A fast-growing social media marketing company, TechCo encourages all of its employees to speak up. By promoting open dialogue across the corporate hierarchy, the firm has fostered a uniquely engaged workforce and an enviable capacity for change. Yet the path hasn't always been easy. TechCo has confronted a number of challenges, and its experience reveals the essential elements of bureaucracy that remain even when a firm sets out to discard them. Through it all, TechCo serves as a powerful new model for how firms can navigate today's rapidly changing technological and cultural climate.

Catherine J. Turco was embedded within TechCo for ten months. The Conversational Firm is her ethnographic analysis of what worked at the company and what didn't. She offers multiple lessons for anyone curious about the effect of social media on the corporate environment and adds depth to debates over the new generation of employees reared on social media: Millennials who carry their technological habits and expectations into the workplace.

Marshaling insights from cultural and economic sociology, organizational theory, economics, technology studies, and anthropology, The Conversational Firm offers a nuanced analysis of corporate communication, control, and culture in the social media age.

"[A] well-written, insightful ethnographic study." - strategy+business

"The right book just at the right time in the right place. . . . An excellent ethnographic account of organizational life." - Organization Studies

"Turco does an excellent job....In part, this is the result of the method she chose: ethnographic research of a company that is at the forefront of the social media revolution. In part, it is the result of her accessible writing style; last but not least, it is the result of her deep knowledge of organizational theories." - American Journal of Sociology

"A rare and wonderful empirical example of life in a digital startup." - Contemporary Sociology

"This book is an excellent addition to the field of publications. . . . Turco accompanies this emotional analysis with rigorous academic context, but this does not impede accessibility." - Isreal Book Review

"[Turco's] efforts greatly contribute to shaping the academy's understanding of millennial impact on corporate culture. . . . Highly recommended." - Choice