This paper argues that communication researchers could benefit from incorporating a rules approach as a supplement to more traditional methods of organizational analysis. Two major flaws in the methodology of traditional organizational analysis are noted: failing to account for actor or participant meanings--how the actor interprets relationships, roles, and interactions; and focusing too exclusively on organizational structures at the expense of the process that actors use to make sense of environmental input. The basic assumptions and constructs of a rules approach to organizational analysis are explained, centering on the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory advocated by W. Pearce and V. Cronen in 1980. An example of an organizational study using the CMM approach is offered to show how a rules conception of human action has the potential to make all of a researcher's data more interpretable. (Author/RL)