Review excerpts: Communication as organizing: Empirical and theoretical explanations in the dynamic of text and conversation (2006) "Unusually for an edited book, this text offers strong insights and cogency of argument throughout. In general, in my opinion, it manages to maintain a discursive focus while avoiding the exaggerated claims for the value of its approach that often mar this kind of endeavour". Dennis Tourish, (2007) Professor at the Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Themed book review: Communication, discourse and leadership (in press). "The editors muse that one idea behind their book is to see different traditions within organizational communication as complementary dimensions of one problematic rather than as competitors. For example, they see the need to analyze 'both/and' consensus and dissensus within organization, rather than using 'either/or' logic. If the book succeeds in bringing such unity to our fragmented field that will indeed be a major achievement." Andrew P. Blundell (2007), University of Calgary, Canadian Journal of Communication, 32 2, pp. 313-15. The Emergent Organization (2000) "Taylor and Van Every have written nothing less than a book about organizations as a form of life. What makes this book significant for psychology is that it offers a means to remove longstanding obstacles that have weakened psychological treatments of organization, obstacles, such as the insistence on distinguishing between micro and macroprocesses, on treating cognition as mental rather than communicative, and on deploying the concept of agency in the narrower sense of acting rather than in the broader sense of acting for." Karl Weick (2000) Contemporary Psychology, APA Review of Books Vol. 46, No. 2. pp. 166-168, This is an interesting book, which seeks to locate, that is, to instantiate ´organization´ in layers of on-going discourse. Thus, organization is ´emergent´ rather than existing or extant...The overall result is a mapping organization instantiation which would support the discourse analyst, the conversation analyst, or the ethnomethodologist in undertaking studies of organizational problems...On the right agenda, this text has the kind of authority that would appeal to major corporations and large businesses as well as smaller governmental and administrative bodies. It has a Franco-Canadian touch, a range of associated literature spanning the Euro-US divide and is, in consequence, an important integrative work". Russell Kelly, Health Studies, University of Central Lancashire Discourse and Society 13 (1), pp. 154-156, The Vulnerable Fortress (1993) "This book looks at the impact of office automation on organizations. The title alludes to the way in which social, political and economic institutions are threatened by the intrusion of new technologies. What is most apparent, according to the authors, is that office automation has underscored the divergence between theory and practice in organizations. So long as the theory was not operationalized, it did not matter if the theory was inaccurate. In fact, the theoretical descriptions of organizational process served a certain symbolic function. However, when a system is designed and run on the basis of flawed theory, the theory can become a very expensive millstone...To program a computer to contribute to the decision-making dimension of organizations, one has to make certain assumptions about organizational process. These assumptions are (too often) drawn from the conventional perceptions of organizational process as set out in symbolic models... Students of organizational communication and new media should find this book instructive and worthwhile reading. Professional managers and executives, as well as system designers, will also be interested in it". Sherry Ferguson (1994) University of Ottawa, Canadian Journal of Communication. Vol. 19, pp.247-248