184Vasquez


Paperback: 242 pages
Publisher: Routledge (2014)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0415741668

Unplugged - Book Reviews Special Forum:
Around the Communicative Constitution
of Organizations perspective

James R. TAYLOR & Elizabeth VAN EVERY (2014), 
When organization fails. Why authority matters, New York, 
NY: Routledge. 

reviewed by 

Consuelo VASQUEZ
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
vasquez.consuelo@uqam.ca

The unplugged  section edits some book reviews special forums dedicated to a 
topic, an author or a theoretical perspective. This second forum considers three 
important volumes gravitating around the communicative constitution of 
organizations perspective. Originated in a seminal contribution from one of our 
reviewers, Robert McPhee, who  based his work on Giddens’s structuration 
theory, this perspective experienced different avenues and forms now a “rather 
heterogeneous theoretical endeavor” (Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Montreal 
School of organizational communication constitutes one of the main pillars of this 
perspective; James R. Taylor and François Cooren recently offered some 
stimulating volumes, carving  out their own path within organizational 
communication studies. The CCO  perspective has significantly disseminated in 
the field of organizing studies and an effective conversation henceforth unfolds 
with various discursive studies. 

! Following The Emergent Organization (2000) and The Situated 
Organization (2011), James R. Taylor and Elizabeth Van Every pursue their 
inquiry into the communicative constitution of organization in their latest book, 
entitled When Organization Fails: Why Authority Matters (hereafter, Why Authority 
Matters). As the third part of what can be  thought of as a trilogy, this book extends 
the communicational framework developed by the  authors in their previous books 
to study organization and organizing. This framework can be summarized by the 
following thesis: organization essentially consists of interconnected processes of 
communication; this is defined as the recursive articulation of conversations and 
texts. Hence, for Taylor and Van Every, organization emerges in communication 
as described in text – organization becomes an object toward which actors co-
orient their actions – and realized in conversation – organization is enacted by 
actors through situated interaction. 

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! While The Emergent Organization offered the theoretical grounding for 
developing the ‘communicative constitution of organization’ or CCO  thesis, The 
Situated Organization presented the pragmatist standpoint of this framework and 
put it to work through several empirical studies. So what does Why Authority 
Matters add? As the authors themselves suggest in the opening sentences of the 
introduction: ‘[this book] is an inquiry into the role of authority in the constitution of 
organization’ (Taylor & Van Every, 2014, p. xiii). The focus on authority as the 
‘foundation’ and the ‘unifying force’ of organization (p. xx) is thus the driver 
behind and the main contribution of this book. Let us note that Taylor and Van 
Every’s interest in authority has come a long way (cf. Taylor, 1993; Taylor & Van 
Every, 2000). Yet it is in Why Authority Matters that the authors are able to offer a 
strong and systematic account of the nature and practice of authority in 
organization. More specifically, the  main contribution of this book lies in its 
attentiveness to authority as a communicational phenomenon, and one that is 
key in the establishment of organizations. It follows that when authority is not 
accomplished  – when there is confusion about who has authority and how it must 
work – then, as the title of the book suggests, organizations fail. 
! To inquire into the role of authority in organization, the authors propose a 
two-step  structure  based on their pragmatic approach to the study of 
organizational phenomena: the  first part of the book presents the conceptual 
framework, while  the second part puts the framework to  work through two case 
studies. Taken together, the two sections of the book allow us to  understand 
authority as a property of communication in  practice, which is one of the main 
arguments developed in Why Authority Matters. In what follows, I will sketch out 
the main ideas of the two sections of the  book. I will then reflect on some of the 
questions that this book poses for further engaging with the ‘communicative 
constitution of organization’ or CCO thesis.
! The theoretical framework presented in Part 1 is based on three premises: 
(1) communication plays a constitutive role in generating the system of authority 
that holds organization together; (2) organization is constituted by a transaction 
linking agents to a beneficiary associated with the organization and thus with its 
purposes and values; and (3) the beneficiary (i.e., the organization) is a source of 
authority for those  who represent it, yet it can only act through their voices and 
agencies. This results in different and often conflicted readings of the purposes of 
the organization, which, if not properly negotiated, can result in organizational 
crisis. Following this reasoning, the main question Taylor and Van Every ask is: 
How is the organization to exercise authority when its values and purposes have 
become confused and problematic? The answer can be  found  in what the 
authors call imbrication, which ‘involves a sequential authorship  that gives actions 
and activities a new meaning at each new phase of re-authoring’ (2014: 28, see 
also, Taylor, 2011). In other words, imbrication allows the construction of a 
common narrative about organizational purposes, values and goals, while 
recognizing  different interpretations or micro-stories of the different communities 
of practice that compose the organization. When successful, imbrication 
establishes and legitimatizes the collective authoring that gives meaning to the 
activities and actions of these  communities. In keeping with this idea, an 
organization fails when imbrication fails; that is, when communities of practice are 
not able to collectively rewrite the organizational text and give this text the 
authority required to guide the actions and meanings of organizational actors.
! The second part of Why Authority Matters invites the reader to follow the 
intricacies of two case studies that deal with authority (or the lack of it!) and the 
ensuing organizational failures related to the confusion between different 
interpretations of authority (in other words: no imbrication!). The first case 
narrates the events that led to the cancellation of Seven Days, a popular 
Canadian television program aired in the 1970s by the Canadian Broadcasting 
Corporation (CBC). The second  case presents the story of the Integrated 

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National Crime Information System (INCIS), introduced during the 1990s by the 
New Zealand Police and abandoned a few years later at a cost of millions of 
dollars to  the New Zealand  Government. I will not discuss the details of these 
cases here but rather focus on their commonality and on what they tell us about 
authority in practice. 
! While these  cases happened  in very distinct organizational and societal 
contexts, and in different times, they both present stories of innovation: a new 
genre of television program and mode of production, and a new technology of 
surveillance, respectively. Innovation plays an important role here as it sets the 
context for re-questioning authority; the  authority of expertise (related  to 
knowledge) and that of position (related to hierarchical structures) are confronted 
in both cases by new ways of doing  and organizing. For example, in Seven Days, 
the new television genre that the producers of the program proposed – and that 
was very well received by the audience – changed top  managers’ traditional 
conception of television broadcasting. This led to  two questions: who  was in 
charge – the person with the expertise or the person in a position of authority – 
and how decisions were to be made. As for INCIS, this new technology entailed 
new procedures, activities and  tasks for the Police Department, which were 
developed  and managed by a new team in charge of the implementation, called 
the INCIS team. This team, mainly composed of software designers and internal 
consultants, had to  battle for their authority as INCIS representatives, which was 
an extremely difficult task considering  the  culture  and hierarchical structure of the 
Police Department. In both cases, innovation mixed up  the lines of authority and 
generated opposition between the authority of expertise  and the authority of 
position. 
! These cases also show the importance of the socio-historical context of 
organizing: Canadian television broadcasting  in the 1970s and the New Zealand 
governmental context in the 1990s were characterized by particular issues that 
had major implications for the  development of the events narrated in Why 
Authority Matters. As Taylor and Van Every aptly recall, ‘None of what happens in 
the organization, […] takes place in a vacuum’ (2014: 202). Seven Days’ 
producers and managers, as well as the  INCIS designers and  internal 
consultants, understood that the  implications of their decisions were wider than 
the organization they worked for: other rules had to be taken into account. 
Context mattered in these cases because it grounded the accomplishment of 
authority, but also because it showed that authority also depends on ‘the outside’ 
of the  organization. Another issue that mattered in these two cases was 
leadership. Both cases show how leadership  failed, not because it did not exist, 
but because it was not collectively authorized as such. The founder and main 
producer of Seven Days was not legitimized by top  management as the being the 
person ‘authorized’ to make the decisions related to the  program. The  same goes 
for INCIS’s project manager who was never recognized in the Police Department 
as the legitimate spokesperson for this project. Leadership  can be gained only if it 
comes with authority: not only a formal and normed authority, but also a practical 
and sensible authority that needs to be legitimized for it to be exerted. 
! To summarize, these cases illustrate well the idea that authority is not a 
property of an individual or a position: authority is enacted in practices, but more 
importantly it governs those practices. Authority is both the frame for action and, 
as mentioned above, the  law or contract of the transaction between the  agents 
and the beneficiary. As Taylor and Van Every note, it is the double nature of 
authority – that of ‘authoring’ and ‘authorization’ – that makes it a crucial 
phenomenon for ‘holding  the organization together’. As the cases show, if there 
are too many lines of authority, if the purposes and goals of the organization are 
distinct or if different views (managerial and experts) conflict, then there is no 
common understanding of the governing rule; there is no authority. Innovation 
triggers the need  for renegotiating the rules of the transaction between the agents 

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(organizational actors) and the beneficiary (the organization), which also implies 
the renegotiation of who is authorized to talk on behalf of the organization. 
! Now that I have reviewed the main ideas presented in Why Authority 
Matters, let me now explore some of the questions regarding the  communicative 
constitution of organization or CCO  thesis that were triggered  by reading this 
book. The first question relates to the way authority is described and applied in 
the case studies. As mentioned above, the definition of authority presented by 
Taylor and Van Every is quite general (and I think this is an advantage  of such a 
definition): a property of relationship  that holds organization together. Yet, in the 
cases, authority is often referred to in terms of the distinction between the 
authority of position and that of expertise. It is worth noting  that the starting point 
of Taylor and Van Every’s (2014: 3) definition of authority is Barley’s (1996) well-
known analysis of technicians’ work, in which ‘[he] identified the basis of all 
claims to authority as either hierarchical office (position) or skilled practice 
(expertise)’. Based on Barley’s work, Taylor and Van Every (2014) argue that 
today’s organizations strongly rely on a horizontal distribution of work in which 
authority is defined by expertise. Yet, the vertical distribution of authority 
(authority of position) is still the main model for many large organizations. This 
paradoxical arrangement is, following the authors, what defines (and makes 
difficult) the accomplishment of authority – an argument that they defend in the 
analysis of the two case studies. 
! Now, I wonder if authority is really only about the conflict between expertise 
and position. What about other forms of organizing, such as project organizing, 
nonprofit organizing, freelancing and entrepreneurship, that do not follow a 
horizontal distribution of authority? The two cases described in the book refer to 
formal and  public organizations –  the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and 
the New Zealand Police – and Barley’s research was based in hospitals. Could it 
be  possible that these particular organizational contexts illustrate only one  of the 
many ways that authority works in organization (albeit a predominant one)? I 
would  suggest that reducing authority to ‘position versus expertise’ is quite 
problematic as it does not account for the array of modes of organizing. If we 
consider that authority is a property of relationship  (i.e., communication) and we 
agree that communication constitutes organization, and that there are many 
forms of organizations ‘out there’, then it seems possible to envisage that 
different configurations of authority could exist.
! My second question relates to the materiality of authority. Again, the 
definition of authority deployed in the book, both in the theoretical framework and 
in the case studies, suggests a language-based view of authority. This view is 
emphasized, for example, by the  narrative approach that underlines the  case 
studies (see p. xxi) and also  by the conversation/text dynamic which, as 
mentioned above, is at the heart of Taylor and Van Every’s definition of 
organizational communication (and thus of authority). And yet the cases present 
material contexts of innovation related to television broadcasting and the 
implementation of a new technology. Considering the emphasis on materiality 
that has lately emerged in organizational communication, and more specifically in 
the communicative constitution of organization approach (see for example, 
Ashcraft et al, 2009), I was expecting a deeper engagement with the materiality 
of authority. Taylor and  Van Every do mention that, in the INCIS case, technology 
played an important role in the  position versus expertise conflict, but this remains 
a general argument about the ‘plenum of agencies’ (Cooren, 2006) that 
characterizes organization. What about the role  of artifacts, such as procedures, 
norms, charts, PowerPoint presentations, in legitimizing, authorizing, and 
contesting? And the physical arrangements of the  organizational environment or 
the bodies and emotions that express or retain manifestations of authority? 
Materials have inherent properties for enduring  through space and  time and for 

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holding together the organization, which seems to  be  an important feature of 
authority. How do they contribute to the constitution of authority?
! A final question concerns the pragmatic approach that sustains Taylor and 
Van Every’s proposition for studying  authority and, more generally, for 
understanding the communicative constitution of organization. Pragmatism, as 
the authors note referring to Peirce, begins with observation. It follows that 
theoretical propositions are not built a priori from observable facts but generated 
by a mode of reasoning that Peirce called ‘abduction’. This inferential mode of 
reasoning, which is at the basis of the pragmatist approach, implies a search for 
the meaning of the facts situated on the facts themselves. While I completely 
agree with Peirce’s proposition, and I do believe that the abductive mode of 
reasoning fits well with an inquiry into the communicative constitution of 
organization, I had the feeling, while reading the book, that this reasoning 
followed rather a deductive thought process (i.e. the development of a hypothesis 
which is then validated or contested by empirical studies). Can this feeling be 
related to the structure of the book, which, as mentioned, presented  first the 
theoretical framework and then the case studies? Is it because the studies relied 
on second-order data (for Seven Days) and only on interviews (for INCIS), and 
that the ‘facts’ were difficult to observe directly? The result was for me somewhat 
disturbing and made me think about the need in organization studies for 
alternative  – and maybe unexplored – methodological avenues for rendering and 
writing about the process of abduction when inquiring about organizations.
! Reading When Organization Fails: Why Authority Matters – like any of 
Taylor and Van Every’s books – was thought-provoking  as it opened new 
theoretical horizons for the inquiry into the communicative constitution of 
organization. By adding authority to the communication–organization equation, 
this book adds a missing piece to the organizational communication and 
organization studies puzzle. Indeed, authority matters, we may conclude. As for 
when (or how) organization fails, I believe more empirical studies are needed to 
further (abductively) explore this idea. 

REFERENCES
Barley, S.R. (1996). Technicians in the workplace: 

Ethnographic evidence for bringing work into 
organizational studies. Administrative Science 
Quarterly, 41(3), 404-441.

Cooren,  F. (2006),  The Organizational World as a Plenum 
of Agencies, in Cooren F., Taylor, J.  R. et Van Every,  E. 
J.  (eds.), Communication as Organizing:  Empirical and 
Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and 
Conversation (pp. 81-100).  Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence 
Erlbaum.

Schoeneborn,  D., Blaschke, S., Cooren,  F., McPhee,  R.D., 
Seidl, D. & Taylor,  J.R.  (2014). The Three Schools of 
CCO Thinking : Interactive Dialogue and Systematic 
Comparison.  Management  Communication Quarterly, 
28(2), 285-316.

Taylor,  J. R. (1993). Rethinking the theory of organizational 
communication: How  to read an organization. 
Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Taylor, J. R. (2011). Organization as (imbricated) 
configuring of transactions. Organization Studies, 
32(9),1273–1294.

Taylor,  J.R.  & Van Every,  E.J. (2000). The emergent 
organization: Communication as its site and surface. 
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Taylor,  J.R.  & Van Every, E.J.  (2011).  The situated 
organization. Case studies in the pragmatics of 
communication research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Taylor,  J.R. & Van Every, E.E.  (2014).  When Organization 
Fails. Why Authority Matters. New York, NY: Routledge. 

www.management-aims.com

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