Running Head: ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE

Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective Dennis Schoeneborn University of Zurich

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective Abstract A growing body of literature in organization studies draws on the idea that communication constitutes organization, often abbreviated to CCO. This paper introduces Luhmanns theory of social systems as a prominent example of CCO thinking. I argue that Luhmanns 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, Luhmanns approach fruitfully combines a processual, communicative conceptualization of organization with the notion of boundary and self-

referentiality. Notwithstanding the merits of Luhmanns 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Authors 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.

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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.

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Organization as Communication: A Luhmannian Perspective

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 Weicks 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 Luhmanns theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1995, 2000; Seidl & Becker, 2005), a long-reaching theoretical tradition in the Germanspeaking 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 Luhmanns 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 papers objective is systematically to introduce Luhmanns notion of organization as communication to an international readership

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE in the field of organizational communication and to contribute to emergent debates on the CCO view. Particularly, I put forward the argument that Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns focus on decisions as the distinctive feature of organizational communication. In this context, Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns framework is helpful in combining a processual, communicative conceptualization 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 Luhmanns theory of social systems and especially his notion of organization as communication. Based on this brief introduction, I relate Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns framework to CCO thinking. The study concludes with a discussion of how acknowledging Luhmanns theory of social systems

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE (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, Franois 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 organizations 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 organizations inception occurs

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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 Schools 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. Giddenss notion of the duality of structure and agency; Giddens, 1984). For instance, in what is a predominantly supportive account of Taylors 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 communication 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-

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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 organizations 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-

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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configurations; for instance, the PDA reminded me of the appointment (Cooren, 2006, pp. 84-85) or a sign at a restaurants 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 (Ricur, 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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).

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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 Zaugs 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 Luhmanns 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 perspectives 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 Luhmanns work on organizations, particularly his

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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 Luhmanns 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 articles objective to introduce the TSS, concentrating on its main features, and to highlight its contributions to understanding organization as communication.

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Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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).

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Based on this conception, Luhmann distinguishes three basic types of autopoietic

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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 mesolevel; 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: Anschlussfhigkeit; 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 Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns idea that the decision-communication is the key feature of organizational communication:

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE [] 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) Luhmanns 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

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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:

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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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 Luhmanns 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, Luhmanns 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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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)

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Thus, organizations constantly operate in a state of paradox: The decision must

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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, Luhmanns 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. selfstructuring, 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE coordination during a team meeting will most likely involve a decision-communication on

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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 Luhmanns focus on decisioncommunication, 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 organizations very core, to semi-detached interactions with a merely loose relation to decision-making (e.g., gossiping) at the organizations outer layers. Seidls 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE organizations are essentially based on the paradox of the undecidability of decisions, Luhmanns framework enables us to observe the organization as a processual entity by

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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 communication 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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 Luhmanns 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

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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.

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Factual deparadoxification involves characterizing a decision as a reaction to the nature of

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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 Entscheidungsnotwendigkeiten; 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 decisioncommunications 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,

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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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 Luhmanns 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).

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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

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operational closure becomes the precondition for organizations to remain structurally open to interaction with their environment (cf. Maturana & Varela, 1987). Although Luhmanns 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 organizations 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

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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would re-establish the status of the Obama administration as a collective actor. In contrast to this, Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns ideas (1995), Schreygg 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 organizations 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 AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE organization and who is not and how this distinction is continuously communicatively

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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 Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns neglect of the role of materiality. In the following, I will briefly elaborate on these limitations to transferability. Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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 Blhdorn rightly

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE 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

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appear to be either the whole theory package or nothing at all (Blhdorn, 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 Schreygg and Sydow, forthcoming). Another limitation in transferability lies in the fact that the TSS (despite efforts from Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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).

ORGANIZATION AS COMMUNICATION: A LUHMANNIAN PERSPECTIVE Conclusion and Outlook This paper contributes to current debates on the emerging CCO perspective

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(communication constitutes organization; Ashcraft et al., 2009; Putnam & Nicotera, 2008). In this paper, I have introduced Luhmanns theory of social systems (Luhmann, 1995, 2000) as one explicit strain of CCO thinking. I particularly argue that Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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 Luhmanns 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.

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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 Schools 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 Microsofts 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

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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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