Why Organizational Communication Has Not Gained a Foothold in German-Speaking Communication Studies—Until Now

Organizational Communication as a Nondiscrete Area of Research

In German-speaking academia, communication studies has its roots in public communication as the central focus of research. For several decades, the development of mass media (especially print and broadcasting) and its impact on individuals and society at large have been central topics in this discipline. In the late 1980s the field expanded and the national communication associations of Germany (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft, DGPuK) and Switzerland (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft, SGKM) became compartmentalized into different divisions, such as “journalism,” “mass media and politics,” “media economics,” “reception and impact of mass media,” or “sociology of the media.” There is also a division called “public relations and organizational communication,” both in the DGPuK and in the SGKM. These divisions are dedicated to researching the communication processes “in and by organizations” (see http://www.dgpuk.de/organisationskommunikation), a self-description that seems to imply that scholars at least acknowledge also the internal side of organizational communication. At closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that public relations (PR), rather than organizational communication, is the dominant interest of most researchers in those divisions; for example, many studies concern the history and theories of public relations, issues management, public relations and journalism, or public relations and the public sphere. Evidently, German-speaking scholars in the field of communication studies have found more linkages to public relations than to organizational communication in the past, especially since PR activities have been identified as relevant factors in the process of constituting the public realm (Baerns, 1985). Unsurprisingly, the connection between individuals working in the field of PR and journalists dominated such research for years and produced different models of explanation (Bentele, 2005; Theis, 1992). As a result, in the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) with their strong and elaborate ties to public relations research, organizational communication is not considered to constitute a distinct field.

The prevalence of public communication as a topic is also the reason why German-speaking scholars, with few exceptions, usually neglect the internal aspects of organizational communication and related theories. In the late 1960s, some German-speaking scholars began to explore the editorial departments of media organizations. These organizations gained in significance in communication studies because of their role in shaping the public discourse. In his famous study of an editorial department of a newspaper, Rühl (1969) demonstrated that decision processes in this type of organizational system can be characterized as programs for managing environmental complexity. Rühl drew especially on March and Simon’s (1958) work on decision making and on Luhmann’s (1970) early publications on organizations. Besides the fundamental work of Rühl, which has been continued by scholars like Altmeppen (1999) and Blöbaum (2000), little effort has been devoted to integrating organizational theory with the study of communication (for an overview see Theis-Berglmair, 1999). Given that organizational communication does not constitute a distinct area of research in German-speaking academia, most scholars in the field of communications would probably describe their work as pertinent to “communicator studies,” that is to say, studies on journalists or on public relations actors and their working conditions. Some of those works, however, could also be assigned to the research area of organizational communication, for example, Kastl’s (1994) study on how journalists produce their environment through processes of “enactment” (see Weick, 1969, p. 130). However, if organizational communication has been explicitly addressed in German-speaking communication studies, these studies have focused primarily on the editorial departments of media firms.

The Development of Organizational Communication as a Distinct Area of Research

Despite the dominance of public relations in German communication studies and the fact that the relevant research concentrated on media organizations, the situation has been undergoing a veritable change since the 1990s. During that decade, organizational communication as a distinct area of research encompassing communications, linguistics, and organization studies became more visible.

The first time there was a panel on organizational communication in a meeting of the German communication association (DGPuK) was at the 1991 annual meeting, which took place in Bamberg, Germany. The panel brought together German scholars from the field of communication and Noshir Contractor (at that time, affiliated with the University of Illinois). In the period 1990-2010 there was also a rise in monographs on organizational communication published in German (Hahne, 1998; Herger, 2004; Theis, 1994), some of which referred extensively to research conducted in North America. New media of dissemination that became popular in organizations began to attract the attention of scholars in the field of communication (for example, see Wiest, 1994) and sociology (Stegbauer, 1995). Furthermore, handbooks on communication published during this period in German-speaking Europe increasingly acknowledged organizational communication as an evolving and distinct field of communication research (Bentele, Brosius, & Jarren, 2003), while handbooks on public relations started incorporating articles on organizational communication and favored a more integrative view of the field (for example, see Theis-Berglmair, 2008; Zerfass, van Ruler, & Sriramesh, 2008). The shift toward an integrative view is paralleled by a tendency in German academia to use increasingly the term “organizational communication” instead of “public relations” (Theis-Berglmair, 2012). As a result, the label of organizational communication has begun to spread in German-speaking academia; however, the content of the research differs considerably from that in North America.

There are at least two other disciplines that are of some relevance to the development of organizational communication studies in German-speaking academia: linguistics and organization studies. During the 1990s, organizational communication research began to attract the attention of linguists. One of the first attempts to bring together linguists interested in organizational communication in Germany was the two international conferences on “corporate communication” 1985 and 1991 in Hamburg. The 1991 conference (Bungarten, 1991) was attended by scholars from different countries, including Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Russia, and Germany. At the beginning of the last decade, German-speaking linguists began to regard organizational communication as “one of the most attractive research areas” in their field (Müller, 2008, p. 17); for example, a volume on organizational communication published by Menz and Müller (2008) is dedicated to the linguistic production of organizations. These approaches have much in common with the kind of linguistic analysis typically associated with North American organizational communication studies (see, for example, Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001).

In organizational studies, the 1990s were marked by what some observers might call a “linguistic turn.” Consequently, communication and storytelling as fundamental processes of constructing organizations became a focal topic for organization researchers (Kieser & Muley, 2003). Kieser (1998), for example, titled his publication “On the Gradual Fabrication of the Organization in the Course of Talking” (translation; original title: Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Organisation beim Reden). Likewise, in communication studies, scholars began to explore the relevance of organizations to their discipline (Rühl, 1989; Theis-Berglmair, 2003), while scholars of organizational theory came to regard communication as relevant to the construction of an organization and its identity (Ortmann, 2004, 2011).

To summarize, organizational communication in German-speaking Europe is an evolving area of research with roots in various disciplines, namely, communications, linguistics, and organization studies. On the one hand, the strict separation of these disciplines in academia and the prevalence of public relations in communication studies in the German-speaking countries have prevented organizational communication from developing into a distinct area of research until recently. On the other hand, “organizational communication” as a label is becoming increasingly popular. This popularity may pave the way for studies that go far beyond traditional public relations studies in that they take organization theory as a point of departure.

The Significance of Theory for Structuring the Research Field: Should We Interpret Organizational Communication in a Narrow or in a Broad Sense?

Developing a more integrative view of organizational communication does not depend exclusively on the label. Theoretical approaches play a significant role in how the research field will be structured. In terms of theory, today the study of organizational communication in German-speaking academia is heavily influenced by the epistemology of constructionism and Luhmann’s (1995, 2000) social systems theory. This influence holds true for streams of literature in the field of organizational communication with roots in organization studies (Blaschke, Schoeneborn, & Seidl, 2012; Seidl & Becker, 2005), as well as in linguistics (Menz, 2000; Menz & Müller, 2008) and communication studies (Schoeneborn, 2008, 2011; Theis-Berglmair, 2009). Luhmann distinguishes between various forms of social systems, namely interaction, organization, and society. In his view, all social systems are constituted by communication, which is their core element. Thus, Luhmann’s theoretical conceptualization allows scholars to position the different branches of organizational communication more broadly.

North American studies in organizational communication show a great interest in how interaction and organization interrelate and in how organizations are built through interactions—that is, through communication (Cooren, 2012; Cooren, Taylor, & van Every, 2006; Taylor, 1993; Taylor & van Every, 2000). This interest is reflected in the right half of Figure 1. The same applies to the work of German linguists in organizational studies (Menz & Müller, 2008). The right part of the figure also represents streams of research in organization studies that explore how speech acts produce the organization (Ortmann, 2011) or how organizations are constituted via communication episodes (Blaschke et al., 2012).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Organizational communication in a broader, integrative sense and in a narrow sense.

By contrast, public relations research traditionally discusses how organizations and society interrelate (left side of the figure). Scholars in that field concentrate on the role of the public as an organizational environment. From a constructionist viewpoint, public relations serve as a tool for stabilizing the identity of organizations (Kussin, 2006) and for reducing complexity and contingency. In that context, decision communication, the typical form of organizational communication (Luhmann, 2000), could provide common ground to both branches of the broader field of organizational communication, namely, traditional organizational communication and public relations. In the subdomain of organizational communication in a narrower sense, scholars are interested in the processes of decision making (i.e. of “closing” contingency), whereas in the subdomain of public relations, scholars examine, for example, how mass media and other media of dissemination contribute to creating (“opening”) contingency, or the difficulties of maintaining contingency “closed,” especially where social media are involved (e.g., Theis-Berglmair, 2009; see also the paper of Wehmeier and Winkler in this forum on the bridges between the fields of public relations and organizational communication). The recent theoretical developments in North American and German-speaking organizational communication, which concern the communicative construction of organizations, may help promote a broader, integrative understanding of organizational communication and at the same time help concentrate on the communicative dimension of organizations. In this sense, both tendencies can help crystallize the identity of organizational communication as a distinct research field in German-speaking academia. An additional favorable development is the increasing popularity of the idea that communication constitutes organizations. As a result of this idea (see also the contribution of Schoeneborn & Sandhu to this forum), organizations have finally emerged as a subject of study that is relevant to scholars in German-speaking studies, as well.