Wiberg M. - The Interaction Society[c] Practice, Theories and Supportive Technologies (2005)(en)

152 Varey

emerges among those who are present to one another. Interactions are temporally arranged episodes of societal process, only possible within preexisting and continuing societal communication. Interactions are embedded within the flow of ephemeral individual actions. Interaction systems include everything that can be treated as “present,” and are able to decide who and what is to be treated as present and who and what is not. Presence is determined by the perception mode of information.

Society is, on the other hand, the totality of all social communication, and characterisedbycomprehensiveness(orinclusivity).Thesocietalsystemisnot composed of interactions — societal action is interaction-free — for example, demonstrated in mass communication events.

The extensive differentiation of society and interaction leads to less reliance on the resolution of societal problems of science-politics, economy-education, and science-religion, by interaction (for deliberative democracy). There is a gap between the interaction sequences a person lives through, and the complexity of the societal system (whose consequences cannot be influenced or controlled). But interaction has not lost societal relevance. Highly consequential developments are initiated in interactions. Contemporary society is more indifferent to, but also more sensitive to, interaction than pre-modern societies were.

Inthinkingbacktothenotionofsocialaction,wecannowseethatthisisevident whenever one person considers what others would think of their action, whereas societal action arises when action is intended and/or experienced as communication.

Some social action is free of interaction — we can act without the presence of others and can give our action a meaning that for us (and any possible observer) refers to society (e.g., reading, writing, sitting alone in a waiting room, and so on). Solitary action is much more common in modern societies than in older societies,andmuchofthishasreferencetosociety(I’mwritingthischapterwith some anticipation of some reading by others some time in the future). It is now possible, through writing, printing, etc., to withdraw from interaction systems and to communicate with far-reaching societal consequences — society is a result of interactions with a standardised, disciplined use of a language.

Organisations (i.e., organised social systems) are a special form of social system. Formal organisations regulate their boundaries by membership roles andcontrolofadmissiontomembership.Thus,“customers”aremembersofthe extended organisation. What is significant is that organisations standardise the motives that guide interactions.

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 153

Communication as a Mode of

Interaction

So, is interaction a special case of communication? Is communication a special case of social interaction? Whilst interaction is widely taken to be a mutually responsive form or style of communication, and communication is commonly located as the site of organisational problems, this is a muddling and thus wasteful use of the concepts. Deetz (1992, 1995) has explicated the centrality of social interaction. The two modes of interaction are informational and communicational. The former is a reproductive technology for use in a societal system that is a closed, self-referential communicative nexus. The latter is a productive technology (better explained as a social process) for the interaction system as the processing of contingency on the basis of presence. Luhmann (1995) distinguishes, in German, Interaktion (presence) from Kommunikation (absence).

The Informational Conception of Human Interaction

This is the commonsense conception of “communication” — the presentation oftheindividual’spointofviewinwhichmeaningsariseintheprivatecognition ofindividuals.Thisisareproductivetechnologythatisavehicleforovercoming difference through message exchange with the purpose of arousing a response. Meaning is strategically reproduced, i.e., for a pre-defined purpose, to serve the interest of the individual.

Born of the emergence of telecommunications practices in the 1940s, information theory (originally termed communication theory) was developed as a theory not of significance and meaning but of signals (in copper wires) (see Shannon & Weaver, 1949). “Information” became a popular idea, and communication theory became an explanation of meaning as well as of telegraph and telephone channel signal capacity. Communication became, in the common sense of everyday talk, the sharing of information. Several academic disciplines came to be defined in terms of information production, manipulation, and interpretation including computer science, management sciences, economics, journalism, and communication studies.

Some people have even suggested that all that is human should be explained by information, communication, and control [see Beniger (1986), and Peters’

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

154 Varey

critique (1987)]. Yet, in our communication we are not concerned only with information, but also the body it comes from. Unfortunately, for it muddles and veils unnecessary biases and distortions, the notion of communication as information exchange touches on the ancient notion of instant contact between minds at a distance, but also allows that any “thing” that processes information is a communicator, and thus for people to be reduced to information processors.

Myerson (2001) has examined the change in the idea of “communication” that has enabled, and is driven by, the move to widespread mobilized communication (the pervasive adoption of PCTs, especially the mobile phone). This discussion is elaborated in the end case study.

The Communicational Conception of Human

Interaction

Communicationisaprocessforexploringandnegotiatingdifference.Meaning is produced through interaction. This is a productive technology.

Monologism takes communication to be the action of a person as a selfsufficient whole, whilst dialogism takes communication to be a “between” process (Sampson, 1993). The communicative interaction is the unit of analysis, not individuals, intentions, or abstract language systems. Social approaches to communication are in opposition to a psychological approach, and characterised as “organic” rather than “mechanistic,” concerned with “ritual”ratherthan“transmission,”andfundamentally“interpretive”ratherthan “scientific” [Leeds-Hurwitz (1995) provides a comprehensive collection of essays around this “new paradigm”].

Social approaches to communication describe events occurring between people in the process of interacting. This is in contrast to the reporting of how events are perceived through a single individual’s understanding. Thus, communication is thought of as inherently collaborative and cooperative visible behaviour, rather than as merely personal cognition. An utterance, often referred to as “a communication” in common parlance, is not in itself a communicative act. The instigator needs the other to “complete it.” Communicativeactionsarecollaborativeaccomplishments.Communicationistheproject of reconciling self with other, to make friendly after estrangement or to adjust into accordance (Peters, 1999). The notion that communication is interaction reduces problems of relationship to problems of contact at “touch points”

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 155

(common jargonese in Customer Relationship Management circles). The concept of “communication” allows for contact without presence. Communication is then the disembodiment of interaction — contact without touch (Peters, 1999). ICT-based technologies mediate — there is interaction without personal/physical contact.

A particular definition of what constitutes communication is adopted. This focuses on process as well as product or outcome. For example, Carey (1975, p. 17) defines communication as “a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.”

Social reality is not seen as a fact or set of facts existing prior to human activity

— it is created in human interaction [see Berger & Luckmann (1967) for the classic exposition of this view, and Gergen (1985)]. Berger & Luckmann analysed knowledge in society in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality. They concluded that people interact and produce meaningful behaviour patterns that construct a shared reality. We create our social world through our words and other symbols and through our behaviours. Such an approach requires that we questionthevalidityoftraditional“scientific”experiments.Thebusinessofthe interpretivist is not to reveal the world to us but to create some part of the world for us. “Inquiry is the professional practice of the social creation of reality” (Anderson, 1990, p. 14). Interaction is forwarded as a creative social accomplishment. Deetz feels very strongly that, “[I]f the study of human communication is not ultimately the study of how we make the world in which we have our human existence, then it is as trivial as our dominant ‘model’ of it would seem to say it is” (1995, p. 130). Further, “[c]ommunication, then, is the process in which we create and maintain the ‘objective’ world, and, in doing so, create and maintain the only human existences we can have” (Deetz, 1995 p. 203).

The central problem attended to is how social meanings are created. The focus is on people not as passive rule followers operating within pre-existing regulations, but as active agents — rule-makers within social contexts. Identity isseenasasocialconstruction,andstudyofsocialroleandculturalidentitylead to study of power and what happens when particular identities are chosen or ascribed by others. The concept of culture is central and is defined as the knowledge that people must learn to become appropriate members of a given society.Culturalcontextsincludethecommunityinwhichparticularcommunicative behaviours arise. Social approaches are mostly holistic — the study of

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

156 Varey

interaction requires the whole picture to understand how the multiple components are related.

Reddy (1993) observed that our major metaphor for communication takes ideas as objects that can be put into words, language as their container, thought as the manipulation of these objects, and memory as storage. Thus, in this view we send ideas in words through a conduit — a channel of communication — to someone else who then extracts the ideas from the words. A consequence of this metaphor is that we believe that ideas can be extracted and can exist independently of people. We also expect that when communication occurs someone extracts the same idea from the language that was put in by someone else. Meaning is taken to be a thing. But the conduit metaphor hides all of the effortthatisinvolvedincommunication,andmanypeopletakeitasadefinition ofcommunication.

Mantovani (1996) heralds the obsolescence of the old model of communication as the transportation of information from one person to another. No longer should we be satisfied with an outmoded model, which conceives of commu- nicationas“thetransportationofaninertmaterial—theinformationthatactors exchange with each other — from one point to another along a ‘pipeline.’” There is no account of the cooperation, which stimulates reciprocal responsibility for interaction and the series of subtle adaptations which occur among “interlocutors.” Nor does the old model consider that communication is possible only to the extent that participants have some common ground for shared beliefs, they recognise reciprocal expectations, and accept rules for interaction, which anchor the developing conversation. The old theory of communication treats knowledge as an object (i.e., as a body of information as independent facts to be processed) existing independently of the participants that can be carried through channels and possessed by a receiver when communicationissuccessful.Thedisseminationofinformationisnon-interac- tion or suspended interaction.

The alternative conception of communication is of a common construction of meanings. Information is not moved from one place to another — it is always a means to an end, produced and used by social actors to attain their goals in dailylife.

In the informational conception of social interaction, “I already have my required meaning for this (desired) situation, and I talk to you because I want to change your choices of possible actions — I seek to persuade.” In the communicational conception of social interaction, “Meaning is always incomplete and partial, and the reason that I talk with you is to better understand what

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 157

you and I mean, in the hope that we can find more satisfying ways of acting together — I seek to create and learn.”

Non-interaction is entirely monological. Others are treated as absent and distant.Informationalinteractionisahybridformthatisdialogicalinintent,but monological in execution. The other is treated as distantly present. Communicative interaction is dialogical. The other is treated as present. Social systems come about only though communication. One cannot not communicate in an interaction system — one must withdraw to avoid communicating. Society is anautopoieticsystemconsistingonlyofcommunication.Societalcommunication, on the other hand, is largely, but not exclusively, conducted as interaction.

Conclusions

What now, is my answer to the question I posed at the outset of this chapter?

Social interactions are socially constructed realities — we can see this phenomenon when we look for it. Two “tribes” explain the province, purpose, and product of social interaction quite differently, based on competing ontological and epistemological pre-suppositions and assumptions [see Varey (2000) for a meta-review in business and management literature]. In talking of an Interaction Society, we can attend to matters of technology or morality. Both, of course, have substantive value. Do we want the former to determine the latter, or vice versa? Human interaction both produces, and is subject to, deep philosophical differences.

It is not that interaction has become a social phenomenon, but rather that we can use the concept of interaction to better explain what we can observe in socialsettings.The“organisation,”forexample,arisesasthepatterningofsome people’s interactions, and this produces learning. Following Elias (1939), the social is the plural of interdependent people — interaction is requisite.

In a capitalist society that is dominated by the market mode of social coordination, the concept of “interaction” takes on a special meaning — responsive communication. However, communication can be interactional or interaction-free. It is better to reserve the term “communication” for dialogical interaction,andnotuseitinplaceof“informationdissemination.” Socialaction is not societal action: communication is possible without interaction — i.e., without presence.

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

158 Varey

A number of themes can be highlighted from this discussion.

What’s Wrong with Interactive Communication?

Why is the alternative conception of interaction better than the commonsense conception? Castells (1996, p. 359) is not alone in referring to the idea of “interactive communication,” but I ask what kind of communication is not interactive? Of course, the answer is given by the analysis of modes of interaction. Thus, we find that informational (monological) interaction is not communicational(dialogical).Communication isaninteractivesocialprocess.

Much so-called “interaction” is better termed and explained as “reaction” — the action of a person prompts (catalyses) a response by the other. For example, someone asks for directions or for a chocolate bar. The other describes a route with landmarks, or hands a chocolate bar from a box. An effectisproduced,butthereisnonecessityforreciprocityormutuality(another fuzzy term in common use). We might better speak of “re-action” in place of interactive when we mean responsive action. Perhaps “reciprocal” should be reserved for situations of giving in return (“give-and-take”) — what we have referred to earlier as exchange.

From Information Technology to Interaction Technology

In considering possible effects of the involvement of ICTs and PCTs, we are attendingtotheproblemofthespatialorganizationofsocialrelationships.ICTs and PCTs do impact on our lives, in terms both of relationships and social practices [see Katz & Aakhus (2002) and Hutchby (2001) for examination of this issue]. When persons are not in the presence of the other, their respective glances, looks, postural shifts, words spoken, tone of voice — that “carry” implications and meanings — are concealed or lost.

Information technologies make possible the mass reproduction of meaning for dissemination,yetthecoreprocessesoflearningandinnovationrequireadense network of face-to-face interaction that shape the way that, and the degree to which, ICT is absorbed into, and used within, societies. ICT adoption doesn’t necessarily enable a network of social interactions. Gergen (in Katz & Aakhus) explainsthatmonologictechnologiesofinteractionleadtomonologicpresence, providing information or simulation, moving from the collective to the private, removingorminimizinganytransformationthroughcollectivedeliberation.TV

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 159

and radio are fine examples of this. On the other hand, dialogic technologies of interaction, especially, for example, email, and also telephone and print, allow a high degree of dialogic engagement. What is created by insertion of these technologies, points out Gergen, is “absent presence.” The growth in ICT and PCT use diminishes the importance of face-to-face relations. There is more interaction, but of an increasingly shallow nature. The technologies divert and redirect attention, expanding the range of actual and imagined relationships. Absent presence makes a cultural shift in the form of a wholesale devaluation of depth of acquaintance to breadth/number of acquaintances. My Microsoft Outlook Address Book has an ever-increasing number of contact details, and the proportion of people registered therein with who I have active communication decreases each time an entry is made.

Castells (1995) points out that CMC has been the medium for communication for the most educated and the most affluent minority of the population of the most educated and affluent countries — it is not available to, nor used by, most people. Interaction mediated by ICT is a minority sport, it would seem. Habits of usage will be shaped by a cultural elite.

Castells also points out that “the symbolism of power embedded in face-to- face communication has not yet found its language in the new CMC” (p. 360) (written in the early 1990s). Email is replacing telephone conversation, but not face-to-face conversation — the return of the written word, according to some commentators. For others, email is a new form of orality. Castells suggests that we have an emergent new medium, mixing forms of communication that were previously separated in different domains of the mind (speech, writing) in a many-to-many mode of interaction.

CMC reinforces pre-existing social patterns rather than creating new networks

— it is used in addition to telephony and transportation — it expands the reach of networks, and enables more activity and more choice in patterns of time and place. However, this does not apply beyond the cosmopolitan elite, who live symbolically in a global frame of reference, unlike most people who hear and see only what happens among those present.

The mobile phone privatizes public spaces. There is physical presence, but mental absence. Private conversations are open and shared in public places. They allow instant contact and ensure availability, but is this freedom or control? PCT enable more and more frequent interaction. In society that explicitlyvaluesinteraction,wecanacquirenewcontactsandenlargeoursocial network. We can talk more with more people. But how much of this activity is talk with a reason? Much is emotionally empty chatter — texting for texting’s

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

160 Varey

sake. ICTs and PCTs may indeed shorten social distance, but in doing so weaken emotional bonds. Paradoxically we can be alone in a crowd — in contact, but increasingly lonely. Peer pressure in the form of obligation to chatterwithoutmeaningfulandemotionallyloadedrelationshipsisnomorethan constant connection. Maybe (excuse the telephonic pun), to be engaged is what we want!

Hutchby (2001) helpfully suggests the power of talk-in-interaction and the pervasive use of ICTs and PCTs for conversation. He highlights the inherent strangeness of talk-in-interaction with others as if they are co-present, when they are not. This technologised interaction emerges through the effects of the properties of the technologies that support many conversations. The systems are designed with a computational model in mind: encoding and decoding of intended meanings as messages. Hutchby traces this mindset back to Saussure (1915) and subsequently Shannon & Weaver’s (1949) process of monologic message transmission. What this conception of communication misses is that perception produces experience, but not meaning; interactants may or may not accomplishcommunication,andinteractionisforthecoordinationofaction.An interactionalconceptionofcommunicationisinherentlydialogical.

Dialogue and Appreciation in the Interaction Society

Dialogue has both practices and forums. We have witnessed the rise of “team working,” “cooperative” organisation, and similar calls premised on a social hope for “working together” over several decades, resulting in the term dialogue entering our everyday vocabulary. Participation processes have been designed and deployed in many spheres of work and local politics, and we have beeninvitedtoworktowardsandwithcommunicationandinformationtomake “better” decisions, and have been provided with “information age” resources for this purpose. What seems, however, to be absent in this is the logic of participationincommunicationandinformationprocesses.Thus,“dialogue”is productive,ratherthanreproductive,communicationalinteraction.Indialogue, there is continual social formation of consensus in interaction, beyond the intentionsandopinionsoftheparticipants.Adialogictheoryofcommunication is necessary for the practices of working together (Deetz & Simpson, 2003).

In a society constituted by interaction, the most likely occupation of members is influencing and being influenced through talk (conversation), determined by communicative acts, events, and styles.

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.

Informational and Communicational Explanations of Corporations 161

Sir Geoffrey Vickers (1983) refocused attention on the initiation and pursuit of desired relationships and the elusion of undesirable relationships. This is quite different from Herbert Simon’s earlier explanation of human behaviour as essentially goal-seeking. Every act of a person is interpreted by other people and so becomes communication only when meaning is attributed to it by the other(s), i.e., when it is perceived and appreciated. Vickers could find no accepted word to describe the attaching of meaning to perceived signals to create communication. He thus referred to this mental activity as “appreciation,” the code it uses as its “appreciative system,” and the state of the code as the “appreciative setting.”

Vickersclarifiedthenatureofthehumancommunicationproblem.Cultureand communication cannot be separated. For us to communicate and cooperate, wemustsharesomecommonassumptionsabouttheworldwelivein,andsome common standards by which to judge our own and each other’s actions. These shared epistemological assumptions must correspond sufficiently with social reality to make common action effective. The shared ethical assumptionsmust meet the minimal mutual needs that the members of our society have of each other. “Culture” is the shared basis of appreciation and action which communication develops within any political system (a corporation is simply a subsystem of wider society).

Philosophically, “the purpose of words is to give the same kind of publicity to thought as is claimed for physical objects” (Russell, 1979, p. 9). Pragmatically, “[c]ommunication is the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning” (Frey et al., 1991).

According to Kreps (1990), human communication occurs when a person responds to a message and assigns meaning to it. Specifically, we should be careful to define a message as any symbol or thing that people attend to and create meanings for in the communication process, whether or not intended by another person. Meanings are the mental images created to help us interpret what happens around us so that we develop an understanding. Human communicationisirreversible,boundtothecontextinwhichitoccurs(e.g.,time and place), and arises within relationships between communicators.

Acceptance arises from the apprehender’s choices, not the initiator’s intentions. Participants to a communicative event take part in a process of creating shared meaning. First we interpret the situation, then act, influencing one another.

We all have concerns, in response to each of which we construct an inner representation of the situation that is relevant to that concern. The Apprecia-

Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.