Whereas many organizational communication texts address internal communication processes, few consider the efforts that companies expend to communicate with external stakeholders. Likewise, many texts that concentrate on public relations or advertising consider external communication, but fail to give attention to internal communication. Combining both points of view, this text explains how an entire organization operates through enactments of personnel and external stakeholders.

Central to this book is a concern for meaning and its influence on the performance of jobs in response to expectations of co-workers and external publics. The concept of narrative is used to explain how individual and organization performance is the expression of personae that are best when enacted jointly -- in varying degrees of coordination -- to satisfy mutual performance expectations. Narrative explains the power of organizational meaning, interpersonal contacts, group performance, stakeholder negotiation, and internal and external organizational zones of meaning -- assumptions that are shared by people who enact an organization through coordinated efforts.