When Birds of Different Feather Flock Together

Abstract

In the German-speaking countries, organizational communication has no distinct tradition as a separate field within communication studies, where it is often subsumed under the field of public relations (see Theis-Berglmair’s contribution in this forum). Consequently, and apart from rare exceptions, among German-speaking scholars (e.g., Theis-Berglmair, 2003; Weder, 2010), organizational communication is primarily understood as “communication in organizations”, i.e. as internal communication (e.g., Buchholz & Knorre, 2010; Mast & Huck, 2008; Schick, 2010), by following the “container metaphor” with regard to the relation between organization and communication (Putnam, Phillips, & Chapman, 1996, p. 125). A consequence of this rather narrow focus is that German-speaking research on organizational communication is somewhat disconnected from international debates in the field, which, over the last decades, have shifted from the container metaphor to a more holistic understanding of organization as communication; that is, to the idea that organizations essentially consist of interconnected communicative practices (see Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009).