Engaging Organizational Communication
Volume 17, Number 3 Article by Shiva Kumar Srinivasan September, 2005
Engaging Organizational Communication: Theory and Research : Edited by Steve May and Dennis K Mumby, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005, pp. 308, Price: $39.95 (paper). :
Is it possible to design an anthology of multiple perspectives on organisational theory and research without seeking recourse to the standard format of a handbook? Steve May and Dennis Mumby, the editors of this volume, argue that it is indeed possible to assemble an anthology with a personal touch, for research students. The term that May and Mumby invoke for this personal touch is `engagement'. As the title announces at the very outset, and as leading scholars of organisational communication spell out in the volume, the problem of theory choice is not innocent. It is animated by a passion that determines the extent to which a scholar is able to `engage' in a given domain and such engagement often marks the formative theoretical moments in the intellectual lives of the researchers. Such an approach to editing an anthology of theory and research not only promotes `multiple perspectives' as the democratic thing-to-do, but also gives the novice research student an opportunity to understand the range of choices that areavailable in organisational communication
The focus then is not on research on particular areas of organisational communication like conflict, leadership, etc., but on the larger questions of ontology and epistemology which are presupposed in theoretical work. The theoretical approaches included in the volume are those that not only `dominate' the work being done presently in North America, but those without which a researcher in organisational communication cannot claim to be in touch with the latest developments in the discipline. The perspectives in contention are the following: postpositivism, social constructionism, rhetorical approaches, critical theory, postmodernism, and feminism. In addition to these macro-level perspectives, three meso-level theoretical perspectives — structuration, worldview, and globalisation are included because of their `formative influence on current research trends' in the field of organisational communication.
Each of the methods given above is set out in a separate chapter. The contributors are or have been members of communication faculties in North America and are not necessarily writing for a business school audience. Their focus is on a social science notion of organisational communication that draws mainly on organisational theory. Here organisations are compared to discursive entities and the working assumption is that the attributes of a `discourse' are applicable to organisations since language can then be understood as serving a methodological function which is not reducible to mere reporting. Most of the assumptions that they work with are fairly well-established in critical theory and even in critical management studies but relatively new in organisational studies; hence the importance of this volume. The political stance of most of these approaches is informed by the post-1960s liberalism in North America.
An `organisation' in organisational communication studies, is more an instantiation of `organising in society' rather than `organising for an economy', i.e., a firm or a company. The focus of these scholars is to generate social descriptions of inequity in organisations (which itself becomes symbolic of society) rather than work out how an economic agent can do better for himself or herself through a mastery of communication techniques. In other words, these studies are replete with ethical appeals to include those traditionally disadvantaged and who therefore have not been able to participate in the mainstream of socio-economic or organisational life. This is also interestingly the paradox that research programmes in communication in business schools will confront in the years to come since their traditional focus has been on skill-building rather than on theoretical inquiry. The funding for these programmes is generally made available by the economic right, but the students who gravitate to these programmes hail from the cultural left. The resolution of this paradox by moving towards more inclusive practices not only in the process of organising, but in the practices of representation, is one of the main challenges for organisational scholars.
The methodological agenda of the book is to set out the basic postulates of research in each of the perspectives of organisational communication. It begins with Steven Corman's account of postpositivism in its relation to classical positivism and argues that those who routinely attack positivism are attacking a `straw man' since postpositivists have in fact incorporated the traditional critique of positivism and recognise the role of interpretation and human contexts in science. They are also willing to use transcendental reasoning, adopt transformational models, and recognise emergent (as opposed to absolute) objectivity by differentiating between the `context of discovery' and the `context of justification' in the history of science. Most of the work in this area is a response to the critique of positivism proper by the philosopher of science, Karl Popper (who is described as an `early postpositivist') and others..
It then goes on to two methods that are generally seen as very different from positivism: social constructionism and rhetoric. While positivism is preoccupied with the logic of scientific discovery, these methods are interested in the acts of creation and persuasion. Brenda Allen's take on how she understood retroactively that she was always a social constructionist (whose race had profoundly affected her career choices) is one of the most interesting narratives of engagement in this volume. George Cheney and Daniel Lair in their piece on rhetoric are concerned with the `management of meaning' and its relationship to ideological forces in society. Rhetorical analysis helps them to understand the role and forms of hierarchy in organisations and the forms of persuasion used to legitimise the role of power and authority. They are also interested in the rise of marketing and communications (including public relations) as professions and the logic that structures their discursive positioning.
The emergence of critical theory in organisational studies is charted by Stanley Deetz. He attributes the importance of this European school as a response to the discursive traditions of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. The theories of these writers forced scholars to re-evaluate their understanding of class conflict, the link between knowledge and power, and the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. The central link between these thinkers becomes the notion of ideology, or more specifically, the critique of ideology. Deetz, then, is interested in exploring how the critique of ideology in Western thought has implications for the role of reification, the `universalisation of class interests', the `dominance of technical rationality', and the generation of `consent' in organisations. The question that scholars using this method ask with endless astonishment is this: why do people consent to the loss of freedom so readily in the face of illegitimate authority? This was a question that was first asked in the context of Nazi Germany, but is now asked of everyday life in democracies!
The theorists of postmodernism may appear to draw from literary and philosophical sources in the French academy, as opposed to critical theorists who draw from the German academy, but are, in reality, in debt to the same trinity of thinkers mentioned above. As Bryan Taylor points out in his contribution to this volume, they are preoccupied with the dissolution of colonial empires, the shift from an industrial to an information-led economy, the role of the global media in shaping public opinion, the reinvention of art and literature through the notion of the fragment, the suspicion of master narratives including those of the master thinkers themselves, and on the semantic shift in the notion of the human from the `individual' to the `subject' (since the individual is subject to forces that are beyond his or her control whether they be structural or historical). The implications of these historical developments for the process of organising and communication are brought out in a compare-and-contrast format where the term `modern' is applied to industrial organisations and the term `postmodern' is applied to post-industrial organisations that were first described by Daniel Bell in 1973.
Feminists too have their take on organisational communication as Karen Ashcraft demonstrates in her piece. The focus of the feminist approach has been to invoke gender as the link concept between the private and the public domains. The practices of gender, they argue, are social constructs, but are naturalised by patriarchy and routinely conflated with sex. The theoretical gap between these two concepts is the interstitial opening that is necessary for the reading of communication flows in organisations and society as a whole. Ashcraft reviews briefly the history of feminist scholarship in organisational studies before concluding that `communication is the process through which gender, power, and organisation are accomplished' without denying the role of materialist practices in the construction of feminist theories of subjectivity.
The final methodological approach is structuration theory. Marshall Poole and Robert McPhee argue that this method works by invoking the relationship between three privileged terms: system, practice and structure. But these concepts presuppose the availability of an agent, the modalities of whose action can be spelt out. These modalities that characterise social interaction generate another triad: meaning, power and norms. These triads are understood in relation to two coordinates: space and time. The significance of this theory is that it helps scholars understand the role of human agency in bringing about change in a given structure, and the inevitable `role of power and domination in structuring processes'. Structuration theory is of use at the levels of the individual, the group, the organisation, and the interorganisational. This theory is most closely associated with the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, a political moderate, who argues that `a politics of lifestyle choice will slowly replace the politics of emancipation of the past'. Hence, perhaps, the need to adopt moderation in our critiques of organisations as well, which are but creatures of time
In addition to being creatures of time, organisations are also `forms of life'. James Taylor, in his account of `engaging organisations through worldviews', wonders where it is that organisations come from. Invoking the deconstructionist theory of Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, Taylor focuses on acts of `self-constitution' to explain the genesis of organisations. His resonant example of an organisation is nothing less than the United States itself. Taylor picks up Derrida's analysis of the signing of the Declaration of American Independence. Those who signed this document did not actually have the authority to do so since they did it in the name of the United States which did not exist in the first place such that it could authorise their signature. The circular relationship is captured well by Derrida when he writes that `the signature invents the signer'. It is moments of self-constitution through language that Taylor seeks to highlight in his attempt to understand the genesis of organisations.
The final perspective is that of the role of globalisation and its theorists in helping us to understand the flows of organisational communication. Cynthia Stohl points out that the theories of globalisation can be understood under two axes: convergence and divergence. Convergence models tend to be optimistic and invoke instrumental and/or technical rationality for their justification. Divergence theories are more pessimistic and bemoan the loss of cultural differences and the human cost of globalisation. Stohl surveys the various theories of globalisation before concluding that in the changing academic landscape, globalisation theory is here to stay and must be factored into our understanding of organisational communication. Stohl enumerates the principles shared by the theories of globalisation including, `increase in economic interdependence', the intensification of forms of exchange, diffusion of ideas through communication and information based technology, `the compression of time and space', `new realignments and restructuring of social interaction', and an increasing `global consciousness through processes of self-reflexivity'. What are the implications of these momentous changes for organisational communication? It is to the theoretical elaboration of these changes, Stohl argues, that scholars of organisational communication should now dedicate themselves.
The editors however conclude by saying that organisational scholars should focus not only on theory building, but also work towards revitalising the act of teaching. Teaching, too, is a form of ethical `engagement' given the pressure of student numbers and the excessive preoccupation with questions of utility in most curricula where there is, at best, time and resources for `training' in the rudimentary skills rather than in the cultivation of life-long learning. The task of the teacher is, after all, not just the transmission of knowledge, but the facilitation of a learning environment so that students and teachers can once again experience not only the joy of learning, but of learning from each other in the true spirit of knowledge workers.
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