Invisibility and Visibility in Alternative Organizing: A Communicative and Cultural Model

Abstract

This study reengages organizational communication scholarship on invisibility and visibility through a cultural lens. Departing from Western-centered approaches, I deploy African feminisms to examine how organizational members communicatively negotiate invisibility and visibility in a different cultural logic and context. I focus on market women’s susu groups—grassroots organizations—in postconflict Liberia, West Africa. I conducted 100 hr of participant observation and 40 interviews with susu group members in Monrovia, Liberia. I unearth a communicative situational model to culture. At a micro-level, the model uncovers three situational dimensions—temporal, relational, and structural—that shape how organizational members negotiate invisibility and visibility. At a macro-level, the model contributes to emerging work on culture and organizing. In conclusion, the study moves past understandings of culture as a factor to consider underlying assumptions shaping how we conceptualize communicative processes, here invisibility and visibility.