Timothy Kuhn

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Colorado Boulder

Existing theories of the firm exhibit significant shortcomings when questions turn to intra-organizational power and extra-organizational relationships - two issues central to understanding firm operations. Here I advance an alternative view, founded on the Montreal School of organizational communication’s conception of conversation-text relations,...

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐const...

The Work of Communication: Relational Perspectives on Working and Organizing in Contemporary Capitalism revolves around a two-part question: "What have work and organization become under contemporary capitalism-and how should organization studies approach them?" Changes in the texture of capitalism, heralded by social and organizational theorists a...

Scholars of organization tend to apportion organizational phenomena into two distinct levels: micro and macro. In organization studies, efforts to overcome the problems resulting from the micro-macro split focus on locating appropriate microfoundations or engaging in multilevel theorizing, but these approaches ultimately reinforce rather than trans...

This chapter argues for the need for an alternative theory of the firm in the context of communicative capitalism. It outlines two broad camps of existing theories of the firm: governance approaches (focusing on transaction cost economics and agency theory) and competence/capability approaches (including the resource-based view, dynamic capabilitie...

The development of an alternative theory of the firm suitable to contemporary capitalism involves a shift towards focusing on communication practices as constitutive of organization, as opposed to the traditional representational/transmissive view. The chapter connects Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) scholarship with new materia...

‘Purpose’ has become a battleground for contemporary corporations. Indeed, a common refrain among scholars and practitioners alike is that the key problem facing the firm is the development and pursuit of a purpose – a singular purpose – compelling to its multiple audiences. Yet the forces of late capitalism push firms toward forms of wanting that...

The final case study explores the evolving landscape of corporate purpose and social responsibility, particularly in the context of B Corporations (B Corps). The chapter delves into the various forms of binding associated with B Corps, from the legal structure and certification process to the platform's role in shaping firms' authoritative texts an...

This chapter begins the book’s challenge to conventional theories of the firm by arguing that the central problem of the firm lies in purpose, which is more complex and provocative than typically assumed. The chapter examines the battle over corporate purpose between advocates of shareholder value maximization and stakeholder obligation, highlighti...

The first of three case studies discusses the concept of boundarying and its implications for firms' dynamic capabilities in the context of managing customer service performances under communicative capitalism. The chapter shows how boundarying is the result of agential cuts, where organizing practices generate conceptions of the real that become e...

The book’s concluding chapter summarizes the claims of the book and condenses the unique perspective offered by the Communicative Theory of the Firm (CTF). It highlights the significance of the CTF in reimagining firms’ purposes as ontologically multiple and the influence of communicative capitalism in shaping their desires. It challenges tradition...

The aim of this chapter is to describe the socioeconomic shift toward ‘communicative capitalism’ and what that recognition summons from analysts. It begins with an account of how Fordism (and its standardized production, stable workforce, and the provision of adequate wages) became the predominant form of production and capital accumulation during...

This chapter explores the practice of branding at a startup accelerator, connecting the concept to orders of worth in entrepreneurship. Drawing on the Communicative Theory of the Firm (CTF), it emphasizes the significance of the multiple and competing logics that underpin evaluations of value in the context of new firms’ emergence. The chapter exam...

Primarily due to an influx of market models, the journalism industry recently experienced a fragmentation of professional culture and, therefore, professionalism. This theoretical essay proposes a new focus for understanding influence on journalistic practice. Studying influence in the twenty-first century requires a model that does not include a h...

Theories of the firm are the primary vehicles by which scholars answer questions about firms' existence, internal operations, modes of securing competitive advantage, and location of boundaries. Starting in economics and moving into management, this entry reviews dominant governance and competence approaches to the theory of the firm, exploring the...

Practice-based organization scholarship has made significant contributions, but its vision is narrow. It aims to show organizational scholars that what are taken to be entities are better understood as the accomplishments of ongoing practices; in doing so, it seeks to re-imagine the organization studies field. Yet, practice-based organization schol...

The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock buybacks, excessive dividends and a failure to invest in pro...

Although the lion’s share of scholarship in management and organization studies conceives of organizations as entities within which communication occurs, “Communication Constitutes Organization” (CCO) scholarship has attracted interest because it makes a productive reversal, that is, by asking how organization happens in communication. Over the pas...

At the centre of the undeniably contentious debates about climate change lies the question of authority: Which voices will be heard and, thus, who will influence policy, activism, and scientific inquiry? Following high-profile errors found in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Dutch Parliament...

Over the past three decades, scholars have increasingly come to view knowledge as one of the most important resources necessary for successful organization in the contemporary socioeconomic landscape. In our vigor to understand how organizations may harness the diverse knowledge available to them, however, we have produced a disparity in our theori...

Typical renderings of the domain of organizational communication focus on topics, perspectives, and persons. These perspectives encourage an attention to the boundaries surrounding the field, but have little to offer questions about the relevance of the field's work to pressing social problems. Consequently, I explore how we might enhance our schol...

Counter-Narratives and Organization brings the concept of "counter-narrative" into an organizational context, illuminating these complex elements of communication as intrinsic yet largely unexplored aspect of organizational storytelling. Departing from dialogical, emergent and processual perspectives on "organization," the individual chapters focus...

This chapter is motivated by curiosity about how the turn toward relationality can generate novel ways of addressing social and organizational problems. We thus join a conversation that is gathering steam in organization studies, an effort to examine the texture of “the social,” “the material,” and “the real” (Barad, 2003; Coole & Frost, 2010). Rel...

In line with recent efforts to increase the representation of women in the field of computing and information technology (I.T.), the National Center for Women and Information Technology has spearheaded an occupational branding campaign that seeks to encourage more women to enter this field. We use this campaign as a case study to investigate how re...

The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as agents for the owners. Emerging as a self- styled ‘prof...

As Cooren and Sandler note in their paper, communication studies has largely received Bakhtin as a theorist of dialogue, but such a framing limits his potential contributions to our thinking. They argue that when we seek to understand the communicative constitution of reality, Bakhtin's work can lead us in novel and fruitful directions. I find thei...

Cross-sector partnerships (XSPs) are an important part of today’s organizational landscape and a favored strategy for addressing complex social problems. However, a discrepancy exists between the popularity and prevalence of XSPs and evidence of their ability to produce value with respect to the problems they address. We therefore offer a framework...

The Communication Monographs Café first opened six months ago when it hosted a group of scholars to talk about issues social justice and public scholarship. The conversation was wide-ranging and stimulating, so we knew it was important to open the Café on a regular basis for more interaction about the issues that are engaging today's communication...

This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are 'talked' into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and ana...

This article examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the angle of critical theory. It begins by arguing that values shape corporate decisions in three general ways: managerial choices, routines, and reasoning processes; governmental regulation, incentives, tax structures, and oversight; and consumption choices within market systems. It...

Critics assert that lawyers’ subject positions make them accomplices to corporate domination. Work on subject position formation, however, frequently ignores either identifications with particular organizations or the manifold discourses circulating around those organizations. To address this, I asked junior corporate attorneys at a large US law fi...

A cross-disciplinary examination of democratization, as seen in different attempts at it across the globe. Democracy is not in steady state and democratizations are open-ended processes; they depend on structures and functions in systemic contexts that idiosyncratically evolve in tone, tenor, direction, and pace. They affect and are affected by sco...

This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐const...

For organizational communication scholars, identification provides a key to understanding organizing practices, the individual–organization relationship, and the construction of selves. “Organizational identification” refers to the creation, maintenance, and modification of linkages between individuals and organizations, whereas “identity” refers t...

This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are ‘talked’ into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and ana...

This article proposes a shift in how researchers study knowledge and knowing in organizations. Responding to a pronounced lack of methodological guidance from existing research, this work develops a framework for analyzing situated organizational problem solving. This framework, rooted in social practice theory, focuses on communicative knowledge-a...

This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are 'talked' into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and ana...

One key to understanding the contours of late modernity is to examine workers' allocations of time to their organizations. In this article, I frame workplace time commitments as the outcome of two forces: individuals' efforts to portray a positive and distinctive identity (identity work) and the organizational and social discourses shaping those id...

Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories: limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collective...

Scholars interested in group phenomena generally conceive of communication as either a conduit for, or as constitutive of, group decisions. Hewes's socio-egocentric model contends that we possess no unambiguous proof of any communicative impact on decision making. This study asks whether contrived socio-egocentric group speech is distinguishable fr...

Scholars and practitioners increasingly strive to understand the complexities marking implementations of organizational change programs. Studies on this topic often concentrate on members' cognition about a planned change, regularly finding that members' knowledge structures and interpretations either converge or diverge over time. Using interviews...

Corporate scandals generate public scrutiny of organizational communication practices, invoke discourses about systemic change, and problematize firms' legitimacy as communication agents. Accordingly, the authors situate corporate scandal as a crucial social problem that organizational communication scholars can usefully inform, and they propose th...

Numerous researchers and practitioners have turned to complexity science to better understand human systems. Simulation can be used to observe how the microlevel actions of many human agents create emergent structures and novel behavior in complex adaptive systems. In such simulations, communication between human agents is often modeled simply as m...

Numerous researchers and practitioners have turned to complexity science to better understand human systems. Simulation can be used to observe how the microlevel actions of many human agents create emergent structures and novel behavior in complex adaptive systems. In such simulations, communication between human agents is often modeled simply as m...

Recent theoretical work in organizational identification has developed two themes: that members of complex organizations have multiple social groups with which they identify and that acts displaying members’identifications contribute to the construction of collective identities. Using a multimethodological and longitudinal approach, this case study...

Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories; limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collective...

This study examined the relationship between group conflict management styles and effectiveness of group decision making in 11 ongoing, naturally occurring workgroups from 2 large U.S. organizations. The major postulate of the study was that groups develop norms regarding how they will manage conflicts that carry over to affect other activities, su...

In this essay, I use the rhetorical approach of generic criticism to analyze issues management campaigns: instances of public relations discourse in which an organization makes explicit efforts to influence public policy. There are striking similarities among contemporary organizations’ issues management campaigns in terms of their organizing princ...