Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations
: The Critical Approach to Organizations o Theorizes how power is sustained and manipulated through communication and seeks to unmask unjust and unwise communication practices within organizations Social constructionist Critical and Phenomenological traditions Interpretive theory Explored through qualitative research, including textual analysis. ethnography o Theorizes how organizations can promote "stakeholder participation" allowing everyone who will be affected by a policy to have voice in the decision making process Corporate Colonization and Control of Everyday Life o Corporations/Organizations "control and colonize" modern life "Corporate colonization": encroachment of modern corporations into every area of life outside of the workplace -"We need to consider in depth what type of business this is, who the moral claimants are, how privilege is organized, and what the possible democratic responses are" o Critical because: Problematizes the assumption that what is good for the organization is good for it's membership Aims to reveal practices that undermine democratic participation Aims to promote democratic practices that produce greater quality, innovation, and fairness with organization/corporations : Information or Communication Transmission o Information Model A view that communication is merely a conduit for the transmission of information about the "real" world :All communication is constitutive : Value free information is meaning in formation - Corporate Information -- is an outcome of under democratic processes that usually hurts democracy o Communication Model A view that language is the principle medium through which social reality is created and sustained Language is part of the production of the thing that we treat as self-evident and natural within society Seeks to replace "managerial control" with "codetermination" Codetermination -- collaborative decision making; participatory democracy in the workplace Strategy: Overt Managerialism
o Managerialism -- a systematic logic, set of routine practices, and ideology that values control over all other concerns Organizes relationships into either/or associations with power -"Love it or leave it", "my way or the highway" : Relies on managerial power to accomplish outcomes : Top-down mode of organizational communication Consent: Allegiance and Covert Control o Consent -- the process by which employees actively, though unknowingly. accomplish managerial interests in a faulty attempt to fulfill their own Consent is the term I use to designate the variety of situations and processes in which someone actively, though unknowingly, accomplishes the interests of the others in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own interest. The person is complicit in his or her own victimization o Systematically distorted communication -- operating outside of employees' awareness, a form or discourse that restricts what can be said or even considered Discursive closure -- suppression of conflict without employees realizing they are complicit in their own censorship :"Common sense" : The structures of who can speak, what can be spoken about, and with what authority :Artificially limited options - Involvement: Free Expression, No Voice o Involvement -- stakeholders' free expression of ideas that may, or may not, affect managerial decisions The "suggestion box" :Feigns a commitment to free speech and a marketplace of ide