n social sciences, coordinated management of meaning (CMM) "theorizes communication as a process that

allows us to create and manage social reality".[1]

People have unique interpretations of the world around them - they have different "meanings" of what they

encounter. These meanings/interpretations are dependent on myriad factors including history, personality,

affiliations etc. Through communication, an underlying process takes place in which communities negotiate a

common or conflicted interpretation of the world around them thereby creating a social reality in which the

community lives. CMM advocates that these meanings can be managed in a productive way so as to improve

the general state of the community by coordinating and managing the meaning-making process.

Much of the development of the theory consists of heuristic models and concepts that enable the user to

perceive and describe the ongoing processes of communication.

CMM heavily relies on three basic processes: coherence, coordination, and mystery. Separately and sometimes

in combination, these processes help to clarify and explain how social realities are created

through conversation.

History and orientation[edit]

The theory of CMM was developed in the mid-1970s by W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon E. Cronen. The cluster

of ideas in which CMM emerged has moved from the periphery toward greater acceptance and CMM has

continued to evolve along a trajectory from an interpretive social science to one with a critical edge and then to

what its founders call a "practical theory".

CMM is one of an increasing number of theories that see communication as "performative" (doing things, not

just talking "about" them) and "constitutive" (the material substance of the social world, not just a means of

transmitting information within it). In CMM-speak, "taking the communication perspective" means looking at

communication rather than through it, and seeing communication as the means by which we make the objects

and events of our social worlds.

The "communication perspective" entails a shift in focus from theory to praxis.[3] CMM concepts and models

are best understood as providing tools for naming aspects of performance. The hierarchy model of actors'

meanings, for example, does not purport to describe a fixed number of levels or a necessary relationship

among those levels. Rather, it serves to discipline and guide perception of the process of communication by

asking: What stories are the communicators using to make sense of their experience and to guide their actions?

How have the communicators sorted these stories out in terms of their relative importance in this specific

situation? What changes in these stories themselves or in the pattern of context-and-contextualized stories

occur during or as a consequence of coordinated actions with others?