How organizations incorporate insights from stakeholder communication : The role of media and modal affordances

Abstract: Organizations are increasingly opening up to external voices that might carry new insights and help organizations to find their place in society. But the context through which organizations communicate with their stakeholders shapes how communication unfolds. Traditionally, organizations communicated with their stakeholders through shareholder letters, town hall meetings, or printed advertisements. Nowadays, cyberspace has opened up communication in multiple ways. It affords fast and boundless two-way communication between organizations and stakeholders and among stakeholders, that can be both a blessing and a curse. In any case, changes in the communication landscape have affected all types of organizations—large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and newly started ventures.My research connects to ongoing discussions on how new media have shaped the landscape of organizations. Specifically, I explore how organizations incorporate insights from stakeholder communication from a practice-based view. This view allows me to magnify and understand better how the communication context shapes the interaction. My empirical research focuses on stakeholder communication in a single-case study of the world’s largest miniature model railway exhibition and three new venture ideation cases. I employ a mix of qualitative research methods, including digital data collection techniques.A bricolage of the four papers included in this dissertation frames the insights under the assumption that communication constitutes organization. It allows me to conceptualize the incorporation of new insights from stakeholder communication as a co-authoring process. Specifically, I show that modes provide the meaning-making resources through which humans communicate organizations into being. Media act as vessels of modes and shape how stakeholders can interact with—and co-author—the modes.My future research agenda focuses on two aspects. First, I suggest following more closely how new narratives that stakeholders offer during the co-authoring process subsequently travel through an organization. This question is particularly relevant in larger corporations where the newly proposed narratives have to travel more considerable distances between stakeholder communication practices and decision-making practices. Second, I suggest investigating stakeholder communication from a design perspective, that is, a study of the heuristics that managers and entrepreneurs employ before engaging in stakeholder communication.