PART 3: CCO - KEY CONSTRUCTS

The constructs introduced here build on some or all of the concepts described so far. The concepts and constructs provide the basis from which to describe the nature of organisations and the processes by which they are constituted in communicative practices. The various CCO constructs discussed here are as follows:

i) Communities of practice ii) Metaconversation

iii) Authoritative text and organisation-as-actor iv) Hypertext and hyperconversation

4.23.1 Organising and organisation: Different ways to frame organisation

Brummans et al. (2014) described the dynamic processes of organising and organisation and they highlighted four different views of organising or organisation. These four perspectives are described by Brummans et al. (2014) as follows:

i) Organising as a network of locally situated practices within patterns of conversational activity. These may be described as communities of practice (Taylor, 2011) where individuals become members of a group working together; ‘I’ translates to ‘we’.

ii) Organising as a collective of multiple communities of practice translated into a larger collective with a collective identity; ‘we’ translates to ‘all of us’. Rochichaud et al. (2004) called this the metaconversation.

iii) An organisation that is objectified and authored where a separate identity can be discerned;

a collective actor emerges, no longer limited to a local context or to specific conversations;

‘all of us’ translates to ‘it’.

iv) An organisation that formally represents a collectivity of others; that acts through is agents who represent it and interact with other entities; that is enabled to act as a collective entity;

‘it’ becomes enabled to act. The organisation-as-actor emerges. Kuhn (2008) called this

“an authoritative text”.

Each of these perspectives is now discussed with reference to the literature.

4.23.2 Perspective 1: Organising as process: Communities of practice

At a local level of activity, Taylor said that a few individuals who collectively get together to get something done over a period of time, will organise and will display organisation. He called this a working group or a community of practice (Taylor, 2011). He said that the organisation relies on

“the locally situated community of practice to get its work done”.

Taylor (2009) described a community of practice as the coorientation of a group of people who are

“regularly focused on a common object”; so that there are “recurrent patterns of interaction”. He said that such contexts favour learning how to do things in patterned ways so that work is embedded in social practice; a community of practice exhibits the “inherently socially negotiated character of meaning”.

The term used by The Montreal School appears to be a more general idea related to the process of organising when compared to the concept developed by Etienne Wenger. Wenger and Snyder (2000) called a community of practice a new organisational form that promises to “galvanise knowledge sharing, learning, and change”. They defined it as “groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise” and in this form, it is more focused on the knowledge content and outcomes than the actual process of organising itself.

4.23.3 Perspective 2: Organising as process: Metaconversation

Robichaud, Giroux and Taylor (2004) described the idea of organisation as a metaconversation, or a conversation of conversations, as “the distributed - even fragmented - character of organisation as a more or less interconnected multiverse of communities”. It is multiple communities of practice. Taylor (2011) described a metaconversation as a gathering or “a congeries” of communities of practice.

Metaconversation “is a conversation that embeds, recursively, another conversation”. The recursive processes of organising creates a “conversation in which a collective identity is constituted that is larger than that of the smaller communities of practice” (Robichaud et al., 2004).

They showed how organisation occurs in metaconversation in which a metanarrative is produced.

The collective identity is basically a metanarrative that is negotiated collectively and through a recursive process of imbrication, it becomes embedded in the ongoing layers of conversation.

4.23.4 Perspectives 3 and 4: Organisation as actor: The authoritative text

Perspectives 3 and 4 are both related to organisations as entities but Brummans et al. (2014) distinguished between the organisation emerging from the reification or ‘authoring’ of the organisational narrative and an organisational entity that has the representation of agents with the

‘authority to act’ on its behalf or in its name. This latter is the concept of the organisation-as-actor or “authoritative text” (Kuhn, 2008).

The process involves creating the organisational narrative but also establishing a voice by invoking human, nonhuman, textual and collective agents to materialise and present the organisation (Benoit-Barne & Cooren, 2009).

4.23.5 A further progression: Hypertext and Hyperconversation

Taylor and Van Every (1993: 204) introduced the metaphor of hypertext as a model of organisation. With reference to Morgan (2006: 4), they defined metaphor as an image that implies

“a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervade how we understand our world” (ibid: 75). The hypertext metaphor is a perspective that goes beyond the metaconversation and beyond the authoritative text and Taylor and Van Every described it as a multi-dimensional reality (ibid: 209).

“A hypertext model would visualise organisation not as a fixed, unyielding structure but as a set of alternative possible transactional arrangements” (ibid: 205) so that organisation would emerge out of the process of communication. Taylor and van Every explained that while hypertext can represent a conventional, fixed, hierarchical structure, it is not limited to or constrained by a static view. It is not a single thing but rather it is a composition of multiple images; it considers the organisation “as a virtual, not a fixed physical network” (ibid: 207). The organisation is not monolithic but “simultaneously multiple and constantly evolving”.

In a hypertext world, they contended that value is created through a process of negotiation. There is a dynamic of ongoing interaction, transaction and negotiation. Taylor (2000) used the terms hypertext and hyperconversation interchangeably.

4.23.6 A model of four rationalities

Taylor (2000) presented an alternative schematic of four rationalities that depicts each of these modes of organising and organisation. These are shown in Figure 4.4 below. He extended the options beyond the community of practice, metaconversation and authoritative text, to include hypertext and hyperconversation.

He compared the different communicative perspectives of organisation. The one he called “the organisation-as-actor” that is enabled to speak with a single voice⁴ and identity; he said it is a

“realized text”. This corresponds with the authoritative text as already described. The other he

4Taylor (2000) attributed a very broad meaning to the notion of voice.

called “the organisation-as-network” which he described as a “layered hypertext of perspectives”

where there are many conversations; he talked about this as hypertext, “a superimposition of many virtual texts” or a “lamination of conversations” and “intersections of conversations”.

Figure 4.4: Organisation as a dynamic interaction of rationalities Source: Adapted from Taylor (2001b).

Taylor (2001b) expanded this discussion in a subsequent article and explained that the one perspective is essentially the framing of organisation as conversation (bottom row) and the other is the framing of organisation as text (top row). He then distinguished between the individual (right-hand side) and the collective (left-(right-hand side) so that he represents what he called four

“rationalities”. Taylor emphasised that the individual and the group are separate but mutually interdependent. Just as conversation and text are mutually constituted, Taylor (ibid) argued that

“the identity of the group and the identity of its members are mutually conditional on the existence of each other”. This created a four quadrant model as shown in Figure 4.4 above.

These four ‘rationalities’ or perspectives of collective action co-exist. Starting at the bottom right quadrant, Taylor (2001b) explained that the basic work of an organisation is performed by individuals in locally situated communities of practice and ongoing conversations of a like-minded group of individuals in which individuals are represented and have a voice.

Moving to the bottom left quadrant takes us to a position in which a collective has become organised as metaconversation, multiple conversations with a common narrative that gives it a collective identity.

At top left, he depicted the organisation as a collective that is represented and has a single voice as a single actor; and what Taylor called the “organisation-as-actor”; it is organisation as an authoritative text.

Lastly at top right, Taylor identified what he called “hyperconversation” or hypertext which he described as multiple conversations that are “flexibly linked to each other through the activities of individual members, who either migrate from one conversation to another or intercommunicate” in

Organisation as Collective Representation/Voice

An Authoritative Text

Organisation as Hypertext or Hyperconversation

Organisation as Individual Representation/ Voice Community of Practice Organisation as

Metaconversation

INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIVE