This Element presents and discusses the main trajectories in the evolution of the concept of ambiguity and the most relevant theoretical contributions developed around it. It specifically elaborates on both the intrinsic perspectives on ambiguity as an inherent part of organizational decision-making processes and the more recent strategic perspectives on discursively constructed strategic ambiguity. It helps illuminate the path ahead of organizational scholars and offers new avenues for future research. This is important given the ever more pervasive presence of ambiguity in and around organizations and societies.

"Eisenberg′s book is refreshing, in addition to its theoretical merits, for the presence of a distinctive human voice, unafraid to express passion, anger and hope. Readers will benefit enormously from the substance of his book, but also from its form." —HUMAN RELATIONS In Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity, Eric M. Eisenberg, an internationally recognized leader in the theory and practice of organizational communication, collects and reflects upon more than two decades of his writing. Strategic Ambiguities is a provocative journey through the development of a new aesthetics of communication that rejects fundamentalisms and embraces a contingent, life-affirming worldview. Strategic Ambiguities: Explores the role of language and communication in the construction of social structures and personal identities. Provides a useful intellectual and historical context for students through framing chapters and head notes developed especially for this volume. Chronicles the historical development of an important argument about communicating and organizing through the sustained focus on a single theorist. Intended Audience: This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Organizational Communication, Communication Theory, and Organizational Behavior in the fields of Communication, Business & Management, and Educational Leadership. "This collection of essays is insightful, thought-provoking, and forward-looking. Eric Eisenberg takes on challenging positions, writes in a cogent and accessible manner, and always stimulates new scholarship. This work will be an important teaching tool, not just for the innovative content of the writing, but also for the historical narrative of organizational communication embedded in it." —Steve May, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Lay audiences will find the text rich with evocative narratives even as the theoretical moves will engage students and teacher-scholars. This edited compilation is likely to serve as a springboard for future inquiry and an invaluable resource for teaching and learning in undergraduate and graduate communication courses." —THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION

Chan Su Jung provides a thorough review of goal ambiguity in the public sector, exploring the general assertions, arguments and empirical evidence regarding performance goal ambiguity, particularly highlighting its causes, consequences, and mediation effects. The author proposes a new conceptual framework for successful analysis of goal ambiguity that can effectively relate to diverse organizational and program characteristics.

Academics from a number of disciplines, and several practicing executives, discuss how managers can make effective strategic decisions amidst the uncertainties and ambiguity of major transitions, be they technological, financial, regulatory, or economic. Contributors draw lessons from the experiences of actual companies, and they offer maps and models for guiding effective action. Empirical studies reveal some proven practices for innovation in the face of adversity, and a study in contrasts shows how one company successfully reframed policy in response to a drastic environmental change, and how another succeeded by holding to a constant strategic plan in a changing environment.

Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Exploring the role of favors in social welfare systems in postwar, postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, this volume provides a new theoretical angle on links between ambiguity and power. It demonstrates that favors were not an instrumental tactic of survival, nor a way to reproduce oneself as a moral person. Instead, favors enabled the insertion of personal compassion into the heart of the organization of welfare. Managing Ambiguity follows how neoliberal insistence on local community, flexibility, and self-responsibility was translated into clientelist modes of relating and back, and how this fostered a specific mode of power.

Widely known as a leading intellectual, Zygmunt Bauman’s thinking is often categorized as sociology or philosophy. But his work has been hugely influential in other fields as well, not least within organization studies. From increasing management control and growing standardization of work activities, to the increase in uncertainty and insecurity experienced by contemporary workers, organizations themselves are becoming ever more ephemeral entities. Bauman’s themes: globalization, liquid modernity and postmodern ethics are arguably fundamental to contemporary notions of organization and management and his thinking has never been more relevant. However, despite the obvious and continuing influence of Bauman’s ideas on business studies, there has been no comprehensive attempt to chart his impact on organization theory. In this innovative and insightful collection, an international selection of leading management scholars explore key topics in current organizational discourse, including networked organizations, control and ambiguity, technologies, work and responsibility, extending Bauman’s liquid modernity to the "liquid organization". The book will be essential reading for scholars and academics and students in management and organizational theory, and also sociology, managing culture and organizational ethnography.

This volume presents a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the theories, evidence and methodological issues of contingency theory - one of the major theoretical lenses used to view organizations.