Born on December 13, 1928, Taylor received his BA and MA from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick in 1949 and 1950.
[1] Back in Canada, Taylor started his career as radio and television producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Ottawa in 1956, where in 1963 he became Regional Supervisor.
In 1970 he moved to the Université de Montréal, where he was appointed Professor at the newly founded Department of Communication.
[2] Drawing from research in fields such as organizational psychology (Karl E. Weick), ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel, Deirdre Boden), phenomenology (Alfred Schütz) and collective minding (Edwin Hutchins), Taylor developed an original theory of organizational communication, suggesting that communication is the "site and surface" of organizations,[3] rather than a phenomenon taking place within pre-existing organizations.
The line of thought initiated by James Taylor has come to be known as "The Montreal School" of organizational communication, sometimes referred to as TMS, and has been acknowledged as an original theory by such authors as Haridimos Tsoukas, Linda Putnam, Karl E. Weick, Barbara Czarniawska[citation needed].