Communication & Organisation 65

The current crises, with climate change and the environment at the forefront, are prompting us to take stock of the changes underway. Information and communication sciences, and more particularly studies in the field of organisational communication, can help to shed light on what is at stake in these changes, and their transformative impact. The notion of “alter”, coupled with that of the organisation, appears to be a relevant way of approaching this transformative impact, because of the diversity of its variations and its heuristic potential: alteration of the organisational system in place, the failings of which are said to have been revealed by the crises; alterity as a marker of a form of functioning that comes into play in repairing, continuity or substitution; as an alternative to a type of functioning deemed problematic. This issue explores a number of questions: what alter-organisations do organisational and managerial transformations in the context of pandemics and ecological crises reflect, and what organisational alternatives are being performed and/or devised to meet current health, social and ecological challenges? The texts in this issue refer to practices arising from the pandemic to introduce the idea of “alter”; to the ecological crisis, through the analysis and questioning of actions of hopeful struggles; or else they link the question of “alter” to other phenomena calling for, reflecting on, or criticising alternative forms of organisation.