Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 111
New chart. Old authority.
Formal redesign becomes durable only when recurring communication enacts new rules, resources, authority, and consequences
Premise
An organization can redraw reporting lines, issue a policy, or install a platform while everyday work continues as before. People still seek approval from former authorities and use routines that reproduce the old arrangement. The organization may still be enacting the structure leaders intended to replace.
Structuration Theory in Communication explains that persistence through the recursive relationship between action and structure. Drawing on Anthony Giddens, early communication adapters Marshall Scott Poole and Robert D. McPhee showed how communicative practices reproduce and alter organizational properties. For executives, the perspective redirects change management from announcements toward the repeated rules and resources through which a new arrangement becomes real.
What the model is: Structuration Theory in Communication in Knowledge →
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryTheories & Explanatory Models
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.