Abstract
Within the past decade or so, researchers in the discipline of communication have become more vocal in sharing its methodological and theoretical contributions. Whereas scholars in media research or interpersonal communication are perhaps well-positioned to share their insights with those in other fields, organizational communication scholars have sought a larger audience by promoting a constitutive approach to organizations that emphasizes the discipline’s roots in social construction. Articles and special issues in journals such as the Academy of Management and Business and Society frame communication as a process that “constitutes,” or creates, organizations rather than simply communication that takes place within organizations.
How then to understand Matthew Koschmann and Matthew Sanders’s (2020) book, Understanding nonprofit work: A communication perspective? Koschmann and Sanders (who alternate authorship in the book’s chapters) suggest that their goal is to offer a distinct communication perspective on nonprofit work. For those who are not especially familiar with communication, the authors offer an extensive explanation in the first chapter in which they revisit transmission or “functionalist” approaches to communication. This approach, which Koschmann and Sanders point out is prevalent within nonprofit literature, often emphasizes messaging strategies within organizations (e.g., fundraising campaigns, communication of managerial decision-making). This approach can reduce communication to an easy and straightforward process of transmitting and receiving messages which, as Koschmann and Sanders attest, do not often capture the realities of human interaction or nonprofit work. The alternate view, and one that is gaining traction outside its disciplinary home, is to position communication “as the fundamental process that creates and maintains our social reality” (p. 8). Throughout the text, the authors apply this communication perspective to various areas that a reader might expect to see in a nonprofit text, including chapters devoted to leadership, management, and governance, the marketization of nonprofit work, collaboration, meaningful nonprofit work as expressed through employees and volunteers, and international nonprofit work.
The authors suggest that this book will offer scholars an opportunity to consider a distinct view on the nonprofit itself, as well as offer insights to nonprofit practitioners. Among nonprofit scholars, however, I suspect that there are really several distinct audiences. For researchers who consider communication their disciplinary home and nonprofit organizing their main topic of interest, this book is a comprehensive justification for the existence of what continues to be a very active community of scholars—those who attend ARNOVA, publish in nonprofit journals, and have also produced multiple special issues of disciplinary journals specific to nonprofit organizing. For those who might be unfamiliar with or skeptical of communication as a discipline, this book is an insightful and persuasive introduction to process-oriented or constitutive views on organizing (not just organizations). Finally, and most importantly for readers of NVSQ, this book positions the nonprofit as its own entity—one not defined in opposition to business or government organizations. Ultimately, this text offers a compelling take on how a communication perspective may enrich traditional perspectives or even embolden scholars to re-examine some of their commonly held assumptions about nonprofit work.
There are several things that the text does well. Although the authors provide an accessible disciplinary history of organizational communication, they also draw extensively on nonprofit scholarship and arguments familiar to NVSQ readers and nonprofit scholars from varying disciplines. Koschmann and Sanders are quick to say that they do not view their approach as supplanting other scholarship, but rather, to suggest added value. A constitutive approach also may be empowering to scholars and practitioners alike—the authors name challenges common to nonprofit organizing, but an approach rooted in social construction allows us to call out, question, and engage these challenges in more substantive ways. In particular, the authors expertly show how a communication perspective grounded in social construction and process allow nonprofit leaders to engage questions of difference (key to Koschmann’s discussion of international nonprofit work as described in Chapter 6) as well as the tensions and paradoxes inherent in nonprofit organizing (which surface throughout the book, but are particularly evident in Sanders’ chapter on the marketization of nonprofit work).
In addition, standout chapters include Koschmann’s focus on collaboration—an area that naturally lends itself to communication research, and one in which organizational communication scholars have been active for decades. Here, Koschmann introduces a framework for thinking about nonprofit collaboration comprised of authority, identity, agency, and value, and leans on a case study interwoven throughout the chapter. Those who are not convinced of a social construction approach in Chapter 1 might skip ahead to this chapter to see how different organizations can co-construct a shared identity, or why the creation of a shared dashboard can be a meaningful act that leads to real results. Another particularly relevant chapter is Sanders’s take on meaningful work and the nonprofit in Chapter 5. Here, Sanders acknowledges that nonprofits are often defined by what they are not rather than what they are, and unpacks different ways of understanding nonprofits as meaningful work. Although I have drawn on research from both Koschmann and Sanders over the years, this is the chapter that prompted me to revisit some of my own experiences as a nonprofit employee and volunteer, and the chapter that I’ll assign to my undergraduate students for us to read together as they try to make sense of their volunteer experiences in service-learning courses or consider how to reconcile what they view as competing discourses about having a job that matters versus making a living.
The authors state that they want the book to be practical, and to that end, more case studies or detailed examples would help illustrate their claims and add value for nonprofit students and practitioners as well as researchers. The text suggests some new terminology—for instance, the communicative “L-M-G” is intended to convey the intertwined nature of leadership, management, and governance, and “collabrocation” suggest a mash-up of collaboration and communication. These terms may not catch on, but more important than any of these terms is the proposition they represent. The book is particularly successful when the authors point out the interconnections between these concepts. The “L-M-G” nomenclature may be clunky for nonprofit scholarship, for instance, but the argument that the traditional view of nonprofit leadership is individualistic and relies on assumptions that the “right” individual can overcome systemic and individual forces is a refreshing counter to much of the leadership literature—and paves the way for a communication perspective that relies on “broader social and interactional contexts that shape individual behavior” (p. 37).
Ultimately, how one feels about this book will depend on a willingness to challenge some traditional assumptions—about nonprofits, and about communication. Some readers may be frustrated by the authors’ own admission that their approach means embracing a more complex view of the nonprofit, or the authors’ advancement of a framework rather than specific formulas that guarantee success. But, for researchers and practitioners who want to see nonprofits defined and defended on their own terms, Koschmann and Sanders offer a compelling argument.
