyce,1996, for a review of this literature). We couldenrich our model further by incorporating any ofthese other narrative characteristics. For exam-ple, an examination of the narrative structure ofconversations could help us to learn why someconversations make more sense than others(Weick & Browning, 1986), how some “charac-ters” could be “emancipated” from the captivenature of the organizational narratives in whichthey participate (Gabriel, 1999), or how peopleengage others in narratives by enhancing thenovelty or credibility of their narratives (Barry &Elmes, 1997). Space considerations prevent usfrom integrating our model into the broad fieldof narrative theory, but these are important ar-eas for further developing our model.


Location in “Traditional” Organization Studies

Our model contributes to research on theequivalency of communication and coordina-tion, on the coordinating properties of affect,and on conversation analysis in organizations.While organizational scholars use these bodiesof literature to explain organizational behavior,this literature tends to fall more squarely in thedisciplines of communications, psychology, andsociology. Therefore, we now consider how ourmodel fits into “traditional” discussions of coordi-nation in organization science. We use Figure 1 toframe this discussion. The figure illustrates whathappens when people are interdependent. Thesolid arrows illustrate the focus of our theory, andthe dotted arrows illustrate the focus of researchon performance in interdependent situations.

Research on performance in interdependentsituations—if it “measures” coordination atall—measures coordination as communication.Thus, the relationships we depict with solid ar-rows tend to be lumped into variables like the“accuracy” or “amount” of communication. As aresult, researchers manipulate types of interde-pendence. Other scholars who study group per-formance take a motivational approach. For ex-ample, group goal researchers (e.g., O’Leary-Kelly, Mortocchio, & Frink, 1994; Weldon, Jehn, &Pradhan, 1991) study how goals affect variableslike direction and effort, and they control forvariables like skill and feedback. Researchersusing both approaches often overlook what co-ordination is and how it is accomplished—thefocus of our theory. Not only do we contribute adescription of what coordination is and how itgets accomplished; we also reconsider how theprocesses of coordination and motivation areintertwined in everyday organizational experi-ence and provide a means to explore whatmakes coordination meaningful.

Coordination is a motivational process. Webegin the process of reintegrating our under-standing of these processes (Heath & Stauden-mayer, 2000) by describing how people generateenergy and direction in the conversations inwhich they coordinate. As illustrated in Figure 1,the energy people generate or deplete in conver-sation affects the effort they devote to activities,and people find direction for their efforts in theirinterpretations of conversational texts. (For ex-ample, when a person utters a directive, the

receiver’s interpretation of that directive giveshim or her direction regarding what activity toperform and how.) These activities are not lim-ited to physical activities but also include sub-sequent speech acts. Thus, efforts to coordinatemotivate subsequent coordination activities(e.g., speech acts), as well as the activities (e.g.,subsequent conversations, physical activities)that follow. People coordinate by using speechacts to impose narrative structures onto situa-tions, people know in what direction to devoteeffort based on how they interpret these narra-tives and speech acts, and people devote moreor less effort to coordinated activities based onhow much energy they feel for the activities.

Practical Contributions

In a world of accelerating change and in-creasing complexity, people must coordinatemore and more often, and their ability to accom-plish the goals that they coordinate to achieve ismore crucial. People should be more likely toaccomplish these goals to the extent that theyinterpret and respond to the texts that othersgenerate in appropriate ways. By focusing onenergy texts as well as on verbal and writtentexts, people may be more likely to find impor-tant nuances in coordination efforts that im-prove the direction of their efforts. And if peoplemanage the coordination process in ways thatincrease their own and others’ energy, this pro-cess should also increase the effort that peopleinvest in subsequent activities and should in-crease the well-being of the people who partic-ipate (Ryan & Frederick, 1997).

People can coordinate in ways that energizeconversational participants by asking questionslike “Is there a way to coordinate that will min-imize or eliminate the need for people to submitto others’ narratives?” (e.g., “Can we create acollective subject, or involve them in the processof renarration?”), or “How will this arrangementof activities affect people’s autonomy, compe-tence, and relatedness?”

Conclusion

Our theory of coordination as energy-in-conversation reveals how energy is a text affect-ing coordination according to people’s interpre-


tations, that coordination is an affective processwith dynamic contours that are consequentialfor creating and maintaining organizational ar-rangements, and that narratives and speechacts affect both the effort and direction of sub-sequent actions. These contributions can beused to renarrate the way in which organiza-tional scholars study coordination. We hope thatthose of us who tell the story of the future ofresearch on coordination do so with energy, zest,vitality, and enthusiasm. We intend to.

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Ryan W. Quinn is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Hestudies the subjective experience of organizational practices, including topics such ascoordination, change, energy, flow, courage, and empowerment.

Jane E. Dutton is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Business Administration at theUniversity of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Herresearch interests include high-quality connections, thriving at work, compassion,resilience, energy, and organizations—all part of a focus on positive organizationalscholarship.


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