Summoning the spirits: Organizational texts and the (dis)ordering properties of communication
研究为何组织在创造秩序时往往同时引发失序,通过三个项目组织的案例,揭示语言和文本在固定意义的同时也打开了多重意义的可能性,从而推动组织持续进行意义协商。
This article addresses the question: why does disorder tend to simultaneously accompany efforts to create order when organizing? Adopting a communication-centered perspective, we specifically examine the role of texts in the mutual constitution of order and disorder. Drawing on empirical material from three qualitative case studies on project organizing, we show that attempts of ordering through language use and texts (i.e. by closing and fixing meaning) tend to induce disordering (i.e. by opening the possibility of multiple meanings), at the same time. As we contend, these (dis)ordering dynamics play a key role in the communicative constitution of organization, keeping them in motion by calling forth continuous processes of meaning (re-)negotiation.