Communicating and Organizing in Context ─ The Theory of Structurational Interaction

Communicating and Organizing in Context integrates Giddens’ structuration theory with Goffman’s interaction order and develops a new theoretical base—the theory of structurational interaction—for the analysis of communicating and organizing. Both theorists emphasize tacit knowledge, social routines, context, social practices, materiality, frames, agency, and view communication as constitutive of social life and of organizing. Thus their integration in structurational interaction provides a coherent, communication-centric approach to analyzing communicating, organizing and their interrelationships.

This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars as an orientation to the field of organizational communication and as an integration of organizing and communicating. It will also be useful for practitioners as a tool for understanding how conceptual frames limit possibilities and constitute the nature of organizing and members' participation in organizations.

Beth Bonniwell Haslett (Ph.D, University of Minnesota) is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. Her research and teaching interests span both organizational and interpersonal communication, and focus on issues of face, cross cultural communication and the social impact of information and communication technologies. Dr. Haslett has written three books (Communication: Strategic Action in Context; The Organizational Woman, with F.L. Geis and M. R. Carter, and Children Communicating, with W. Samter) and has published more than 30 articles and book chapters