Document Acts Create Social Reality

Documents don’t merely record what already exists, they bring new social entities into being.

A marriage certificate doesn’t document a pre-existing legal state. The act of signing it creates the marriage as a legal entity. A job offer letter doesn’t describe an employment relationship, it constitutes one.

This extends Searle’s speech act theory. Speech acts are ephemeral, the promise exists only at the moment of utterance. Document acts provide temporal extension: the signed contract persists, can be referenced, transferred, revoked.

The implication for organizations: corporate structure isn’t just represented in documents. The org chart, the employment contracts, the policy documents, these are the substrate from which organizational reality is made.

Smith (2012) puts it directly: documents don’t only register information, they “create a variety of social and institutional powers, which in turn allow the establishment of ways of life in society.”

Related: 06-atom—bona-fide-vs-fiat-objects