Organizing and Disorganizing Strategic Communication: Discursive Institutional Change Dynamics in Two Communication Departments

ABSTRACT

This article explores the institutionalization of strategic communication as a dynamic interplay between macro- and mesolevel discourses. The change processes in the two cases of this study involved both a reorientation of the purpose of the communication function and a physical relocation of the professionals to a centralized department. In both organizations, the transformation toward a strategic management function failed and the communication professionals are now working in ways similar to those before the change was initiated. The analysis illustrates that the institutionalization of strategic communication is effected by organizational-level processes and mechanisms that are not always controlled by communication professionals. The institutionalization of strategic communication is bound by organizational discourses as well as by the actions of communication practitioners and general managers. The study also shows that macro- and mesolevel discourses influence the ways in which change initiatives are translated and strategic communication effected on an organizational level. Hence, institutionalization processes of strategic communication will comply with management trends but can change direction when these trends are challenged. Our results expose that new ideas or practices of strategic communication are translated discursively within organizations in processes of recontextualization, reinterpretation, and reframing. Consequently, new ideas and practices of strategic communication are adjusted to organizational discourses and organizational settings. The translation of a new idea or practice will therefore change the initial meaning of that same idea or practice. For that reason, institutionalization of strategic communication should not be reduced to a unidirectional process but conceptualized as a dynamic interplay between discourses on different levels that moves institutionalization in multiple directions.