Communicating and Organizing in Context

6

GIDDENS: CONTEXT, AGENCY ANDINTERACTION

With an overview of Giddens’ structuration theory in mind, I now turn to a more thorough discussion of his views on agency, action and interaction and their implications for organizing and communicating. In particular, I will look at modernity as the context in which organizing and communicating take place. Through distanciation, disembedding, re-embedding, and communication and transportation advances, new forms of organizing and communicating are possible. In addition, I will discuss the challenges of interaction, agency, and the self in modern times, particularly in terms of identity, uncertainty and risk.

The Sociohistorical Context of Modernity

In discussing modernity, Giddens argued that the pace ...