François Cooren

Who is François Cooren?

François Cooren, Ph.D, is a French sociologist of organisational communication and, until 2008, the editor of Communication Theory. He completed his Ph.D. at the Department of communication of the Université de Montréal in 1996, under the supervision of James R. Taylor. He is now chairman of that same department, where he is full professor. Cooren also holds a postdoctoral degree from the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, in Belgium.

Cooren is currently serving his one-year term as President of the International Communication Association.

Cooren's research mainly focuses on organisational communication in mundane and emergency situations. He is part of what has come to be known in the field as the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, which proposes communication as the "site and surface" of organizations, meaning that the latter emerge from and are maintained by communication processes. This parts from what could be called conventional organizational communication, which views communication as a phenomenon taking place in pre-existing organizations. That particular point of view, inspired by the works of Taylor and Van Every, Weick and others, leads Cooren to use interaction analysis and conversation analysis as his main source of data, although, whereas other interaction or conversation analysts do not seek to explain anything beyond the observed interaction, Cooren, following the works of Harold Garfinkel or even Gabriel Tarde, uses the micro - the interactions - to find an explanation to what takes place at the macro - organizational - level.