Welcome to The CommUnity Lab — the knowledge transfer podcast where we dive deep into the fascinating world of professional communication research and its application! Hosted by Danny (Daniel Wolfgruber), this series brings together leading scholars to explore how communication shapes workplaces, relationships, and society at large.

In each episode, we break down communication research and real-world insights, making them accessible and relevant for communication professionals, leaders, fellow scholars and students, and anyone curious about the magic of communication.

In this Lab Talk, I sit down with Prof. François Cooren from the Université de Montréal, Canada. We talk about his research on the communicative constitution of organization (CCO), the fact that we are all puppets - at least occasionally, and why thinking about the world in communicative terms is a fruitful avenue if we want to understand how organizations and our “reality” are being shaped in and through communication between human beings but also with so-called “other-than-human” actors.

Want to explore more? Here are five scientific publications related to today’s episode:

Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cooren, F. (2010). Action and agency in dialogue: Passion, incarnation, and ventriloquism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Honneth, A. (1996). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Latour, B. (2013). An inquiry into modes of existence: An anthropology of the moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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