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

Abstract

François Cooren’s new book, Organizational Discourse, is a clear, wellinformed, sensitive account of varied discursive approaches and topics in organizational studies. The book is, I would say, appropriate in difficulty for upperlevel undergraduates or graduate students beginning in management and organizational communication. It assumes little student preparation in linguistics or sociology, and Cooren is very skilled and systematic about explaining technical terms and assumptions lucidly and with sustained examples. However, some prior exposure to sociolinguistic theory is more valuable than usual for increasing readers’ understanding, since sophisticated issues lurk, often overtly but with limited and mainly common-sense elaboration, in Cooren’s account. It is also worth mentioning that, while the book’s special focus on discursive issues makes it most valuable as a text for courses concentrating on organizational discourse/ communication issues, its breadth makes it a real option as a textbook, or a halfterm text, in more generalized organizational behavior and communication classes.