A Communicative Ontology of Organization? A Description, History, and Critique of CCO Theories for Organization Science

Writing as an organizational communication scholar, I provide a brief description and history of theories encapsulated by the phrase communication is constitutive of organizing (CCO). Then, I explain that CCO theory would benefit from an explicit differentiation between which conditions are prerequisite to and which conditions ensure the constitution of organization. Specifically, I argue that communication may be better thought of as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for organizing.

to a keen interest in the "organizing features of [italics added] communication" (Cheney, 2000, p. 25). The scholarly project was first and foremost a philosophical shift. These scholars argued that a force present within communication creates, calls into being, or otherwise produces organization. In the same spirit of this sense, the famed organization theorist, Karl Weick (1969), urged scholars to understand organization as the verb, organizing, in that organization is produced (often communicatively) action by action. Despite what our common language use may represent or reify, organizations are not fixed and stable but are rather called into being by interacting and sensemaking persons who attempt to coordinate their behaviors to accomplish goals. These philosophical suppositions were eventually crystallized by the phrase communication is constitutive of organizing by Putnam and Nicotera (2009), whose edited volume is the subject of this forum.
CCO theories trace their history through many roots. Retrospectively, we see that some CCO scholars influenced one another, whereas other CCO theorists worked simultaneously. For instance, Anthony Giddens's (1979) work is an important chapter in the history of CCO theories. Giddens described society as unfolding through time influenced by both structural and agentic dynamics. More to the point, he posited a paradox: Structure (i.e., the determinism of cognitive processes or societal influences) and agency (i.e., the voluntarism of individuals' communicative and interpretive choices) are mutually constitutive of one another. In other words, Giddens explained that society itself is located in a duality of structure in which the enactments of agency become structures that, across time, produce possibilities for agency enactment. Giddens's arguments influenced Boden (1994) greatly (see p. x). Eventually, Boden applied Giddens's insights to the workplace. Boden (1994) demonstrated how the decision making of organizational members-in this case, university employees-was governed by local logics and turn-taking behaviors. Even more dramatic, Boden articulated how a university literally acted through the rhetorical and sensemaking behaviors of university employees in a budget meeting. In other words, rather than concluding with an explanation of how the organization's structure enabled and constrained communication, Boden argued that the university employees' meeting talk was ontologically what we come to think of as organization. Fairhurst and Putnam (2004) later labeled this strand of organizational research based on Giddens's notion of duality, grounded in action research.

Divergence
In 2000, Taylor and Van Every wrote the groundbreaking book The Emergent Organization: Communication as its Site and Surface. Concomitantly, McPhee and Zaug (2000) wrote their influential article "The Communicative Constitution of Organizations: A Framework for Explanation." Although both are foundational CCO works, their specific articulations of the central mechanisms and processes by which communication is associated with organization differ. Taylor and Van Every assembled a dizzying number of linguistic, interpretive, and critical theories to argue that communication is the location and manifestation of organization. Functionally, they argued that organization can only be enacted through members' communication and sensemaking; thus, organization is an emergent reality that is constantly in a state of becoming, word by word, message by message, and turn by turn. Their analysis attempted to link microlevel grammatical structures of language and discourse to representations and enactments of coordinated action (i.e., organizing). Within Putnam and Nicotera's (2009) edited volume, chapters by Taylor (2009), and to a lesser extent Cooren and Fairhurst (2009), continue to invoke this perspective.
McPhee and Zaug (2000), writing at the same time, proposed that organization may be thought of as arising from four communication flows: activity coordination, self-structuring, membership negotiation, and institutional positioning. In contrast to Taylor and Van Every's (2000) arguments, McPhee and Zaug's four flow model locates organizing among the microlevel talk of instructions and commands (i.e., activity coordination), the macrolevel talk about how the organization should function and what image it should attempt to create (i.e., self-structuring and institutional positioning, respectively), and the mesolevel talk of culture and socialization (i.e., membership negotiation). Within Putnam and Nicotera's (2009) Taylor (2009) wrote in his chapter that he agrees with their model; however, he also "believe[s] that their program of research needs to be supplemented with a more precise theory of communication that has as its objective to trace the genesis and grounding of organizational form and process in the communication event" (pp. 154-155). Conversely, McPhee and Zaug may argue that Taylor and Van Every's model of CCO is too narrow to account for communication's multifaceted relationship to organization.

Necessary and Sufficient?
A tension between these perspectives is apparent throughout Putnam and Nicotera's (2009) edited volume. Nevertheless, the usefulness of both sets of CCO theories for organization science may be bolstered by a clear explanation of the necessary and sufficient conditions under which communication constitutes organization. Organizational communication scholars are fond of the argument that communication generates organization because it places the study of communication at the center of organization science. However, that argument-as demonstrated throughout the pages of this forum-reduces the usefulness of CCO theories for organizational studies scholars who hold interests outside of communication. Perhaps, one way to enhance the usefulness of CCO theories for organization science scholars is to clarify and qualify the conditions under which "communication creates organization" (Taylor & Cooren, 1997, p. 425).
Necessary and sufficient conditions are logical qualifiers to nomothetic causality (Wertheimer, 1968). Although CCO theorists seem to avoid employing causal propositions, necessary and sufficient conditions may be a useful analogy for clarifying and qualifying communication's relationship to organization. A necessary condition refers to a circumstance that must be present for an effect to have a chance to be present. A sufficient condition refers to a circumstance whose mere presence ensures the subsequent presence of an effect (Babbie, 2004). CCO theorists tend to blur the distinction between these conditions as they argue forcefully for the importance of communication in the constitution of organizing. Although it should be noted that McPhee and Zaug's (2000) model seems to be a reaction to attempts to define constitutive features of communication too narrowly.
CCO theories patterned after Taylor and Van Every (2000) seem to presume that the presence of specific grammatical structures fulfill both necessary and sufficient conditions to ensure the presence of organizing. Likewise, CCO theories patterned after Zaug (2000, 2009) seem to begin from the assumption that activity coordination, self-structuring, institutional positioning, and membership negotiation are the necessary conditions for organizing, whereas their combinations produce the sufficient conditions for organizing (see, e.g., Browing et al.'s, 2009, chapter).
For some scholars, coordinated action produced through communication is a sufficient condition to ensure the presence of organizing. From this perspective, the study of organizing includes the study of "street gangs, virtual groups, social movements and more" (Cheney, 2000, p. 25). However, for others, a comprehensive ontological explanation of organization must be able to distinguish these forms of coordinated action from what we come to call organization prima facie. For example, in the present forum, Sillince critiques McPhee and Zaug's (2009) CCO model on the grounds that the model could include markets, networking, belonging to a community, and social in reality is complex" (p. 101). CCO theories may represent conceptual reductionism in that these theories describe the complexity of organization in terms of a single domain. Communication is no doubt necessary for organization; however, the usefulness of CCO theories is enhanced when we qualify and clarify the fact that the mere presence of communication is by no means sufficient for the constitution of organization. Written differently, communication is not the sine qua non of organization; communication is a sine qua non of organization.

Conclusion
One way to move CCO theory forward is to test the boundaries of communication's constitutive force. McPhee and Zaug (2009) argued that "all communication has constitutive force" in that all communication "constitutes socially recognized agency" and calls relationships into being (p. 28). In addition, in their chapter, McPhee and Zaug made the important observation that "although communication relatively straightforwardly constitutes the agency of the communicating parties and aspects of their relationship, the constitution of outside objects, especially complex organizations, is itself more complex" (p. 28).
I agree with McPhee and Zaug (2009) and argue that the gap between communication's constitution of interpersonal relationships and communication's constitution of organizing should be proving ground for CCO theory to clarify and qualify the mechanisms and processes by which communication comes to constitute organizing. This gap may be bridged by organization theory outside of communication theory, or this gap may be bridged by an evaluation of how communication relates to the material necessities of organizing. In sum, CCO theory needs an addendum: Communication is a necessary condition for the constitution of organizing, but it is not sufficient to ensure organizing will be called into being. Future pioneering work in CCO theory will test and articulate the necessary and sufficient conditions under which organization is constituted.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.