Working alongside a suicide prevention nonprofit in its early stages of formal organizing, this project utilizes qualitative research methodology to explore the roles of authority and ventriloquism in decision-making situations. Specifically focused on partnership and collaboration-related decisions, the analysis utilized participant observation, textual analysis, and semi-structured interviews to analyze questions regarding decision-making moments.
Exploring these moments of decision-making from a Communication Constitutes Organization (CCO) framework, this study contributes to understanding authority and ventriloquism in decision-making. It emphasizes the importance of both human and nonhuman elements that (re)constitute the organization itself. Some of the important nonhuman elements this study draws attention to are emotions. Additionally, the study highlights the presence of multiple vents at play in the same decision-making situation. Finally, the analysis complicates notions of authority, understanding it both as communicatively negotiated and as a resource that can be assigned and transferred depending on the situation at hand.</p
