Abstract

The balance between the permanent, as reflected in truth, determinism, prediction and control, and rationality, and the changing, as seen in free will, chaos, rationalities, and understanding has favored the permanent in Western culture of the last 2,000 years. This dissertation presents the case for the flux, seeking a new balance that recognizes circularity over the binary, argues for the end of the value of the mind/body duality, suggests the recognition of multiple rationalities, presents the evidence for chaos and complexity, and finally, offers the concept of Contributive Complexity to situate organizational communication research. ;Contributive complexity suggests the utilization of a broader base of research tools than has been applied widely in organizational communication studies, including phenomenology, hermeneutics, permanence and flux, chaos, complexity, and contributive complexity, all designed to explore organizing where the central issue is communication. The argument proposed advocates that the nature of complexity denies reductionalism and resituates communication research within the concept of "talking the becoming" where organizational study prospers from engagement and emergence as opposed to isolation of variables for study