The Agency of Organizing

Boris H. J. M. Brummans (PhD, Texas A&M University) is a Professor in the Département de Communication at the Université de Montréal in Canada. His research interests include agency, mindful organizing, organizational communication, organizational ethnography, and process philosophy. He has contributed chapters to several edited books and his articles appear in international peer-reviewed journals such as Communication Monographs, Human Relations, Information, Communication & Society, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization Studies, and Qualitative Inquiry. His edited volume, The Agency of Organizing: Perspectives and Case Studies, received the 2018 Outstanding Edited Book Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association and he served as an Associate Editor of Management Communication Quarterly from 2015 to 2019. He also received college and university awards for his teaching excellence and was a Visiting Scholar at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan as well as the University of Bologna in Italy.

List of Illustrations

Foreword: Theorizing Agency by Making the Implicit Explicit

Linda L. Putnam

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Perspectives on the Agency of Organizing

Boris H. J. M. Brummans

2. The Distribution of Decision Rights at ICANN: A Luhmannian Perspective on Agency

Steffen Blaschke

3. Being Able to Act Otherwise: The Role of Agency in the Four Flows at 2-1-1 and Beyond

Joel O. Iverson, Robert D. McPhee, and Cade W. Spaulding

4. Agency in Structurational Divergence and Convergence: Insights from Nursing

Anne M. Nicotera

5. Targeting Alex: Brand as Agent in Communicative Capitalism

Dennis K. Mumby

6. Releasing/Translating Agency: A Postcolonial Disruption of the Master’s Voice among Liberian Market Women

Kirsten J. Broadfoot, Debashish Munshi, and Joëlle Cruz

7. Acting For, With, and Through: A Relational Perspective on Agency in MSF’s Organizing

François Cooren

8. Agential Encounters: Performativity and Affect Meet Communication in the Bathroom

Karen Lee Ashcraft and Timothy R. Kuhn

9. Conclusion: Further Theoretical and Practical Reflections on Agency

George Cheney and Dean Ritz

About the Contributors

Index