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& Communication
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Organizational discourse and communication: the progeny of Proteus

Guowei Jian, Amy M. Schmisseur and Gail T. Fairhurst
DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATION 2008 2: 299
DOI: 10.1177/1750481308091912
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ARTICLE

Jian et al.: Organizational discourse and communication 299

Organizational discourse and

communication: the progeny of Proteus
GUOWEI JIAN
C L E V E L A N D S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y , U S A

AMY M. SCHMISSEUR
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, USA

GAIL T. FAIRHURST

Discourse & Communication

Copyright 2008
SAGE Publications.
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore)
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 2(3): 299320
10.1177/1750481308091912

U N I V E R S I T Y O F C I N C I N N AT I , U S A

A B S T R A C T As Van Dijk (2007) proposed in the first issue of Discourse

and Communication, the main purpose of this journal is to bridge the two
cross-disciplines of communication and discourse studies. Given this goal,
this article sought to help clear the ground for such interdisciplinary
development by investigating how organizational researchers use the
terms discourse and communication and cast discoursecommunication
relationships. By reviewing 112 organizational discourse studies from major
journals in communication, organizational studies, and interdisciplinary
journals published between 1981 and 2006, this study identified diverse
conceptualizations of these basic concepts. The findings help dispel some of
the misunderstandings that scholars from one research field may possess
toward the other and sort through some, if not all, the confusions regarding
the terms discourse, communication, and their relationships.
KEY WORDS:

communication, discourse, discourse analysis, organizational

communication, organizational discourse

There is little question that the terms discourse and communication enjoy wide
popularity in the social sciences today witness the birth of this journal, Discourse
and Communication. However, like the Greek sea-god Proteus, both terms are
capable of assuming a variety of forms. This is especially so in the organizational
and communication sciences with its own sub-discipline of organizational
communication (Mumby, 2007) and given the popularity of organizational
discourse analyses (Grant et al., 2004). Yet, it is precisely this variety that deserves
our attention. Some organizational discourse scholars who study communication
do not admit to it, and some organizational communication scholars find the
multifarious meanings of discourse to be confusing and ambiguous. Scholars who
prefer one of the two terms will react to the other with ambivalence or disdain,
while others seek to depict their complementarity. For still others, discourse

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and communication are destined to remain floating signifiers (Laclau, 1990;

Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), floating as it were with each new wave of theory,
setting, or analyst. How we arrived at such a turn of events is certainly worthy
of an archeological dig, but a Foucauldian history of the present also mandates
a fuller examination of current practices.
In this study, we explore the multiple meanings of the terms discourse and
communication and their relationship(s) in a survey of journals linked to the
organizational setting. We are deliberately narrowing the scope of inquiry to
the organizational context because of its uniqueness and growing volume of
literature around the two terms. In line with the spirit of this journal (Van Dijk,
2007), we hope to sort through some of the confusion and facilitate future
dialogue among scholars of organizational communication and discourse. As
authors, we are all from the discipline of organizational communication who
value discourse analytic work in all of its various forms. We begin with some
background on both terms before describing our study.

Background of organizational discourse and

communication
ORGANIZATIONAL DISCOURSE

Since the wave marking the linguistic turn surged through social sciences a few
decades ago, organization studies have undergone profound changes. The rise of
discourse studies partly anchors this paradigmatic shift from an almost exclusive
emphasis on positivistic research towards multi-paradigm work inclusive of
interpretive, critical, and dialogic approaches (Deetz, 1996; Fairhurst, 2007;
Grant et al., 1998; Mumby and Clair, 1997). A wide variety of theoretical currents contributes to this shift, including but not limited to pragmatics (Austin,
1962; Searle, 1995), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), semiotics (Peirce,
1931), post-structuralism (Foucault, 1983), post-modernism (Derrida, 1982),
and rhetorical theories (e.g. Burke, 1969a, 1969b) (see Putnam and Fairhurst,
2001 for a comprehensive review). In organization studies, what galvanizes
scholars from various traditions and disciplines is the role that discourse plays
in the process of organizing and in re-theorizing a wide range of organizational
phenomena previously rooted in cognitive psychology or functionalist sociology.
Fairhurst (2007) presents one of the obvious examples of this by contrasting
discursive leadership from leadership psychology, the latter reflecting an
individualist and mostly quantitative approach to leadership research while the
former focuses on how leadership is achieved or brought off in discourse (p. 5).
Common to discourse studies are the assumptions that discourse is constitutive
of organizations (Fairhurst and Putnam, 2004) and that discourse is action
(Gronn, 1983).
Organizational discourse research is also conceptually and methodologically diverse. For instance, an ethnomethodologically informed conversation
analysis (e.g. Boden, 1994) would treat discourse as talk-in-interaction, focusing
upon turn-taking and the membership categories invoked and fashioned.

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However, a Foucauldian discourse study (e.g. Deetz, 1998) would seek patterns
of thoughts and socially sanctioned practices as discourse and investigate its
formation and effects in particular historical and political contexts. Alvesson
and Krreman (2000: 1126) rightfully characterized the state of organizational
discourse studies suggesting,
There is a wide array of ways of using the term discourse in social science and
organization studies. It is often difficult to make sense of what people mean by
discourse. In many texts, there are no definitions or discussions of what discourse
means.

This situation is, at a minimum, perplexing. On the one hand, the multiplicity
of meaning around discourse demonstrates the versatility and potential for
creative theorization and empirical work. On the other hand, it may lead to
confusion, compromise theoretical and methodological rigor, and create hurdles
for healthy dialogue, meta-analysis, and, ultimately, the accumulation and application of knowledge engendered from these studies.
The present study builds upon Alvesson and Krremans (2000) conception
of little d and big D discourse.1 Little d discourse refers to talk and text in
local social interaction. Studies of this type of discourse focus on or [is] sensitive
to (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000: 1133) detailed language in use and talkin-interaction in specific social contexts. Analysts examine both the doing or
conversing of organizational discourse in interaction as well as texts produced
through talk (Taylor and Van Every, 2000). Big D discourse, or Discourse,
refers to culturally standardized ways of referring to/constituting a certain
type of phenomenon (p. 1134). As Foucault (1980) demonstrated, Discourses
are historically formed by myriad local discourses, contingencies, and cultural
assumptions that, in turn, shape social reality. Research on Discourse then focuses
not only on the process of Discourse formation, but also how it offers linguistic
resources for social interaction as it produces its constituting effects.
ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Traversing both humanistic and social scientific domains, the meaning potentials
of the term communication are no less complex and multidimensional than
those of discourse. The most pervasive understanding of communication among
people outside of the communication discipline is that it is a transmission of
thoughts or ideas from one persons mind to another through a channel, much as
reflected in Shannon and Weavers (1949) classic Sender Message Receiver
model. In the discipline of communication, this perspective is known as the
transmission model of communication, or what Deetz (1995) calls an informational view. A transmissional view of communication evokes the image of
a conduit that carries messages, a lens that filters information, or a link that
connects people or social units (Axley, 1984; Putnam et al., 1996). This approach
to communication rests on the assumption that language is the representation
of meaning and intention already formed psychologically (Deetz, 1995). As
such, it is particularly well suited to the study of communication frequencies,
channels, and networks.

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However, particularly since the 1980s, a more meaning-centered view

of communication has dominated organizational communication research
(Deetz, 1995, 1996; Mumby, 2007; Putnam, 1983). The impetus behind this
trend appears to have been the linguistic turn in the social sciences and philosophy (Wittgenstein, 1953) and the emergence of such schools of thought
as social constructionism (Berger and Luckman, 1966), post-structuralism
(Foucault, 1983), and post-modernism (Derrida, 1982).
The underlying assumption of a constitutive view shifts communication
from an expression or representation of internal thoughts to one in which
meaning is negotiated and productive of thought and action. As Deetz (1995:
5723) wrote,
In the constitutive conception, messages are an active part of the production of
meaning, perceptions, and feelings . . . all expression is derived from a more fundamental set of discursive practices in which the things that are to be expressed by
messages are constitutively produced through messages. (emphasis in the original)

Under the constitutive view, internal cognitive processes are no longer conceptualized as the origin of meaning. Instead, meaning is actively produced,
reproduced, negotiated, and maintained in social interaction.
In organization studies, a constitutive view of communication allows for
greater interpretive flexibility of the organizationcommunication relationship
and, therefore, opens up lines of research that are impossible under the transmissional model. For instance, scholars examine managerial interactions as
dramaturgical performances (Pacanowsky and ODonnell-Trujillo, 1982) that
constitute organizational life; investigate the construction of organizational
reality through narrative and storytelling (e.g. Boje, 1991); and uncover communication as the suppression and distortion of voice and perpetuation of
organizational domination (Mumby, 2005).
With the rapid pace of discourse and communication research both in
and outside the communication discipline (Schmisseur et al., in press), diverse
views as to the relationship between the two terms become unavoidable. For
example, taking a transmissional view of communication, many discourse
analysts object to the notion of equating discourse with communication. As
Edwards (1997: 167) argues,
The notion that discourse is a form of social action should not be equated with
language as communication . . . Certainly the notion of communication improves
on the individualistic sense of representation, in that it introduces a necessary
social dynamic to relations between thought and language. But it also invokes
an image that is itself stubbornly individualistic. It stems from starting not with
discourse as a phenomenon, but from psychology, where two (imagined) individuals,
possessing thoughts, intentions, and so on, have the problem of having to get these
thoughts and intentions across the air waves via a communication channel.

In contrast, as Fairhurst (2007) noted, organizational communication

theorists such as Taylor and Cooren (1997) and Taylor and Van Every (2000)
actually prefer the term communication over discourse because the latter term

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obscures the relationship between conversation and text, a relationship that

they believe explains the way the organization emerges in communication.
With these dynamics in mind, we sought to examine the most current use
of the terms discourse and communication in those journals that publish the
work of organizational communication and discourse scholars. Because
organizational communication is a multi-faceted discipline covering topics
beyond discourse research, such as network analysis, information processing,
and message flow (Fairhurst and Putnam, 2004), we restricted our analyses to
discourse-oriented journals both in and outside of the field of communication.2
We believe that a fuller understanding of the two terms discourse and communication and their relationship(s) will enhance the dialogue among scholars
and clear the ground for cross-fertilization. Thus, our research questions are,
first, how do organizational discourse studies conceptualize the terms discourse
and communication, respectively? Second, what are the relationships between
the two terms postulated in these studies?

Methods
DATA COLLECTION

To examine how organizational researchers use the terms discourse and communication and cast their relationships, we focused solely on data-based articles
to discern analysts treatment of discourse and communication as data. Thus,
we excluded theoretical or methodological pieces, meta-analyses, introductions
for special issues, commentaries, and reviews of articles and books. Because we
initiated our search within organizational discourse studies, we further limited
our review to the ones that were most relevant to communication, those pertaining to any aspect of organizing practices (Mumby, 2007). We thus excluded
analyses of marketing discourse, public debate, and social interactions outside
organizational contexts. To reflect the multi-disciplinary nature of organizational
discourse studies, we selected 13 major journals in communication, organizational
studies, and interdisciplinary journals that have an established history of publishing organizational discourse studies. The scholarly journals we included in
our search were: Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication
Monographs, Communication Theory, Critical Studies in Media Communication,
Discourse and Society, Discourse Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Applied
Communication Research, Language and Communication, Language and Social
Psychology, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization Studies and
Womens Studies in Communication.3 To verify the soundness of our selection,
we consulted with a disciplinary expert in organizational discourse and communication and made modifications based on her comments. Based on the criteria
discussed above, we retained from these selected journals a total of 112 articles
published between 1981 and 2006.
DATA ANALYSIS

Our analysis proceeded through three steps. First, the first and second author
each read half of the articles and took notes guided by a series of questions,

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including how discourse, communication, and their relationship were defined

or implied, and how and what kind of discourse data were analyzed. Second, the
first author developed categories for each of the two terms and their relationship
through re-reading the articles and comparing notes taken in the first step. For
the terms discourse and communication, categorization was initially guided by
the extant categories in the literature, although we remained open to the emergence of new categories as the analysis would suggest. However, for the discourse
and communication relationship, there was little in the extant organizational
discourse literature to readily suggest a priori categories.
Third, to ensure confidence in the categorization, we conducted an intercoder
reliability test, although it is infrequently used in interpretive studies. The first
and second author did a pilot coding of a subset of five articles independently.
Differences in the pilot coding were resolved through discussion among all three
authors until an agreement was reached. Then the first and second author independently coded a random sample of 17 articles (approximately 15% of the total
N = 112) to assess intercoder reliability. Using Cohens (1960) kappa (), we found
that the reliabilities (discourse, = .82; communication, = .61; discourse and
communication relationship, = .78) were acceptable (Banerjee et al., 1999).
We acknowledge that the reliability associated with the term communication
was relatively low, although within acceptable range. Unlike discourse, the term
communication was rarely explicitly defined nor was it extensively invoked in
most of the articles and, therefore, was susceptible to a higher level of interpretive
variability among coders. The coding process thus helped shed light on this interpretive variability. Having explained our methods for data collection and analysis,
the following section details our findings.

Multiple meanings of discourse

Our analysis shows that the differentiation between little d and big D discourses continues to be a viable marker characterizing two distinct approaches
to organizational discourse. Additionally, we see a significant growth in organizational research that deals with the interplay between little d and big D
discourses.
LITTLE D DISCOURSE

Little d discourse refers to talk and text in situated organizational contexts.

Studies that engage discourse often examine the processes in which organizational actors construct emotion, attitude, identity and various aspects of
organizational reality, accomplish work tasks and orderliness, and manage
contradictions and work relationships through moment by moment talk-ininteraction and creation of local texts. These studies register a strong social
constructionist perspective (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Gergen, 1999) and pay
close attention to the formative role of everyday language use. It is believed that
everyday language use does not simply describe lived realities but is inextricably
involved in the constitution of our social practices (Howard et al., 2000: 296).

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Some studies follow or adopt research strategies of conversation analysis

(Drew and Heritage, 1992) and ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). For instance, instead of treating and-prefacing as a grammatical feature as linguists
traditionally do, Nevile (2006) investigated its role as a linguistic resource to
construct orderliness of work. By examining video recordings of airline pilots at
work, he concluded that and-prefacing is a local means for making explicit and
accountable pilots understanding of the connectedness and order of actions in
a setting in which such connection and order is critical (p. 280).
From the tradition of sociolinguistic research, a few studies pay attention
to linguistic practices, such as the use of pronouns, in order to understand the
meaning and interpretation of these linguistic features and the constitutive
effects of their use. For example, Llewellyn and Harrison (2006) investigated
how workers actively reproduced their traditional anti-management attitude.
Their analysis demonstrated the ways in which workers, while consuming
corporate communication, deployed their folk linguistic competency workers
ability, for instance, to distinguish between inclusive and exclusive uses of the first
person plural, passive transformation, nominalization, and to critique the use of
abstractions as the subjects of verbs, identify possible instances of the disguised
second person and so forth (p. 588) to deconstruct managerial meaning and
reconstruct subversive meaning.
Besides a social constructionist emphasis, several discourse studies continue the talk-as-action line of inquiry. Influenced by the pragmatic tradition,
such as the speech acts theory (Austin, 1962), research concentrates on how
everyday language use accomplishes work and relationships. For example,
Holmes (2000) studied how humor in a New Zealand workplace was used to
construct and negotiate work relationships. Based on her analysis of recorded
workplace conversations, she found that humor as a context-bound linguistic
resource performs multiple functions in doing power. It was effectively used
by subordinates to subtly challenge power structures and by superiors to
downplay power distance, soften negative face threats such as directives, or
enhance solidarity. Fairhursts (1993) research on leadermember exchange
(LMX) offers another example of the performative and constructive nature
of discourse in accomplishing the work relationship. Unlike the previously
dominant social psychological approach of LMX, her detailed analyses of recorded work conversation revealed how combinations of various discursive
patterns accomplished different levels of LMX.
BIG D DISCOURSE

By contrast, big D Discourse refers to culturally standardized interpretive

frames historically rooted in systems of power/knowledge. Such systems are
embodied in fields of knowledge and everyday practices (Alvesson and Krreman,
2000), such as in client Discourse (Anderson-Gough et al., 2000) and workplace
health promotion (WHP) Discourse (Zoller, 2003a, 2003b). Dispersed in both
linguistic and extra-linguistic activities, these Discourses constitute social actors
as both objects to be examined and subjects to be disciplined.

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Hence, organizational Discourse studies are interested in showing how

Discourse constitutes workers subjectivities, establishes and naturalizes managerial control, and disciplines the productive body. These researchers often claim
Foucaults work as their major intellectual source. For instance, based on a twoyear ethnographic study of WHP initiatives in an automobile manufacturing
plant, Zoller (2003b) examined the functioning of WHP as part of a managerial
Discourse. Her study revealed first how the WHP Discourse objectifies the body
from a managerial position and prescribes its appropriate use through selfdiscipline while simultaneously excluding discussion of work-related health
issues. Zollers (2003b) research also described how WHP Discourse dispersed
itself in the talk about health by workers, thus demonstrating how it offered
powerful linguistic resources for workers to reflect on to examine their own body
and subject themselves to managerial values.
Moreover, organizational Discourse studies often examine the formation of
Discourse as the assembly and combination of several societal Discourses within
unique historical contexts to produce certain truth effects. For instance, a study
by Medved and Kirby (2005) examined the emergence of a corporate Discourse
that worked to define the identity of stay-at-home mothers. Their analysis illustrated that a corporate mothering Discourse was formed at the confluence of
three distinct yet interrelated streams of Discourse: ideologies of mothering in
relation to the public or private spheres, the contemporary privileging of the
organization, and feminist debates on motherhood (p. 461). The corporate
mothering Discourse was found to further marginalize womens role as
caregivers.
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN LITTLE D AND BIG D DISCOURSE

In addition to studies that primarily focus on either little d or big D discourse,

a growing trend in the past few years is that scholars have begun to address how
little d and big D discourses interplay with one another to co-produce various
aspects of organizational reality in more complicated ways. The impetus
underlying this line of research is the recognition of inadequacies from working
with either little d or big D discourse. To wit, the former is criticized for overestimating the power of social actors in local discourse and overlooking the
constituting power of larger Discourses, while the latter draws criticism for
being Discourse-deterministic and thus minimizing agency (Alvesson and
Krreman, 2000; Newton, 1998). To resolve this dualism, scholars have begun to
simultaneously attend to how Discourses take effect through talk-in-interaction
and how discourses enable a space of action for self-positioning, subversion,
change, and resistance against such Discourses.
The research reviewed here suggests several theoretical accounts that afford
such interplay between discourse and Discourse. First, Holmer-Nadesan (1996)
suggested that the possibility of interplay lies in the surplus of meaning of any
signifier, material practice, or identity that any discourse strives to, but always
fails to, exhaust. As she (1996: 52) wrote,
The subjects identity is not pre-given as the structural intersection of social
structures. Rather, with each articulation (in speech and practice) the subject

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invokes her/his identity by drawing upon discursive forms but always/already
partially. The inability to fully determine the identities of self and practice has the
effect of engendering space for contingency and for choice.

Her analysis demonstrated how dominant administrative Discourse interpolated

into certain subject positions women service workers, who, at the same time, were
able to take advantage of the surplus of meaning in their interpolated identities
and resist through counter- or dis-identification strategies.
Second, the discourseDiscourse interplay could originate from the fact
that any site of interaction presents itself with unique power relationships and
numerous individual and social-historical contingencies, which enable actors
to negotiate, rather than accept, their subject positions. In Doolins (2002) case
study, an enterprise Discourse sought to colonize a New Zealand hospital through
a vocabulary and set of practices oriented toward market commodifications of
health. Instead of being overpowered by the enterprise Discourse, however,
clinicians were able to take advantage of differential power relationships and
professional identities formed in the history of the hospital to negotiate their
varied identities.
A third source of interplay lies in the tensions and inconsistencies among
several dominant Discourses that trigger intensive sensemaking activities in the
form of discourse among organizational members. To make sense of tensions
and contradictions, members create their own local and personal narratives and
strategically appropriate larger organizational Discourses for their own advantage. In a thick description of the identity work by a senior manager, Sveningsson
and Alvesson (2003) illustrated that multiple organizational Discourses coexisted, such as globalization, culture-creativity, and technocratic management control, and that a variety of managerial identities are possible, between
which there are tensions and contradictions . . . (p. 1183). Narrative self-identity
is a specific sensemaking activity identified in their study to deal with these
tensions and contradictions. According to Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003),
it is a kind of life story as a central dimension in identity and something that
potentially integrates the diversity of role expectations common in modern life
(p. 1185). Narrative self-identity functions as a stabilizer for organizational
members to cope with a fragmented Discursive environment.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1993; Fairclough and Wodak,
1997) represents a fourth approach to the interplay of little d and big D discourse but with a manifest critical angle. As Fairclough (1993) noted, CDA
aims:
to investigate how such [discursive] practices, events and texts arise out of and are
ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore
how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a
factor securing power and hegemony . . . (p. 135)

For CDA, Discourse refers to the orders of discourse the totality of discursive
practices of an institution, and relationships between them (p. 135) and ways
of signifying areas of experience from a particular perspective (e.g. patriarchal versus feminist discourses of sexuality) (p. 135). Our review shows that

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researchers apply CDA to investigate a variety of topics. For instance, Leitch and
Davenport (2005) employed CDA to examine the transformation of the science
foundation of New Zealand. As both a theory and method, CDA allows the
authors to unpack the intertwined relationship between local discourse practices, organizational change, and national policy shifts.
Finally, discursive psychology (DP) (Edwards and Potter, 1992, 2001; Potter,
2003; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998) offers a fifth analytical
approach to the interplay between discourse and Discourse. Unsatisfied with
the analytical range of conversational and ethnomethodological analysis and the
abstraction of Foucauldian Discourse analysis, DP proposes a more synthetic
approach (Wetherell, 1998: 388), which attends to ways in which institutional
members manage their subject positions and construct meaning by invoking
and indexing various interpretative repertoires. Interpretative repertoires are
culturally familiar and habitual [lines] of argument comprised of recognizable
themes, commonplaces and tropes (doxa) (Wetherell, 1998: 400). As DPs answer
to the critique over the abstract and reification-prone Discourse of Foucault, their
approach is to ground Discourse (interpretative repertoire) in discursive practices.
An example of organizational DP analysis can be found in Ball and Wilson (2000).
The study challenged the a priori structural view often taken toward computerbased performance monitoring technologies as electronic panopticons. They did
this by explicating how local organizational power relationships impacted subject
positioning in relation to the surveillance technology and how organizational
members invoked various interpretative repertoires in the process. To understand
the ways in which institutional Discourse operates, they concluded that scholars
have to examine situated organizational practices and subjectification.
Thus far we have presented the various meanings of the term discourse.
The following section will turn to the term communication as employed in
organizational discourse studies.

Multiple meanings of communication

It is worth noting that only approximately 56 percent of the studies we reviewed
actually used the term communication. We have identified the following meanings of communication as defined or implied in these studies: 1) communication
as transmission of information and intention; 2) communication as meaning
construction and management; 3) communication as interaction.
COMMUNICATION AS TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION AND INTENTION

Communication as transmission of information and intention is often referred

to in its plural form (communications) that emphasizes channels or means of
message flow. For instance, in a study of the discourse of clinical directors who
were both managers and medical professionals, Llewellyn (2001: 618) wrote,
two-way communication between the clinical and management domains had
improved . . . In professional bureaucracies, communications between managers and professionals are taking place, largely through newly developed
two-way conduits.

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Jian et al.: Organizational discourse and communication 309

In addition to channels, the transmissional view of communication also

attends to the amount and direction of message flow. For example, Coupland
et al. (2005) studied discourse around teamworking and change in us and
them attitude among employees. They stated, Increased communication was
considered vital to develop employee commitment to teamworking. Managers
were encouraged to pass on information about teamworking and relay responses back to senior management to encourage a free exchange of views
(manufacturing manager) . . . (p. 1064). The term communication invoked the
image of a certain amount of information or individually formed views flowing
in a certain direction within a certain channel.
This transmissional approach tends to characterize organizational communication problems as breakdowns caused by transmitting too little, too
much, or incorrect information, choosing inappropriate channels, or using a
chosen channel ineffectively (Deetz, 1995; Putnam et al., 1996). An example
can be found in a narrative analysis of 911 emergency calls by Imbens-Bailey
and McCabe (2000). From a transmissional lens, their analysis concluded that
descriptive information about an emergent event is more important than demands and requests or why-and-how related information, and that failure to
transmit the former by a caller to a dispatcher tends to lead to communication
breakdown.
COMMUNICATION AS MEANING CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT

The meaning-centered perspective sees communication as the creation and

maintenance of symbolic systems (Mumby, 1988). Communication is considered
a productive process in which social realities are negotiated and brought into
existence through interaction and interpretation. For instance, in studying how
technical experts and technical writers collaborate to document work knowledge, Irons (1998) demonstrated that technical communication is an interpretive process involving the writer as well as subject matter experts who produce
agreements about what information is relevant to representing a specific task
(p. 48). Documenting work knowledge is not a transfer of information from the
experts to the writer. Rather, communication through sharing and negotiation
of meaning constructs work knowledge.
Communication as meaning construction and reproduction can also take
place at the organizational level beyond dyadic or small group levels. An example
was offered by Ganesh (2003), who examined how certain organizational
Discourses on technology function to reproduce the preferred ideology and
identity of an organization. In this case study, communication was understood
as auto-communication (Christensen, 1995) in the sense that communication
by an organization to an external audience becomes an active construction
of, and reproduction of meaning about, the organizations own identity and
legitimacy.
A very significant aspect of the meaning-centered or constitutive perspective
of communication lies in the development of a strong critical orientation the
examination of communication as central to the reproduction of hegemonic
ideology and power relations. Following Habermas (1984, 1987), Deetz (1992)

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argued that systematic distortion of communication takes place in the latent

strategic reproduction of meaning rather than participatory production of it
(p. 173) and that certain dominant forms of reasoning and articulations stand
in the stead of other valuational schemes . . . Such expressions can and should
be examined for possible suppressions of alternative voices . . . (pp. 1767).
Thackaberrys (2004) analysis of discursive closure and discursive opening
in an organizational self-study offers an example of this kind. In addition to
Habermass (1984, 1987) theory of communication, researchers (e.g. Clair,
1993; Kinsella, 1999) also draw on Foucaults (1980) power/knowledge and
feminist theories (e.g. Acker, 1990) to investigate managerial control and domination through communication.
COMMUNICATION AS INTERACTION

A third perspective we found is to equate communication to human interaction,

referring to sequenced interrelated acts, the context they create, and the
meanings formed at both relational and content levels and in both linguistic
and extra-linguistic forms. For instance, Brown and Coupland (2005) examined
silence as a unique element of meaning generation in sequenced interaction.
Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Waldenfels (1995), Jacobs and Coghlan
(2005) argued that listening is a central element of communication and a
preliminary stage of speech. As an integral part of the interaction process, they
wrote, listening enables (i) the constitution of a relational basis, and (ii) the intersubjective generation of new meaning between speaker and listener (p. 123,
italicized in the original). In other cases, communication is referred to as the
interactional context. As in cockpit communication (Nevile, 2006), the context
of interaction involves some routine interactional events or episodes with fairly
defined roles and sequences of action.
Thus far we have examined the multiple meanings of the terms discourse
and communication respectively as they are used in organizational discourse
studies. Now we turn to how researchers cast the relationship between the two
terms either explicitly or implicitly.

The relationship between discourse and communication

Our review surfaces four perspectives on the relationship between organizational discourse and communication. They are 1) D/discourse as the resources
for communication; 2) Discourse as operating through communication;
3) discourse as one of the many elements of communication; and 4) discourse
and communication as synonymous. In the remainder of this section, we detail
these categories more precisely.
D / DISCOURSE AS RESOURCES FOR COMMUNICATION

This perspective considers discourse (referring to both little d and big D

discourse) as the building blocks or resources that enable and constitute
communication as a social process of meaning construction and maintenance.
Thus, discourse (generally defined) is considered to embody, construct and

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maintain the meaning of communicators. For instance, Hardy et al. (2000)

argued that discourse is a strategic resource that can bring an object into being
so as to help initiate institutional change because symbols, metaphors, and narratives, when used strategically, can resonate with other actors and be attached
to relations and material referents . . . (p. 1236). Their case analysis about the
transformation of an NGO from an international organization to a local one
effectively demonstrated the instrumental and formative role of discourse for
communication the management and creation of meaning.
In studies of institutional talk, discourse is often conceptualized as a linguistic resource for organizational actors to manage co-worker and customer
relationships and accomplish tasks. Communication is explicitly or implicitly
referred to as the interactional event or context in which relationships are maintained and tasks executed. For example, Ylanne-McEwen (2004) explored the
process in which different serverclient relational alignments were achieved
through spoken discourse. Communication was an episode of social encounter
between travel agents and their clients in which various discursive positionings
by the travel agents and customers allowed them to realize different and often
ambiguous relational goals and meet their interpersonal and conversational
needs. As another example, Howard et al. (2000) presented a case in which police
officers strategically deployed different and, sometimes, conflictual discourses
of emotional disclosure for the purpose of maintaining culturally and professionally appropriate self-identities based on whether the communication
encounter was with one of their colleagues or an academic researcher.
BIG D DISCOURSE AS OPERATING THROUGH COMMUNICATION

A second perspective on the discoursecommunication relationship looks

at big D Discourse as operating and taking effect through communication.
Communication is considered to be a microsocial encounter among social actors
or textual encounters. For instance, Kinsella (1999) examined the Discursive
production of scientific knowledge and power among physicists in a national
research lab. According to Kinsella, the production is accomplished through
multiple, interacting [D]iscourses including the [D]iscourses of a scientific discipline and an emerging technical practice, the many internal [D]iscourses of
a complex organization, and the [D]iscourse of a larger institutional system of
which that organization is a part (p. 172). His case illustrated how social consensus or scientific closure reached in communication among physicists was
actually achieved as a result of the specific configuration of these organizational,
professional, and institutional Discourses and power relationships, and therefore, a moment of discursive formation. A study by Garrety et al. (2003) considered Discourse as managerial knowledge and practices that define certain
ways of being and acting as more desirable than others (p. 218). Their analysis
on the working of the Discourse of personality typing in an organizational
change program revealed that communication as symbolic interaction among
organizational members facilitated the process in which the Discourse of
personality typing normalized and controlled organizational members as
subjects.

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Another take of the perspective Discourse operating through communication is that a transmissional view of communication can be instrumental to
the mediation between disciplinary Discourses. In a study cited earlier, Llewellyn
(2001) argued that professional bureaucracies, such as hospitals, are seeing
increased mediation between clinical and managerial Discourses through a
new cadre of leadership who are both professionals and managers, like clinical
directors. Previous direct communication between managers and professionals
are now taking place through these clinical directors who embody a new regime
of knowledge and practice that eases communication the flow of information
between disciplinary Discourses.
LITTLE D DISCOURSE AS ONE OF MANY ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION

In a third view of organizational discoursecommunication relationship,

discourse is one element of communication characterized by both linguistic and
extra-linguistic forms, dialogical partners, social roles and relationships, physical
objects, and nonverbal features of listening and speaking. Little d discourse
as language use in the interactional milieu is but one of these elements. This
perspective suggests that the effective interpretation of discourse must consider
extra-linguistic communicative elements. For instance, Jacobs and Coghlan
(2005) argued that most existing approaches emphasize speech (discourse)
over listening. The latter, they contended, is a central element in the production
of discourse because effective listening sets up the initial conditions for generating intersubjective meaning, constituting relationships, and forming shared
identities. In spite of the appeal of the consequential roles that extra-linguistic
elements play in meaning construction, in general, language use is still the predominant focus of most studies that we reviewed.
DISCOURSE AND COMMUNICATION AS SYNONYMOUS

Finally, some organizational studies treat the two terms discourse and communication synonymously and use them interchangeably. Here, discourse is
generally defined. In a study of organizational identity during the process of
organizational change, Larson and Pepper (2003: 529) wrote, this case study
examines discursive strategies and related communicative tactics used by workers
and managers in one high-tech company . . . Later in the article, the authors
stated, the purpose of our research is to uncover communicative strategies and
tactics used to manage identifications (p. 536). They employed both terms to
refer to the process of meaning construction through language. In a study of
emotional work as a result of job loss, Buzzanell and Turner (2003) were interested in how emotional work was accomplished through talk among members
of families. The authors used the terms discourse and communication interchangeably to refer to such talk. By contrast, instead of referring to talk or language use, Lemke (1999) employed the terms discourse and communication
synonymously to encompass both the medium (which was an organizations
website in his case) and its language and visual content as part of larger semiotic
systems.

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Jian et al.: Organizational discourse and communication 313

Discussion
As Van Dijk (2007) proposed in the first issue of Discourse and Communication,
the main purpose of this journal is to bridge the two cross-disciplines of communication and discourse studies by introducing the insights of each field to the
other so as to inspire innovative theory and research. Given this goal, we sought to
clear the ground for such interdisciplinary development by surfacing the multiple
meanings of discourse, communication, and the discoursecommunication
relationship as appropriated in organizational discourse studies. Our findings not
only demonstrate the diverse conceptualizations of these basic concepts, but also
spot opportunities for future development. In this final section, we will discuss
what these findings suggest about our current practice and future research.
First, a noticeable contrast exists in the use (or non-use) of the term communication in journals from the communication discipline versus other
disciplines. For instance, among the 38 articles published in Communication
journals, 34 (89.47%) articles employed the term communication, whereas
among articles (N = 74) published in non-Communication journals, only 29
articles (39.19%) used the term communication. In articles from Communication
journals, the use of communication tended to refer to a constitutive use of language. This usage pattern represents greater adoption of a constitutive view of
communication as the more recent development in the discipline beyond the
transmissional view. By contrast, many articles from non-Communication
journals use the term communication to refer to an individually oriented
transmission or to the process of social interaction in general. This contrast
along disciplinary lines may suggest that communication scholars have not
been particularly successful in communicating ongoing development within
the field to those outside. However, it may also be the case the conduit metaphor simply reflects one of communications more obvious features. One has to
think quite a bit more abstractly to capture its meaning generative and reality
defining potential (Fairhurst, 2005).
Second, there is no doubt that the constitutive view of organizational communication and discourse studies share many roots and assumptions about
language use. As such, do organizational communication (at least, the constitutive approach) and discourse head toward convergence into one field? We
can also frame the question in a different way. That is, if we as organizational
communication scholars are to introduce the constitutive view of communication
to organizational discourse scholars, should we simply say that we have been
studying the same thing all along albeit with two different labels? Or, can we
as communication scholars claim differences or extra-value while celebrating
our similarities with discourse studies?
The answers to these questions vary and still need to be worked out in the
future. Some communication scholars do seem to suggest, although implicitly,
that a constitutive view of organizational communication converges with organizational discourse studies. As our findings have shown, discourse is increasingly
foregrounded and often used interchangeably with communication in recent
publications by organizational communication scholars. Prichard (2006) even

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goes so far as to proclaim the potential replacement of organizational communication with discourse.
However, others challenge this perspective, arguing that organizational
communication does bring unique value to discourse studies (Cooren, 2006;
Taylor and Van Every, 2000; Zoller, 2006). For instance, Taylor and Van Every
(2000) argue that communication constitutes organization through the dynamic relationship between conversation and text and what goes into the production of conversation, text, and the coordination and construction of meaning
involves not only linguistic resources and outputs but also paralinguistic features, physical objects, and extra-linguistic human actions. The term discourse
only muddies the waters because of its divergent meanings.
In a slightly different way than Taylor and colleagues, we also assert that
organizational communication brings unique value to organizational discourse
studies and that discourse and communication are not equivalencies. While
there is an inextricably close relationship between discourse and communication,
our view of the mix is that organizational actors operate in communication and
through discourse. By this we mean that in communication actors co-create their
subjectivities in the form of personal and professional identities, relationships,
communities, and cultures through linguistic performances (Barge and Fairhurst,
in press). In communication, there is a dynamic connection among actors,
action, meaning, and context, such that actions modify and elaborate existing
connections or create new ones. Conversational moments are thus distinct and
novel given the unique intersection of time, place, people, and topic. As such, new
possibilities for meaning making and action are continually emerging as each
utterance introduces new elements that may be picked up for future development
(Barge and Fairhurst, in press).
By contrast, it is through discourse that language and communication meet
because discourse is language that is used for some communicative purpose
(Ellis, 1992: 84). As such, discourse is always realized in text that is organized
interactively, linguistically, and cognitively. Note that our conceptualization of
language here is that it brings with it certain affordances (Gibson, 1979), by
virtue of the formal properties of a linguistic system (for example, the English
language), but also the range of communicative uses to which it may be put
such as what one or more big D Discourses would prescribe in the form of an
interpretative repertoire of terms, tropes, metaphors, themes, commonplaces,
habitual forms of argument, and so on (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell,
1998). What, then, of little d discourse? Quite simply, communication is the
doing, while text is the done in little d written or in spoken forms (Taylor
and Van Every, 2000). Thus, little d discourse represents the textual form of
communication, while big D Discourse represents its meaning potentials. Is
our postulated difference between discourse and communication a meaningful difference? We would argue yes, without question, for two reasons. First,
communication speaks to key process issues such as co-creation, connection,
uniqueness, and emergence associated with the experience of interacting with
others much more so than the texts of discourse (Barge and Fairhurst, in press).
Second, organizational participants much more readily identify themselves as

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communicators than discourse analysts. Our best chance of improving communication in an organization is to enter the grammar of its members and avoid
academic terms that would only confuse (Cronen, 2001).
However, having stated our preferences, our goal is not to impose them. We
do wish to encourage scholars toward greater clarity regarding the relationship
they envision and about which they write. By recognizing differences, common ground, and complementarities between organizational discourse and
communication, we believe that future research will be able to create more innovative hybrid theories that combine the advancements from both fields. Heracleous
and Marshak (2004) offered an illustrative example of such hybrid theorizing.
Drawing on speech act theory, rhetoric, ethnography of communication, and
social construction of knowledge, they conceptualize organizational discourse
as situated symbolic interaction so that discourse analysts can fully take advantage of the strengths that communication studies offers in its simultaneous
attention to text and context such as in rhetorical analysis. Such hybrid theorizing, we argue, holds the promise of producing research to effectively address
the question raised by Alvesson and Krreman (2000: 1146):
How does one in empirical work proceed from encounters with texts (documents, interview
talk, observed talk) to make summaries and interpretations of wider sets of discourse
including aggregations of a variety of elements, an integrated framework of vocabularies,
ideas, cognition and, interrelated with these, practices of various kinds? In short: to
what extent and if so, when and how can we move from discourses to Discourse(s)?
(emphasis in the original)

In conclusion, as authors of this article, we believe that organizational discourse studies will continue to enrich organizational communication through its
diverse traditions and rapid developments. In return, organizational communication offers interesting theories and methods that can expand and
complement organizational discourse studies. A journal like Discourse and
Communication opens up an important venue for disseminating the latest
developments from both fields and promoting interdisciplinary research and
cross-cutting dialogue. We hope we have contributed to this cause by dispelling
some of the misunderstandings that scholars from one research field may possess
toward the other and by sorting through some, if not all, the confusions regarding
the terms discourse, communication, and their relationships.
N OTE S

1. Alvesson and Krreman (2000) actually specify four levels of discourse analysis,
which we found overly specific for our study. Thus, we followed their convention of
more parsimoniously separating discourse from Discourse.
2. Thus, discursively oriented journals would be relevant to communication concerns,
but not all communication journals would be relevant to discourse concerns.
3. There are, of course, other journals such as the Journal of Business Communication
and Academy of Management Journal that arguably have come on-line with respect to
discourse study since this study commenced. However, we believe that the inclusion
of such journals would not have substantially altered our findings.

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G U O W E I J I A N is an Assistant Professor of Communication in the School of Communication

at Cleveland State University. His research interests include organizational communication and discourse communication, organizational change, information and communication technologies at work, and intercultural communication. His research appears
in Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Management Communication
Quarterly, Communication Studies, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the
upcoming Handbook of Business Discourse. A D D R E S S : School of Communication, Cleveland
State University, 2121, Euclid Ave., MU 247, Cleveland, OH 441152214, USA.
[email: g.jian@csuohio.edu]
AMY M . S C H M I S S E U R

is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of

Kansas. Her primary research interests include emotion management, leadership, and
organizational change communication with specific emphasis on the emotionality of
planned change communication. Her recent work is featured in the Journal of Business
Communication and in the upcoming Handbook of Business Discourse.

G A I L T . FA I R H U R ST

is a Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati. Her

research interests include organizational communication, leadership and organizational
discourse. She has published over 50 articles and book chapters and is the author of
Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology (SAGE, 2007) and The Art
of Framing: Managing the Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 1996, with R. Sarr).

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