An eventful view of organizations

Abstract

Recent work in organizational discourse and communication studies has engaged considerably with ontological questions in an effort to resolve dualistic understandings of discourse and materiality, problematizing the existence of objects as immutable, mechanical, and real. We argue that organizational and communication scholars can obtain further purchase on the issue by explicitly taking an eventful worldview, and treating ontology as temporal, processual, and ongoing. Drawing mainly from Deleuze, we animate this eventful view by considering three cases of direct action as a form of global activism in both object-bound and event-oriented ontologies to illustrate how an eventful view affords new insights into organizing. We argue that an eventful view of organizing moves us further beyond dualistic thinking by emphasizing the process through which material and idealistic elements intersect and transform, over space and time, in facilitating the ongoing becoming of organizing.

Keywords:

• communication
• direct action
• event ontology
• materiality

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank François Cooren for his careful reading of various iterations of this work, as well as the editor and reviewers of this special issue.

Additional information

Funding

The theoretical work on this project was supported by a Marsden grant on collective action and activism (MAU-1209).

Notes on contributors

Shiv Ganesh

Shiv Ganesh (PhD, Purdue University) is Professor of Communication and Head of the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, at Massey University. His research engages with substantive issues that arise from the intersection of communication processes with globalization, digital technologies, and civil society organizing. Shiv’s research and writing has won numerous awards, and he is currently leading a project funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Foundation, which builds on his research agenda by tracing how emerging and established forms of social justice organizing in Aotearoa New Zealand intersect in volatile technological environments. Shiv is a former editor-in-chief of the National Communication Association’s Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and is on the editorial board of several top Communication and Management journals. While now primarily in an administrative role as Head of School, Shiv continues to maintain an active research profile, both in New Zealand and abroad. He recently delivered the keynote address at the VIIIth Congress of Organizational Communication and Public Research in Londrina, Brazil, and earlier in 2014 delivered the annual Corus Entertainment Distinguished Lecture at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada.

Ying Wang

Ying Wang is a PhD student at the University of Waikato, Hamilton. Her PhD study explores issues of ethics, in the context of cross-sector partnership, from a communication-centred approach. In particular, her research focuses on the dynamic process whereby different ethical and moral viewpoints compete and compromise to engage in a mutually negotiated ethical praxis, as a product of communicative process in partnership. Ying has participated in a number of prestigious grant research projects and won several top student awards as well as scholarships. Ying is currently New Zealand’s postgraduate student representative and an executive member of the Australia and New Zealand Communication association.