Tim Kuhn | University of Colorado, Boulder (original) (raw)
Papers by Tim Kuhn
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018
This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the p... more This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the publication process. The authors and editors of three published papers reflect on how they worked tog...
Communication and Organizational Knowledge, 2010
The alternative conception of knowledge we take up here, a practice-based view, is advocated by a... more The alternative conception of knowledge we take up here, a practice-based view, is advocated by a growing interdisciplinary group of organizational scholars. Influenced by several related streams of theorizing, a practice based view provides a vision of social life based on connections between culture, activity, minds, objects, and interactions (Reckwitz, 2002). Knowledge becomes not an identifiable and commodifiable entity, but rather an active presence in, or attribution made about, practice. Analytical concern thus turns away from identifying the existence or uniqueness of knowledge, and instead turns to processes of knowing, seeing these processes as always embodied, embedded in particular socio-historical settings and communities, and intimately connected to the material factors through which they emerge.
Counter-Narratives and Organization brings the concept of "counter-narrative" i... more 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 on the character of counter-narratives, along with their performative aspects, by addressing questions such as: how do some narratives gain dominance over others? how do narratives intersect, relate and reinforce each other how are organizational members and external stakeholders engaged in the telling and re-telling of the organization? The empirical case studies provide much needed insights on the function of counter-narratives for individuals, professionals and organizations in navigating, challenging, negotiating and replacing established dominant narratives about "who we are," "what we believe," "what we do" as a collective. The book has an interdisciplinary scope, drawing together ideas from both storytelling in organization studies, the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) from organizational communication, and traditional narratology from humanities. Counter-Narratives and Organization reflects an ambition to spark readers’ imagination, recognition, and discussion of organization and counter-narratives, offering a route to bring this important concept to the center of our understandings of organization.
Organization Studies, 2017
At the centre of the undeniably contentious debates about climate change lies the question of aut... more 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 sought to achieve ‘balance’ in these debates by bringing together climate scientists and skeptics for a set of online discussions. Using both communication and dialectical theorizing, we explore the organizing of authority around climate change in the Netherlands. We locate dialectical tensions and discursive positions of diverse actors in the debate, examining the communication practices by which actors sought to resolve tensions as part of three authoritative moves: bridging, (de)coupling, and resisting. The combination of these authoritative moves failed to engage with – and therefore could not resolve – the sources of the underlying di...
Organization Studies, 2008
Existing theories of the firm exhibit significant shortcomings when questions turn to intra-organ... more 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, yet extending it in several ways. In developing a communicative theory of the firm, I highlight the functions of, and relations between, `concrete' and `figurative' texts, paying particular attention to their participation in the construction of an authoritative (yet never monolithic) system for cooriented and distributed action. Using examples drawn from struggles over power, strategy, and organizational form at GM, I show that seeing the firm in textual terms presents a very different view of its operations. Doing so, portrays individuals and collectives as engaging in sophisticated games where firms marshal consent and attr...
Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs
Expertise, Communication, and Organizing, 2016
Organization, 2009
Critics assert that lawyers’ subject positions make them accomplices to corporate domination. Wor... more 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 firm to reflect on the accusation of being a ‘corporate lackey’. In their responses were four forms of discursive resource that evinced varied sources of identification. The analysis shows that the discursive resources reinforced one another in a ‘reticulated’ fashion: conditioned by encompassing discourses of managerialism and legal professionalism, they supported a particular mode of subjectivation. From this finding, I argue for the need to contextualize studies of professionals in multiple discourses, the advantages of studying arrays of discursive resources and the importance of surfacing ‘submerged’ discursive resources.
Organization Studies, 2006
One key to understanding the contours of late modernity is to examine workers’ allocations of tim... more 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 identities (identity regulation). Analysis of interviews with 53 employees from two distinct organizations shows that identity work and identity regulation related to workplace time commitments are not the result of totalizing managerial discourses, but are influenced by the arrays of discursive resources proffered by both locales and organizational practices. Importantly, these arrays tend to ‘tilt’ toward agency or structure in the conceptions of the individual–organization relationship they afford. Based on this finding, I argue that studies of workplace control and resistance should examine the features of such arrays of discursive resou...
Management Communication Quarterly, 2012
Scholars of organization tend to apportion organizational phenomena into two distinct levels: mic... more 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 transcend the divide. In response, I argue that communicative constitution of organization (CCO) theory provides thought leadership that can both reconceptualize the micro-macro relationship and generate novel theoretical directions, with specific attention to three widely employed theories of organization: the knowledge-based theory of the firm, stakeholder theory, and Carnegie School decisional theory. Conceptions of organizing and organization offered by CCO thus hold the potential to foster strengthened relationships between organizational communication and organization theory.
Human Communication Research, 2002
Skip to Main Content. ...
Communication Monographs, 2011
Academy of Management Proceedings
In this paper, we contribute to Ahrne and Brunsson’s notion of “partial organization” (2011). By ... more In this paper, we contribute to Ahrne and Brunsson’s notion of “partial organization” (2011). By definition, partial organizations lack one or more of the typical features of “complete organization...
This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the p... more This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the publication process. The authors and editors of three published papers reflect on how they worked tog...
Academy of Management Learning & Education
Counter-Narratives and Organization brings the concept of "counter-narrative" into an o... more 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 on the character of counter-narratives, along with their performative aspects, by addressing questions such as: how do some narratives gain dominance over others? how do narratives intersect, relate and reinforce each other how are organizational members and external stakeholders engaged in the telling and re-telling of the organization? The empirical case studies provide much needed insights on the function of counter-narratives for individuals, professionals and organizations in navigating, challenging, negotiating and replacing established dominant narratives about "who we are," "what we believe,"...
Human communication …, 2002
Skip to Main Content. ...
Communication Quarterly, 1997
In this essay, I use the rhetorical approach of generic criticism to analyze issues management ca... more 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 ...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018
This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the p... more This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the publication process. The authors and editors of three published papers reflect on how they worked tog...
Communication and Organizational Knowledge, 2010
The alternative conception of knowledge we take up here, a practice-based view, is advocated by a... more The alternative conception of knowledge we take up here, a practice-based view, is advocated by a growing interdisciplinary group of organizational scholars. Influenced by several related streams of theorizing, a practice based view provides a vision of social life based on connections between culture, activity, minds, objects, and interactions (Reckwitz, 2002). Knowledge becomes not an identifiable and commodifiable entity, but rather an active presence in, or attribution made about, practice. Analytical concern thus turns away from identifying the existence or uniqueness of knowledge, and instead turns to processes of knowing, seeing these processes as always embodied, embedded in particular socio-historical settings and communities, and intimately connected to the material factors through which they emerge.
Counter-Narratives and Organization brings the concept of "counter-narrative" i... more 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 on the character of counter-narratives, along with their performative aspects, by addressing questions such as: how do some narratives gain dominance over others? how do narratives intersect, relate and reinforce each other how are organizational members and external stakeholders engaged in the telling and re-telling of the organization? The empirical case studies provide much needed insights on the function of counter-narratives for individuals, professionals and organizations in navigating, challenging, negotiating and replacing established dominant narratives about "who we are," "what we believe," "what we do" as a collective. The book has an interdisciplinary scope, drawing together ideas from both storytelling in organization studies, the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) from organizational communication, and traditional narratology from humanities. Counter-Narratives and Organization reflects an ambition to spark readers’ imagination, recognition, and discussion of organization and counter-narratives, offering a route to bring this important concept to the center of our understandings of organization.
Organization Studies, 2017
At the centre of the undeniably contentious debates about climate change lies the question of aut... more 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 sought to achieve ‘balance’ in these debates by bringing together climate scientists and skeptics for a set of online discussions. Using both communication and dialectical theorizing, we explore the organizing of authority around climate change in the Netherlands. We locate dialectical tensions and discursive positions of diverse actors in the debate, examining the communication practices by which actors sought to resolve tensions as part of three authoritative moves: bridging, (de)coupling, and resisting. The combination of these authoritative moves failed to engage with – and therefore could not resolve – the sources of the underlying di...
Organization Studies, 2008
Existing theories of the firm exhibit significant shortcomings when questions turn to intra-organ... more 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, yet extending it in several ways. In developing a communicative theory of the firm, I highlight the functions of, and relations between, `concrete' and `figurative' texts, paying particular attention to their participation in the construction of an authoritative (yet never monolithic) system for cooriented and distributed action. Using examples drawn from struggles over power, strategy, and organizational form at GM, I show that seeing the firm in textual terms presents a very different view of its operations. Doing so, portrays individuals and collectives as engaging in sophisticated games where firms marshal consent and attr...
Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs
Expertise, Communication, and Organizing, 2016
Organization, 2009
Critics assert that lawyers’ subject positions make them accomplices to corporate domination. Wor... more 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 firm to reflect on the accusation of being a ‘corporate lackey’. In their responses were four forms of discursive resource that evinced varied sources of identification. The analysis shows that the discursive resources reinforced one another in a ‘reticulated’ fashion: conditioned by encompassing discourses of managerialism and legal professionalism, they supported a particular mode of subjectivation. From this finding, I argue for the need to contextualize studies of professionals in multiple discourses, the advantages of studying arrays of discursive resources and the importance of surfacing ‘submerged’ discursive resources.
Organization Studies, 2006
One key to understanding the contours of late modernity is to examine workers’ allocations of tim... more 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 identities (identity regulation). Analysis of interviews with 53 employees from two distinct organizations shows that identity work and identity regulation related to workplace time commitments are not the result of totalizing managerial discourses, but are influenced by the arrays of discursive resources proffered by both locales and organizational practices. Importantly, these arrays tend to ‘tilt’ toward agency or structure in the conceptions of the individual–organization relationship they afford. Based on this finding, I argue that studies of workplace control and resistance should examine the features of such arrays of discursive resou...
Management Communication Quarterly, 2012
Scholars of organization tend to apportion organizational phenomena into two distinct levels: mic... more 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 transcend the divide. In response, I argue that communicative constitution of organization (CCO) theory provides thought leadership that can both reconceptualize the micro-macro relationship and generate novel theoretical directions, with specific attention to three widely employed theories of organization: the knowledge-based theory of the firm, stakeholder theory, and Carnegie School decisional theory. Conceptions of organizing and organization offered by CCO thus hold the potential to foster strengthened relationships between organizational communication and organization theory.
Human Communication Research, 2002
Skip to Main Content. ...
Communication Monographs, 2011
Academy of Management Proceedings
In this paper, we contribute to Ahrne and Brunsson’s notion of “partial organization” (2011). By ... more In this paper, we contribute to Ahrne and Brunsson’s notion of “partial organization” (2011). By definition, partial organizations lack one or more of the typical features of “complete organization...
This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the p... more This panel symposium provides a peek into the processes that go on behind the scenes during the publication process. The authors and editors of three published papers reflect on how they worked tog...
Academy of Management Learning & Education
Counter-Narratives and Organization brings the concept of "counter-narrative" into an o... more 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 on the character of counter-narratives, along with their performative aspects, by addressing questions such as: how do some narratives gain dominance over others? how do narratives intersect, relate and reinforce each other how are organizational members and external stakeholders engaged in the telling and re-telling of the organization? The empirical case studies provide much needed insights on the function of counter-narratives for individuals, professionals and organizations in navigating, challenging, negotiating and replacing established dominant narratives about "who we are," "what we believe,"...
Human communication …, 2002
Skip to Main Content. ...
Communication Quarterly, 1997
In this essay, I use the rhetorical approach of generic criticism to analyze issues management ca... more 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 ...
Handbook of New Media, 2002
Our interest in this chapter is to explore the intersection between social constructionism and th... more Our interest in this chapter is to explore the intersection between social constructionism and the study of ICTs in the workplace. We begin by identifying a set of assumptions that underlie a constructionist perspective and indicate some ways in which these assumptions appear in studies of the workplace. Fundamental to constructionism is the active effort to privilege neither social nor technical factors in constructing accounts of technology design, development, implementation, or use. In the next section we reflect on the impact constructionism has had on studies of the workplace. We observe that within these studies, scholars employ constructionism for different purposes. The first is to provide a framework for understanding ICTs in the workplace and the second is to provide guidance for designing and implementing ICTs in organizations. Our interest here is an assessment of the extent to which constructionist views are successful in each of these. Our argument will be that social constructionist views have in principle developed an understanding that privileges neither technology nor the workplace, but that their use in design and implementation have tended to tilt so as to privilege either the technology or the workplace. Using the terminology of Argyris and Schon (1978), this tilt may be seen in a contrast between the espoused theory of social constructionism (its theoretical understanding) and its theory-in-practice (its actual employment in research and in organizations). We conclude the chapter with some reflections on how scholars might address the this tendency to tilt, and maintain a constructionist perspective in practical contexts.