Schoeneborn Forthcoming MCQ Org as Com Pre-Print-Libre

Running Head: ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMA NNIAN PERSPECTIVE

Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective

Dennis Schoeneborn

University of Zurich

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 1


Abstract

A growing body of literature in organization studies draws on the idea that communication

constitutes organization, often abbreviated to CCO. This paper introduces Luhmann’s theory

of social systems as a prominent example of CCO thinking. I argue that Luhmann’s

perspective contributes to current conceptual debates on how communication constitutes

organization. The theory of social systems highlights that organizations are fundamentally

grounded in paradox because they are built on communicative events that are contingent by

nature. Consequently, organizations are driven by the continuous need to deparadoxify their

inherent contingency. In that respect, Luhmann’s approach fruitfully combines a processual,

communicative conceptualization of organization with the notion of boundary and self-

referentiality. Notwithstanding the merits of Luhmann’s approach, its accessibility tends to be

limited due to the hermetic terminology that it employs and the fact that it neglects the role of

material agency in the communicative construction of organizations.

Keywords: organizational communication; communication constitutes organization

(CCO); Montreal School; theory of social systems


Author’s Bio

Dennis Schoeneborn (Ph.D., Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany) is a senior lecturer and

researcher for organization studies in the Department of Business Administration at the

University of Zurich, Switzerland. His current research concerns the question how

communicative practices get reproduced in organizational contexts.


Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Steffen Blaschke, Sue Newell, Alexander T. Nicolai,

Andreas G. Scherer, David Seidl, Paul Spee, and Anna Theis-Berglmair, the anonymous

reviewers, as well as editors Charles Conrad and James R. Barker for their very helpful

comments on earlier versions of this article.



Organizing is first and foremost a communicative activity. Weick even concludes that

“the communication activity is the organization” (Weick, 1995, p. 75; emphasis added). A

significant body of literature has emerged in recent years that takes Weick’s claim seriously,

acknowledging the constitutive role of communication for organizations, often abbreviated to

CCO. The CCO perspective originates in the interdisciplinary field of organizational

communication studies (Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). In a recent article, Ashcraft, Kuhn and

Cooren (2009) present a comprehensive overview of the emerging CCO perspective. The

authors argue that apart from rare examples, in particular the work of the “Montreal School”

of organizational communication (e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000; Cooren, Taylor, & van

Every, 2006) or scholars working with structuration theory (e.g., McPhee & Poole, 2001;

McPhee & Zaug, 2008), limited attention has been paid to focus on explicit claims that

communication constitutes organizations.

In this paper, I take this claim forward by drawing upon the work of German

sociologist Niklas Luhmann. I argue that Luhmann’s theory of social systems (Luhmann,

1995, 2000; Seidl & Becker, 2005), a long-reaching theoretical tradition in the German-

speaking social sciences, fundamentally shares with the CCO perspective the explicit

assumption of the communicative constitution of organizations. Nevertheless, so far the

theory of social systems has remained largely isolated and separate from comparable theories

developed by authors of the CCO perspective. This lack of reception can be explained by the

fact that a large part of Luhmann’s work on organizations has not yet been translated from

German into English (Hernes & Bakken, 2003, p. 1513) and is therefore mostly inaccessible

to an international readership. In view of that, this paper’s objective is systematically to

introduce Luhmann’s notion of organization as communication to an international readership


in the field of organizational communication and to contribute to emergent debates on the

CCO view.

Particularly, I put forward the argument that Luhmann’s theoretical perspective lends

itself to contributing to three current conceptual debates on unresolved questions within the

CCO framework: first, what makes communication organizational (Bisel, 2010; McPhee &

Zaug, 2008)? Second, if organizations are defined as consisting of something as ephemeral as

communication, how are organizations stabilized over time (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008)?

Third, what differentiates organizations from other forms of social phenomena, such as

networks, communities, or social movements (Sillince, 2010)?

With regard to the first question, I suggest drawing on Luhmann’s focus on decisions

as the distinctive feature of organizational communication. In this context, Luhmann’s theory

of social systems highlights that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox, as

they are built on communicative events that are contingent by nature. With regard to the

second question, Luhmann proposes that organizations are driven by the continuous necessity

to deparadoxify their inherent contingency. With regard to the third question, I claim

Luhmann’s framework is helpful in combining a processual, communicative conceptuali-

zation of organization with the notion of boundary and self-referentiality.

This paper is structured as follows: First, I provide a brief overview of the emerging

CCO perspective. Second, I introduce Luhmann’s theory of social systems and especially his

notion of organization as communication. Based on this brief introduction, I relate Luhmann’s

framework to current debates about the CCO view and analyze his potential contributions to

these debates. In order to set these potential contributions into perspective, I thirdly point out

limitations to the transferability of insights from Luhmann’s framework to CCO thinking. The

study concludes with a discussion of how acknowledging Luhmann’s theory of social systems


as one explicit strain of CCO thinking can inspire future research on organization as

communication.

The Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO)

A growing body of literature applies a constitutive conception of communication, i.e.

the notion that communication fundamentally constitutes social reality (Craig, 1999), to the

study of organizations (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009; Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). As

Castor points out, “organizational communication scholars […] are becoming increasingly

interested in the communication as constitutive of organizations (CCO) perspective that views

organizations as socially constructed through communication” (Castor, 2005, p. 480). The

CCO approach (e.g., Kuhn, 2008; Taylor, 2000) addresses one of the most fundamental

questions in organization studies: What is an organization? In doing so, CCO scholars attempt

a radical shift in perspective: they reject the notion that organizations are constituted by their

members (e.g., March and Simon 1958, p. 110, who maintain that “an organization is, after

all, a collection of people and what the organization does is done by people”). Instead, they

put forward a fluid and processual notion of organizations as being constituted by ephemeral

acts of communication: “An organization is not a physical structure – a collection of people

(or computers), joined by material channels of communication, but a construction made out of

conversation“ (Taylor, 1993, p. 22).

In a recent article, Ashcraft, Kuhn, and Cooren (2009) provide a comprehensive

overview of the current state of research based on the CCO perspective. At the same time, the

authors rely on a rather broad understanding of the CCO approach. Besides discussing

particular strains of CCO thinking which explicitly propagate a constitutive view of the

organization-communication relationship, they also consider strains of embedded CCO

thinking, characterized by the fact that “constitutive claims are not their primary focus”


(Ashcraft et al., 2009: 9). As examples of such embedded approaches, the authors mention

research on organizational culture (e.g., Eisenberg & Riley, 2001), power (e.g., Deetz, 2005;

Mumby, 2001), or networks (e.g., Monge & Contractor, 2003). In this paper, I use the term

CCO to refer mainly to explicit strains of CCO thinking. The most prominent examples of

these explicit strains, i.e. the work of the Montreal School of organizational communication

(e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000) as well as structuration theory approaches (e.g., McPhee &

Zaug, 2008), are introduced below in their main features.

The Montreal School of organizational communication is represented in particular by

James R. Taylor, François Cooren, and their colleagues (e.g., Cooren, 2004; Cooren et al.,

2006; Robichaud, Giroux, & Taylor, 2004; Taylor & van Every, 2000, 2011). The starting

point of their theorizations is the assumption of an isomorphic or equivalent relationship

between organization and communication (Taylor, 1995): The notion of equivalence “treats

communication and organization as a monastic unity or as the same phenomenon expressed in

different ways. That is, communicating is organizing and organizing is communicating: the

two processes are isomorphic” (Putnam, Philips, & Chapman, 1996, p. 375). The basic

distinction on the communicational side of the equivalency concerns the modalities of text

and conversation: “The textual dimension corresponds with the recurring, fairly stable and

uneventful side of communication (i.e. the organization’s ‘surface’), while the conversational

dimension refers to the lively and evolving co-constructive side of communication (i.e. the

‘site’ of organization)” (Ashcraft et al., 2009, p. 20). In a social-constructivist understanding

of organizations, Taylor and colleagues imagine the organization as the alternate succession

of episodes of conversation (where the organization is accomplished in situ) and

textualization (where the organization is “incarnated” as a recognizable actor by creating

textual representations of itself). In this radical view, the organization’s inception occurs


exclusively on the level of ongoing text-conversation processes and thus “has no existence

other than in discourse” (Taylor & Cooren, 1997, p. 429).

However, in this conceptualization of organizations, the crucial question remains:

What particular form of communication “makes communication organizational” (Taylor &

Cooren, 1997; emphasis added)? With regard to that question, the Montreal School’s

conceptualization of organization as communication has been subject to criticism for being

too vague. This criticism has been expressed particularly by scholars who primarily follow a

structuration theory perspective (e.g., McPhee & Poole, 2001; McPhee & Zaug, 2008).

Countering the notion of isomorphic equivalency between organization and communication,

these authors draw on the root-metaphor of production, arguing that organizations both

produce communication and are produced by communication (cf. Giddens’s notion of the

duality of structure and agency; Giddens, 1984). For instance, in what is a predominantly

supportive account of Taylor’s work, McPhee and Poole point out:

One limitation of Taylor et al.’s approach is that it attempts to use communication

concepts that apply to all interaction, perhaps influenced by the idea that if

organization and communication are equivalent, all communication should be

organizational. Since these concepts must […] apply to marriages, mobs, and

communities that intercommunicate, they are hindered from finding crucial

explanatory concepts for specifically organizational communication. (McPhee &

Poole, 2001, p. 534; emphasis added)

In a similar vein, McPhee and Zaug (2008) question the idea that every form of com-

munication has the inherent constitutive ability to let an organization emerge. Instead, they

propose distinguishing between four types of communication “flows,” which they assume to

be essential for the constitution of organization. First, organizations tend to draw a clear-cut

distinction between their members and non-members and thus are characterized by con-


tinuous communicative processes of membership negotiation. Second, organizations entail

communicative processes of reflexive self-structuring, which in turn distinguishes them from

loose forms of social gatherings, such as “lynch mobs or mere neighborhoods” (McPhee &

Zaug, 2008, p. 36). Third, organizations follow at least one manifest purpose, which serves as

a template for communicative processes of activity coordination towards that specific end.

Fourth, organizations do not operate in a vacuum but are embedded into society at large.

Thus, organizations also generate (and in turn are shaped by) complex communicative

processes of institutional positioning, where the organization’s status is continuously

negotiated in interaction with stakeholders and other institutions. These four flows, however,

need to be seen as a soft set of criteria rather than a clear-cut definition of what makes

communication organizational.

Leaning towards the work of the Montreal School, Cooren and Fairhurst (2008)

critically respond to McPhee and Zaug (2008), essentially arguing that their model of four

flows adopts a too reductionist, top-down stance towards organizations:

For example, a group of individuals can organize themselves to accomplish a

common objective (for example, moving) and develop some patterns of

interaction, but this does not necessarily mean that this group constitutes a formal

organization (for example, a moving company). They could just be a bunch of

friends trying to help one of them to move. (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008, p. 121)

Cooren and Fairhurst (2008) instead propose applying a bottom-up perspective, from

which the organization should be conceived as an emergent phenomenon, fundamentally

rooted in local interactions. According to the authors, the key question lies in how local and

ephemeral interactions are scaled up to longer-lasting and stabilized forms of organization: “It

is this source of stability that needs to be unveiled” (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008, p. 123;

emphasis in original). In response, the authors highlight the importance of textual and non-


human agency for processes of organizing. Non-human entities are seen here as agents

capable to act, i.e. of making a difference, by virtue of their mere presence and particular

configurations; for instance, “the PDA reminded me of the appointment” (Cooren, 2006, pp.

84-85) or a sign at a restaurant’s door where a private party is held is likely to stop you from

entering. This is referred to as the “staying capacity” (Derrida, 1988) or “distanciation”

(Ricœur, 1981) of texts and artifacts, i.e. their ability to transcend time and (in some cases

also) space. While circumstantial factors may vary, such entities remain robust over time, as

they become detached from their authors’ intentions and the context of their creation. With

relation to organization, one could say that, in effect, organizations come into existence by

help of the various forms of non-human agency (cf. Latour, 1994), which allow the

dislocation and consequently the perpetuation of its existence. In that respect, the CCO

perspective directs our attention to sociomateriality as a stabilizing condition for organizing

(Cooren, 2006; Orlikowski, 2007). Consequently, changes in sociomaterial practices, e.g., the

introduction of new media and genres of organizational communication (Yates & Orlikowski,

1992), fundamentally affect the perpetuation of organization. In the same spirit, Cooren

elucidates:

Different types of agencies are typically created and mobilized to fulfill

organizing (to name just a few, organizational charts, contracts, ledgers,

surveillance cameras, statuses, checklists, orders, memos, [etc.]). […] Organizing

can thus be understood as a hybrid phenomenon that requires the mobilization of

entities […] which contribute to the emergence and the enactment of the

organized form. (Cooren, 2006, p. 83)

As I have shown, although the authors who represent the various strands of the CCO

perspective agree on the constitutive role of communication for organization, we can also

perceive ongoing debates on how communication constitutes organization. Most recently, this


debate has been intensified in a special topic forum on the CCO approach in Management

Communication Quarterly (e.g., Bisel 2010; Putnam & Nicotera, 2010; Sillince, 2010).

Within the current debates on the CCO view, I identify three main unresolved questions. First,

Bisel (2010) – in line with McPhee and Zaug (2008) – suggests conceptualizing

communication as a necessary but ultimately insufficient condition for the emergence of

organization. Of course, this stance raises the question of what else needs to be in place for

organization to emerge or, in other words, what makes communication organizational.

Second, and closely related to this, if organizations are defined as consisting of something as

ephemeral as communication, how are organizations stabilized over time (Cooren &

Fairhurst, 2008)? Sillince (2010) points out a third question; namely, what differentiates

organizations from other forms of social phenomena such as networks, communities, or social

movements? He argues that McPhee and Zaug’s four flows model (2008) could equally apply

to all of these forms. Consequently, Sillince calls for developing more precisely the defining

characteristics that are specific to organizations. In the following section, I present the

argument that Luhmann’s social systems theory framework particularly lends itself to

contributing to these three questions on how communication constitutes organization.

Potential Contributions of the TSS to the CCO Perspective

The CCO perspective’s most fundamental assumption, that organizations are

constituted by communication, matches a central tenet of the theory of social systems (TSS),

as developed by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1995, 2000). Although the TSS

represents one of the most prominent schools of thought within the German-speaking social

sciences (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 8), so far it has remained largely isolated from the ideas

developed by authors of the CCO perspective (for one rare exception, see Taylor, 2001). One

of the main reasons for this may be that Luhmann’s work on organizations, particularly his


major monograph Organisation und Entscheidung (2000), has not yet been translated into

English and is thus inaccessible to large elements of the international readership. The

reception of Luhmann’s work on organization theory in English-language publications has

begun to grow relatively recently (e.g., Bakken & Hernes, 2003; Hernes & Bakken, 2003;

Nassehi, 2005; Seidl & Becker, 2005, 2006). In view of that, it is my article’s objective to

introduce the TSS, concentrating on its main features, and to highlight its contributions to

understanding organization as communication.

Luhmann’s lifetime project was to develop a universal theoretical framework that can

be applied to all social phenomena and that allows for theory-consistent descriptions.

Expounding his ideas on social systems, Luhmann (1995) starts with communication as the

most basic element of the social domain. In that respect, the TSS leads to the counter-intuitive

notion that human beings are part of the environment of communication processes (Luhmann,

1992, p. 30). In other words, Luhmann theorizes a clear distinction between communication

(“social systems”) and individual human beings (“psychic systems”): “Accordingly, social

systems are not comprised of persons and actions but of communications” (Luhmann, 1989,

p. 145). Despite this rather impersonal notion of social systems as interconnected

communications, Luhmann conceptualizes communication processes and individual thought

processes as mutually dependent on each other (Luhmann, 1992, p. 281).

The key to Luhmann’s understanding of communication is his notion of autopoiesis,

i.e. self-(re)production: Luhmann assumes that the social domain consists of various

autopoietic systems, which reproduce themselves self-referentially on the basis of ongoing

processes of communication: “Social systems use communications as their particular mode of

autopoietic reproduction. Their elements are communications which are recursively produced

and reproduced by a network of communications, and which cannot exist outside the

network” (Luhmann, 1986, p. 174).


Based on this conception, Luhmann distinguishes three basic types of autopoietic

social systems: (1) interactions, the smallest and most elusive form of social gatherings on the

micro-level; (2) organizations as more formalized and stable social systems on the meso-

level; and finally (3) society as a whole, which encompasses all forms of social systems on the

macro-level, and which can be further differentiated into various functional sub-systems such

as the political system, economic system, legal system, etc. (Luhmann, 1986, p. 173). Thus,

organizations represent a generic social form. Like all social systems, organizations are

assumed to be fundamentally constituted by communication. Accordingly, the organization is

conceptualized as an autopoietic system consisting of interconnected communicative events.

In this view, the organization only exists as long as it manages to produce further

communications, which call forth yet more communications.

The view that organizations consist solely of ephemeral communicative events, which

is central to the processual perspective, directs our attention to a fundamental problem of

organization: How do organizations maintain their existence from one communicative event

to the next? Or, in other words, how do organizations ensure connectivity (in German:

‘Anschlussfähigkeit’; Nassehi, 2005)? Indeed, organizational strategies established to increase

the likelihood of connectivity are a focal point for the TSS. In the following, I will discuss to

what extent Luhmann’s theoretical perspective can contribute fruitfully to the three identified

debates on unresolved questions within CCO thinking. These questions will structure my

analysis.

Organization as Fundamentally Grounded in Paradox

With regard to the first question of current CCO debates, i.e. what is it that makes

communication organizational (Bisel, 2010; McPhee & Zaug, 2008), I turn to Luhmann’s

idea that the decision-communication is the key feature of organizational communication:


[…] Organised social systems can be understood as systems made up of decisions

[…]. Decision is not understood as a psychological mechanism, but as a matter of

communication, not as a psychological event in the form of an internally

conscious definition of the self, but as a social event. That makes it impossible to

state that decisions already taken still have to be communicated. Decisions are

communications; something that clearly does not preclude that one can

communicate about decisions. (Luhmann, 2003, p. 32)

Luhmann’s focus on decisions as the constitutive element of organization roots in a

long-standing tradition in organization studies (e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Weber, 1958;

Weick, 1979, 1995) as well as organizational communication research (e.g., Tompkins &

Cheney, 1983, 1985). Within existing strains of CCO thinking, however, such focus on

decisions as the key feature of organizing – in the tradition of March and Simon (1958) – is

regarded as old-fashioned and too reductionist (e.g., Taylor & van Every, 2000, p. 183). But

in contrast to the work of his predecessors, Luhmann ascribes to decisions a radical

communicative character: “Luhmann suggests conceptualising decision as a specific form of

communication. It is not that decisions are first made and then communicated; decisions are

communications” (Seidl, 2005a, p. 39). According to Luhmann, the organization comes into

being whenever speech acts adopt the form of decisions. As an example for what he means by

decisions, let us consider the most basic type of organizational decisions, that is, decisions on

membership. Communicative acts representative of this type include phrases like, e.g., “We

have hired…” or “Please welcome …, our new colleague.” What counts for the organization,

is the completed decision. Seidl draws on the same example when he explains that what

matters for the organization is the decision as such, rather than the process that has led to that

decision:


For the organization the decision on the candidate connects directly to the earlier

decision to create the position. […] For the continuation of the decision process

(e.g. further decisions on concrete curricula etc.) it is only relevant which

candidate has been chosen (and which ones have not). It is completely irrelevant

who was for or against the candidate […], how long it took the participants to

reach the decision etc. What counts for the further decision process is the decided

alternative, while the process culminating in the decision, and the uncertainty

involved in it, are irrelevant or absorbed. (Seidl, 2005b, p. 158)

When it comes to decisions, the TSS highlights that organizations are essentially

grounded in paradox (Luhmann, 2000, p. 64). In this context, Luhmann refers to the paradox

of the undecidability of decisions, as expressed by von Foerster (1992, p. 14): “Only questions

that are in principle undecidable, we can decide” (cf. Derrida, 2002; Cooren, 2010). In order

to make this paradoxical statement more comprehensible let us take a closer look at

Luhmann’s notion of the term contingency, as a first step. When Luhmann asserts that

“contingency is the state that is reached if necessity and impossibility are negated” (Luhmann,

1988, p. 183; translated from the original), he is referring to the philosophical definition of the

term (e.g., Rorty, 1989). Here “contingency” means an instance of “it could be otherwise” and

thus represents potentiality as opposed to actuality. In this respect, Luhmann’s notion of the

term “contingency” clearly differs from its usage in “contingency theory” (Lawrence &

Lorsch, 1967) or its common usage (i.e. a future event or circumstance that is difficult to

predict accurately).

Decisions, in turn, are contingent by definition because in a decision, usually “only

one conclusion [is] reached but others could have been chosen” (Andersen, 2003, p. 245). At

the same time, questions that have only one answer, i.e., questions that can only be decided in

one way, and therefore lack the property of “undecidability”, do not allow organizations to


emerge as interrelated sets of decision-communications: “[I]f a decision can be reached

through absolute deduction, calculation, or argumentation [it leads] to a final closure or

fixation of contingency without simultaneously potentializing alternatives. […] So-called

rational decisions are not decisions at all” (Andersen, 2003, p. 246). In practice, this means

that if, for instance, an organization has established procedures that allow it to determine

deductively the profile of the “optimal” candidate for a job within the organization, e.g., based

on a list of pre-defined criteria, there would be no need to make a decision as such when

choosing among candidates, in the sense that the question of selecting a new member of staff

can be answered solely on the basis of past decisions. Thus, in the TSS the term “decision”

designates only the “pure” form of decisions, which reflects their inherent contingency,

arbitrariness, and undecidability. Consequently, it is in line with Luhmann (2000) to assume

that decision-communications do not necessarily follow a rationalist and deductive pattern

(see also Taylor, 2001). As Nassehi puts it, “Luhmann comes to the conclusion that rationality

is a retrospective scheme of observation, dealing with the contingency and the paradox of

decision-making processes” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186).

One important aspect of decision-communication in organizations is that decisions can

be identified as decisions only if their contingency is made visible in the form of one or more

alternative possibilities, which have been explicitly taken into consideration but are discarded:

[...] What is particular about decisions is that they […] communicate their own

contingency […]. In contrast to an ordinary communication, which only

communicates a specific content that has been selected (e.g. “I love you”), a

decision communication communicates also – explicitly or implicitly – that there

are alternatives that could have been selected instead (e.g. “I am going to employ

candidate A and not candidate B”). (Seidl, 2005a, p. 39)


Thus, organizations constantly operate in a state of paradox: “The decision must

communicate itself as a decision, but by doing that it also communicates its own alternative.

A decision cannot help but communicate its own self-critique, i.e., communicate that it could

also have been made differently” (Knudsen, 2005, p. 110). Seidl adds that “every decision

communicates that there are alternatives to the decision – otherwise it would not be a decision

– and it simultaneously communicates that since the decision has been made, there are no

alternatives – otherwise, again, it would not be a decision” (Seidl 2005b, p. 146; emphasis in

original). Or, in the words of Luhmann, “Decisions can only be communicated [as decisions]

if the rejected alternatives are also communicated” (Luhmann, 2000, p. 64; translated from the

original). The organization, then, can be described as a communicative entity that is driven by

the continuous need to handle this paradox and thus tends to oscillate between visibilizing and

invisibilizing the alternativity of decisions (Schoeneborn, 2008).

To conclude, Luhmann’s focus on decision-communications is highly pertinent to the

first question of current debates on the CCO perspective, i.e. what makes communication

organizational. In this context, Luhmann proposes focusing on a particular form of

communication, the decision-communication. From the TSS perspective, one could argue that

all four flows that define organization according to McPhee & Zaug (2008), i.e. self-

structuring, membership negotiation, activity coordination, and institutional positioning,

essentially involve explicit or implicit forms of decision-communication. From this point of

view, decision-communications represent the specific type of communication that holds all

four flows together; for example, the process of negotiating whether a job applicant joins an

organization or not may result in a contract being signed by the new recruit. For Luhmann

(2000), this process would essentially consist of a decision-communication, in the sense that

the signing of a contract indicates one option (inclusion), which has been chosen over an

alternative (exclusion) and is communicated in written form. Similarly, the process of activity


coordination during a team meeting will most likely involve a decision-communication on

which activities to focus on (from among all available options) and on the allocation of tasks

to team members. Authors of the Montreal School would still object to such decision-centered

reductionism, of course, arguing that language per se has the inherent tendency to generate

instances of organizing. Thus, according to these authors, organization can emerge in

principle out of all forms of communication, not only from decision-communication.

Nevertheless, even if one does not agree with Luhmann’s focus on decision-

communication, the TSS yields potentially valuable insights into the communicative

constitution of organization. For instance, the TSS suggests taking a closer look at the form of

communication. In this context, Seidl (2005b, p. 149) distinguishes various layers of

organizational interactions ranging from the pure “deciding interactions” at the organization’s

very core, to “semi-detached interactions” with a merely loose relation to decision-making

(e.g., gossiping) at the organization’s outer layers. Seidl’s distinction implicitly calls for

comparative research on these various layers of organizational communication (cf. Robichaud

et al., 2004). Most importantly, the TSS highlights that organizations consist of an

interrelated, self-referential and autopoietic network of communicative events, which are

fundamentally grounded in paradox and are inherently contingent – an aspect largely missing

in current CCO debates. Accordingly, the question arises, “How do organizations handle their

inherent contingency communicatively and manage to sustain their existence over time?” I

will further elaborate on this question in the following section.

Deparadoxification as the Driving Force of Organizational Self-Reproduction

In answer to the second CCO question, i.e. how organizations become stabilized over

time (Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008), the TSS provides a processual model to explain how

organizations come into being and maintain their existence. Starting from the assumption that


organizations are essentially based on the paradox of the undecidability of decisions,

Luhmann’s framework enables us to observe the organization as a processual entity by

identifying organizational strategies of deparadoxification (cf. Andersen, 2003; Czarniawska,

2005). As Andersen points out,

In relation to decision communication it is important to make decisions look

decidable. Decision communication is able to deparadoxify itself by basically

making freedom look like restraint. In a certain sense, organizational com-

munication through the form of decision consists of nothing but continual

attempts to deparadoxify decisions. The way they do is an empirical question.

(Andersen, 2003, p. 249; emphasis in original)

In other words, reducing the almost infinite number of potential options (“open

contingency”) to a limited set of options (“fixed contingency”; Andersen, 2003) transforms

the undecidability of decisions into decidability. Again, the example of hiring a new

employee helps us to illustrate this relation: In most cases, the decision to create a new

position usually generates a large range of potential candidates. Typically, the hiring process

involves excluding the majority of applicants and compiling a shortlist of likely candidates.

During this process, the initially high number of options is reduced to a much smaller, and

much more manageable, range of options on which the decision will be based.

Likewise, Nassehi (2005) describes organizations as being driven by the continuous

necessity to conceal the fact that their operation is based on a paradox, the undecidability of

decisions: “If there were any secure knowledge on how to decide, there would not be a

choice. To have the choice means not to know what to do. This is the main problem of

organizations as social systems, consisting of the communication of decisions to perform

strategies to make this problem invisible” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186; emphasis in original).

Organizations are then forced to find some way to deparadoxify the undecidability of their


decisions – otherwise they become paralyzed by the paradoxical character of their basic

operation. Consequently, organizations can be conceptualized as ongoing processes of

transforming open contingency into fixed contingency, i.e. by limiting down the number of

alternatives or even presenting only one inevitable alternative (Luhmann, 2000, p. 170). In

Luhmann’s words, “the paradoxical character needs to be packaged and sealed in

communication” (Luhmann, 2000, p. 142; translated from the original). This is realized, for

example, by constructing “a decider as an accountable address” or by making decision

processes visible: “This means to stage-manage [decisions] in meetings, in special rooms, at

special times, with special rites, and on special documents” (Nassehi, 2005, p. 186). Thus,

organizations seem to depend on the creation of a decisional language game in which they

treat communicative events at least as if decisions were made (Ortmann, 2004, p. 208).

In the same context, Andersen (2003) distinguishes three strategies of

deparadoxification. Temporal deparadoxification refers to overcoming the pressure created by

social expectations to make a decision by either tightening (e.g., by setting a deadline) or by

widening the time frame for the decision (e.g., by postponing a decision to the next meeting).

In both cases, the immediate pressure to execute a decision and to face its vast inherent

contingency is alleviated. Luhmann explains that imposing a deadline is a powerful

mechanism of deparadoxification in the sense that it limits the amount of effort that is

invested in the decision to whatever the restricted time frame permits (Luhmann, 2000, p.

176). Nevertheless, we of course also perceive examples of following the opposite strategy of

postponing a decision, on the grounds that the decision needs to “ripen” before it can be

made. Social deparadoxification refers to justifying a decision by relating it to social

expectations. Claims that an “interest analysis” or “stakeholder analysis” must be carried out

in order to fulfill social expectations are empirical instances of this. Such tools are used to

legitimate a decision by creating social imperatives in the environment of the organization.


Factual deparadoxification involves characterizing a decision as a reaction to the “nature of

the case”; decisions are identified as choices among certain predefined alternatives. Typically

this is achieved by reference to environmental affordances, e.g., the market situation an

organization faces is presented as an imperative that makes a particular choice compulsive.

Because organizations are indeterminate in their complexity and given the large range

of possible connections between communicative events, organizations are driven by the

continuous need to execute selections in the form of decisions (Luhmann, 1988, p. 110). A

characteristic that is inherent in the contingent nature of decisions is that every decision

creates the need for further decisions: “Decisions are attempts at creating certainty […]. But

they also create uncertainty by demonstrating that the future is chosen; so it could be

different. In this way decisions pave the way for contestation” (Ahrne & Brunsson,

forthcoming, p. 17).

It is exactly this interplay of decisions and the inherent necessity to execute follow-up

decisions that reproduce organization in the course of successive communicative events.

Consequently, organizations ensure their performativity by functioning both as the producer

and product of decision necessities (what Luhmann refers to as “Entscheidungs-

notwendigkeiten”; Luhmann, 2000, p. 181). This allows us to provide an answer to the

question raised by Cooren and Fairhurst (2008, p. 121): What distinguishes the organization

from, e.g., a group of friends helping one of them moving into a new apartment? For

Luhmann, an organization comes into being as soon as a self-referential network of decision-

communications emerges, in which a past decision becomes the “decision premise” for

further decisions (Luhmann, 2000, p. 222). Consequently, the friends helping each other to

move may indeed represent the starting point for eventually establishing a more formal

organization but only if a self-referential set of interrelated decisions can be sustained,


typically starting with the decision on membership: who is part of the moving company and

who is not.

In light of our discussion so far, we can distinguish an important difference and an

important similarity between Luhmann and the authors of the CCO perspective – the

Montreal School in particular – when it comes to tackling the question of organizational

stabilization over time: The proponents of the Montreal School emphasize the importance of

sociomateriality (Orlikowski, 2007) to the process of stabilizing the organization as a

communicative entity over time (e.g., Fairhurst & Cooren, 2008). These authors argue that

communicative practices are fundamentally entangled with material objects (e.g., text, tools,

artifacts of all kinds) that endure and thus allow space and time to be transcended (Cooren,

2006). In contrast, Luhmann (2000) rather tends to neglect the dimension of materiality; his

definition of communication (Luhmann, 1992) primarily centers on face-to-face interactions.

However, when it comes to the aspect of non-human agency, we can perceive striking

parallels between the two approaches: Both the Montreal School and Luhmann downplay the

importance of individual human agency. While authors of the Montreal School ascribe agency

to all kinds of “things” and artifacts, Luhmann conceptualizes the organization as ongoing

processes of communication. In Luhmann’s view, the self-referential communication

processes tend to develop an autopoietic life of their own and thus gain a high degree of

agency themselves. Let us illustrate this again by the example of the recruitment decision:

Luhmann would argue that it is not the individual human agent (e.g., a manager) who can

decide voluntarily and largely independent from particular social circumstances on hiring a

new employee. Instead, the current recruitment decision stands in a tradition of earlier

decision-communications that gain (over-individual or even non-human) agency on the

current decision situation (Seidl, 2005b, p. 158).


To conclude, when we describe the TSS approach in the categories introduced by Bisel

(2009), the TSS seems to reside in between “acted-in-structure” (prioritizing text over talk)

and “structured in action” (prioritizing talk over text). Luhmann indeed stresses the

importance of non-human agency (in his case, by conceptualizing social systems as consisting

of communication processes) but largely neglects the aspect of materiality (by prioritizing talk

over text in his focus on face-to-face interactions). In his almost “immaterial” understanding

of organization as communication, Luhmann (2000) instead identifies the inherent need for

deparadoxification as the main driving force that triggers the next instance of communication

and thus enables the organization to perpetuate.

A Processual Notion of Organization, But Within Boundaries

The third question of the current CCO debate has been recently raised by Sillince

(2010): What is it that specifically distinguishes organizations from networks, communities,

or social movements? According to Luhmann (2006), social systems such as organizations

fundamentally emerge by the distinction between the system and its environment. As the

system-environment distinction needs to be continually sustained, the existence of

organizations is a precarious one; they tend either to become either lost in pure self-

referentiality or to become absorbed by their environment (Luhmann, 2000, p. 417). Thus, to

maintain its existence, the organization continuously needs to reproduce a boundary that

distinguishes it from its environment. As Luhmann would argue, it is exactly this systemic

and self-referential boundary that distinguishes organizations from networks, communities, or

social movements. In this context, it is important to note that Luhmann (1995) conceptualizes

social systems as both closed and open (or permeable; cf. Cheney & Christensen, 2001) at the

same time. On the one hand, on the level of their most basic operations, i.e. the decision-

communication, organizations are self-referentially closed. On the other hand, however,


operational closure becomes the precondition for organizations to remain structurally open to

interaction with their environment (cf. Maturana & Varela, 1987).

Although Luhmann’s emphasis on the system-environment distinction and the concept

of the boundary may be misinterpreted as propounding a reified notion of organizations, quite

the opposite is the case. Given that Luhmann (2000) perceives organizations as processual in

nature, i.e. fundamentally constituted by communicative events, the organization’s boundary

is likewise assumed to be formed communicatively. In other words, a boundary has no

existence unless it becomes repeatedly reproduced as a distinction achieved by events of

communication. Every decision-communication – for example, decisions that are made during

an organizational meeting (Boden, 1994; Castor & Cooren, 2006) or a recruitment decision –

reproduces organization and, as a consequence, the boundary to its environment. This is

because decisions are executed for – or in the words of Cooren (2006) on behalf of – the

organization and not for its competitor. For instance, a managerial meeting of Company A

results in the decision to expand into the Chinese market. This decision-communication is part

of a longer history of decision-communications of Company A (e.g., an earlier decision to

expand into the Japanese market), but it is not part of the self-referential network of

comparable decision-communications of Company B, nor would the managerial meeting of

Company A be entitled to make similar decisions for Company B. The organizational

boundary is then stabilized by forming over time a self-referential network of communicative

events, each of which links back to at least one preceding event.

This highlights an important difference from other strains within CCO thinking:

Although the concept of boundary is also emphasized by some authors of the Montreal School

(examples of this include the concepts of metaconversation and narrative closure as discussed

by Robichaud et al., 2004; or the memetic model of organization, in Taylor & Giroux, 2005),

their notion differs from that of Luhmann. For instance, according to Cooren (2006) any


communicative event that ascribes agency to an organization would equally stabilize the

organization as a collective actor. In this view, a CNN report on the Obama administration

would re-establish the status of the Obama administration as a collective actor. In contrast to

this, Luhmann’s way of theorizing is guided by a clear distinction between the inner and the

outer side of an organization. Luhmann (2000) emphasizes that the organization is primarily

stabilized by self-reference, not by external reference. Accordingly, in the TSS view, as the

hypothetical CNN report would take place in the environment of the organization and

represent an external reference to it, it would not contribute to the perpetuation of the

organizational system as such. Instead, the organizational system would be perpetuated by

ongoing events of decision-communications, e.g., decisions on who is a member of the

Obama Administration and who is not, on health-care policy programs, or on what to address

next on the political agenda.

A legitimate question with regard to the above is whether it makes a positive

difference if the Luhmannian notion of organizational boundary is added to the CCO

perspective. First, in a paper that builds on Luhmann’s ideas (1995), Schreyögg and Sydow

(forthcoming) put forward the argument that conceptualizations of the “boundaryless

organization” (e.g., Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, & Kerr, 2002) displace the fundamentals of theory

development on organizations. They go on to argue that the notion of the organizational

boundary and identity is essential in order to grasp an organization’s inherent historicity. For

Luhmann (2000), it is exactly this maintaining of a self-referential boundary to their

environment that distinguishes organizations from more loose forms of social phenomena

such as networks, communities, or social movements (cf. Sillince, 2010). Second, the TSS,

which combines a communication-centered perspective on organization with the notion of

boundary, allows us to address questions of organizational inclusion and exclusion from a

communicative perspective, in particular, the thin line between who is a member of an


organization and who is not – and how this distinction is continuously communicatively

constructed and stabilized (cf. the concept of “membership negotiation” by McPhee & Zaug,

2008).

Limitations to the Transferability of Insights

Despite the identified potential, the transferability of contributions from Luhmann’s

TSS framework to current debates within CCO thinking is limited in two respects, first, by the

hermetic terminology of the TSS approach and second, by the fundamental differences

between the TSS and other strains of CCO thinking, particularly with regard to Luhmann’s

neglect of the role of materiality. In the following, I will briefly elaborate on these limitations

to transferability.

Luhmann’s theoretical approach is furthermore characterized by its hermetic

terminology (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 10). In the TSS, all terms are defined in relation to

each other in a self-referential way. It was Luhmann’s objective to create a theory-specific

language that is explicitly distinct from everyday language (Nicolai, 2004). In this view,

drawing a boundary is an essential precondition for self-referentiality as well as for the

possibility of observation. The eye, for instance, can only perceive its surroundings because a

thin line is drawn, so to speak, that distinguishes the eye from its environment. Consequently,

this principle also applies to Luhmann’s general way of theorizing: Only when the theoretical

framework is established as a closed, self-referential language system which sustains a clear

boundary between itself and the environment is it possible to make observations that differ

from observations based on everyday language (cf. Nicolai, 2004, p. 971).

Thus, becoming familiar with Luhmann’s TSS is not merely a matter of translating his

texts from German into English, but also of learning to use his theory-specific language as a

lens with which to perceive the world (Seidl & Becker, 2006, p. 10). As Blühdorn rightly


observes, “The particular problem [the TSS] presents is that it defies a pick-and-choose

approach. Because Luhmann was aiming for nothing less than a […] paradigm change, it is

hardly possible to adopt some elements of his thinking and reject the rest. The two options

appear to be either the whole theory package or nothing at all” (Blühdorn, 2000, p. 339). The

inherent hermetism of the TSS is a major weakness that limits greatly its compatibility with

other, even similar, theoretical approaches. It is therefore in the best interest of the current

proponents of the TSS approach to make it more accessible to an international readership that

is not familiar with its theory-specific terminology (examples of recent publications which go

in that direction include Seidl, 2007, or Mohe and Seidl, forthcoming, as well as Schreyögg

and Sydow, forthcoming).

Another limitation in transferability lies in the fact that the TSS (despite efforts from

Luhmann’s followers) remains incomplete in various respects. For instance, Luhmann can

rightly be criticized for having overestimated the role of decisions and having underestimated

the role of materiality in the self-reproduction of organizational practices. However, the rise

of the digital age and, as a result, of all kinds of computer-mediated communication have

created new forms of interaction, which Luhmann’s theories do not address – at least not

during his lifetime (Luhmann died in 1998). For Luhmann, organic systems, artifacts, or

machines do not actively participate in communication, as they lack the capacity to process

meaning (Luhmann, 1995: 37). Because of that, the TSS simply lacks the vocabulary for

appropriately discussing materiality and its role in the self-reproduction of organizational

communication. It will therefore be up to future research to close these theoretical gaps and

connect the TSS properly to current debates on the role of materiality within CCO thinking

(e.g., Ashcraft et al., 2009; Cooren, 2006; Orlikowski, 2007).


Conclusion and Outlook

This paper contributes to current debates on the emerging CCO perspective

(communication constitutes organization; Ashcraft et al., 2009; Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). In

this paper, I have introduced Luhmann’s theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1995, 2000) as

one explicit strain of CCO thinking. I particularly argue that Luhmann’s perspective

contributes to current conceptual debates on how communication constitutes organization

(Bisel, 2010; Cooren & Fairhurst, 2008; McPhee & Zaug, 2008; Sillince, 2010). In response

to this, the TSS highlights that organizations are fundamentally grounded in paradox, as they

are built on communicative events that are contingent by nature. Consequently, organizations

are driven by the continuous need to deparadoxify their inherent contingency. At this, the TSS

fruitfully combines a processual, communicative conceptualization of organization with the

notion of boundary and self-referentiality. Notwithstanding these potential contributions, the

transferability of insights is limited by the hermetic terminology the TSS employs and the fact

that it neglects the role of material agency in the communicative construction of organization.

Finally, I want to outline some avenues for further research, which may benefit from a

combination of Luhmann’s theory of social systems with other strains of the CCO approach.

First and foremost, the identified strains of the CCO view (Ashcraft, et al., 2009) as well as

Luhmann’s TSS (1995, 2000) allow us to re-address one of the most fundamental questions of

organization studies: What is an organization? The various strains of the CCO perspective

address this question from different theoretical angles but all agree on the constitutive power

of communication for organizations. I therefore believe that engaging in a dialogue on the

minimum conditions of organizing, a question that is raised both in the CCO approach (e.g.,

Bisel, 2010) and the TSS (e.g., Ahrne & Brunsson, forthcoming), can pave the way for a new,

processual understanding of organization.


Second, the TSS suggests that research should focus on the inherently paradoxical and

contingent character of decision-communication and, with this, organizational communication

in general (Luhmann, 2000). Starting from this assumption, it will be worthwhile to examine

how organizations ensure their perpetuation, although they are based on something as

ephemeral as communication. From the TSS point of view, organizations achieve their

perpetuation by continuously transforming open contingency into fixed contingency, as

described by Andersen (2003) or Czarniawska (2005). From the Montreal School’s point of

view, it can be assumed that the agency by non-human entities (e.g., texts, artifacts,

technologies, etc.; Cooren, 2006) plays a pivotal role in the transformation of open into fixed

contingency, e.g., by limiting the possible range of realizable communicative options. This is

where the CCO perspective and the TSS (as an integral part of it) may mutually inspire each

other by enhancing our understanding of the sociomaterial practices that limit the contingency

of organizing (Orlikowski, 2007; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). These sociomaterial practices

ultimately both stabilize and de-paralyze the processual entity called organization in its

continuous reproduction from one communicative event to the next. In this context, one could

study, for instance, how particular media and genres of organizational communication help to

perpetuate an organization by cloaking the inherent contingency of organizational

communication processes (e.g., software applications like Microsoft’s PowerPoint – cf.

Kaplan, forthcoming; Schoeneborn, 2008).

Third, if the CCO and the TSS approaches become more mutually receptive this could

also contribute to enhancing empirical methodologies. In order to comprehend organization as

communication, so far, authors of the Montreal School have primarily used conversation and

discourse analyses to study the micro level of organizational interactions (Taylor, 1999).

However, these authors also aim at comprehending organizations on a meso or macro level:

“Our theory of communication must be capable of explaining the emergence and


sustainability of large, complex organizations” (Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud, 1996,

p. 4). The TSS approach exactly matches this claim, aiming at comprehending the

organization as a holistic processual entity. In view of the above, opening up the explicit

strains of the CCO perspective also to TSS-enriched quantitative methodologies such as

agent-based simulations (e.g., Blaschke & Schoeneborn, 2006) or social network analysis

may help us to accomplish a fuller understanding of the organization as a holistic processual

entity.


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