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Although the digital transformation of knowledge production has put communication front and center in the production and recreation of academic fields, research on scientific communities still mostly promotes an actor-centric or institutionalist understanding of academic fields. This, we argue, points to the need for a digital transformation of our understanding of academic fields, one that does justice to the important role of communication in the production and recreation of academic fields. Therefore, in this paper, we draw on the "communicative constitution of organizations" (CCO) view to explore how academic fields are communicatively constituted. Our GABEK -based discourse analysis focuses on the communicative constitution of the academic field of corporate social responsibility. Our findings illustrate how academic fields are constituted through the enactment of three communicative practices: embedding, diverging, and converging. Furthermore, our results indicate how the communicative constitution of academic fields occurs through the sequential enactment of these practices. Our theoretical framework extends the literatures on scientific communities and CCO by beginning to develop a communication view of academic fields. These ideas also have implications for the digital transformation of social theory more generally. • Communication is key to the (re)production of academic fields in the digital age • Like other academic fields, CSR is constituted through communicative practices • These communicative practices include embedding, diverging, and converging • Academic fields are constituted through their sequential enactment • Practice theory might be a language for the digital transformation of social theory [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffuse as well as specific information is not solely found in organizations, but it also sprawls all over the Internet. In our article we will show how scattered linguistic knowledge can be selected, processed and structured with the aid of the software WinRelan to promote a holistic understanding of complex social phenomena and to facilitate decision-making that is accepted and supported by those concerned. Based on this problem-oriented background the method GABEK (GAnzheitliche BEwältigung von Komplexität-- holistic processing of complexity, © Josef Zelger, Innsbruck, 1990-2002) was developed and implemented in the software program WinRelan (Windows Relation Analysis © Josef Zelger, Innsbruck). WinRelan facilitates the analysis of large unstructured and controversial everyday language data samples. Automated, computerized steps of data processing are accompanied by the semantic work of the researcher. WinRelan offers different PC-supported operations, whereby each of these procedures leads to the integration and linkage of the multi layered distributed knowledge of the people concerned. Results are conceptual knowledge systems, empirical generalizations, cognitive concepts, causal assumptions and value systems in the form of hierarchically ordered text groups, association graphs, evaluation profiles, cause-effect structures, relevance lists, etc. The procedure is applied in theory construction as well as for the purpose of providing orientation and in preparing decision processes in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]