Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes
Summary of Organizational Communications by Miller
critical approaches, classical approaches: bureaucracy, scientific Management, the human Relations School, organizational culture, power Systems, gender, differences and discrimination at work, types of Leadership and control
Chapter 1: Introducing Organizational Communication.
Human = various organizational memberships & communicative connections.
Organizational control = dynamic communication, organizational stakeholders struggle to maximize
Defining “Organisational Communication”
W. Charles Redding: all complex organisations exhibit 4 essential features:
1. Interdependence:
the integration of interconnection determines success or failure
change in one aspect of interdependence can create changes in the entire system.
2. Differentiation of Tasks & Functions:
principle of division of labour, in which members specialize in particular tasks, division into
departments
3. Goal Orientation:
Barnard:(1) there are persons able to communicate with each other,
(2) willing to contribute to action
(3) to accomplish a common purpose
Organization vs. Members (employees, stakeholders)
Increased productivity: pollute environment, , overlook safety regulations, move facilities → cheaper
4. Control Mechanisms:
Control is a central, defining feature
• The goals & interests of employees & the larger organization conflict → control necessary to
achieve coordinated, goal-oriented behaviour.
5 different types of control:
i. Direct control:
− direction in explicit ways, monitoring of behaviour
− superior-subordinate relations, authority forces worker
ii. Technological control:
− less direct, organizational technology,
type + speed of work
− service-oriented economy: customers as subjects to technological control.
− increase efficiency & profitability.
− electronic surveillance: no certainity about supervision → forced to behave at
all times.
iii. Bureaucratic control:
− western democratic societies: gain advancement on merit rather than based
on one’s connections.
− system of rules, formal structures, roles → enable & constrain activities of
organization members.
− highly effective means of coordinating & controlling activity
iv. Ideological control:
− development of system of values, identification of employees with
organization
− little direct supervision required
− Job interviews: making sure employee “fits” the culture,
indoctrinate new employees through training programs.
− engaged, energized workforce; oppressive to many organization members:
asks employee to invest identity/ sense of self in company.
v. Disciplinary control:
− individual is both subject & the object of knowledge.
− Control is exercised through constitutions of the person who makes decisions
− creates the conditions of possibility in which we act.
→ decreasing levels of direct coercion, increasing levels of participation by employees in their own control
→increasingly sophisticated forms of organisational control require similarly sophisticated understanding of the
role of communication
, Communication Process
• organizations exist through communication, creating complex systems of meaning (“organizations”)
• Communication made possible/ constrained by the institutionalized rules & structures (developed over
time)
• basic constitutive process → experience, describing an already existing reality, creation of people’s
social reality.
• Communication: dynamic on-going process of creating & negotiating meanings through interactional
symbolic practices, including conversation, metaphors, rituals, stories, dress & space.
• Organizational communication: process of creating & negotiating collective, coordinated systems of
meaning through symbolic practices oriented toward the achievement of organisational goals.
Framing Theories of Organisational Communication.
• metatheoretical framework: “theory about theories” →examine the underlying assumptions
• “crisis of representation” - Jameson, 1984
= challenging ideas that knowledge consists of a body of facts that represent an objectively existing
reality, independent from human perception & experience
• 2 levels of understanding:
1. knowledge claims researchers make about the world.
epistemological dimension (how we come to know things), reflecting belief in possibility of making
knowledge claims that accurately reflect/ represent an objectively existing world
“crisis” = recent emergence of challenges to model
2. issue of “voice”
(which groups in our society have the opportunity & resources to speak & represent own/ groups
interests) → increasingly complex, society has become more diverse.
→ increasingly complex perspectives to representational model of knowledge = discourses
worldview made up of a community of scholars, communicate about research, debate the strengths &
weaknesses of theories
5 discourses:
1. Functionalism: representation, human science, world vs. perception
2. Interpretivism: understanding, world as a social construct through communication, sense-
making
3. Critical theory: suspicion, power shapes social construction of world
4. Postmodernism: vulnerability, multiple realities, reality is textual
5. Feminism: empowerment, reality is socially constructed based on genders, communication
→ particular relationship to modernist tradition
Modernism = historical epoch, science, rationality, progress are dominant themes.
altered humans’ relationship to world
notion of individual as a rational, thinking being
organization as an institutional form is a product of modernism
machine metaphor: explaining and seeing an organization as machines
→point out otherwise unseen aspects de-emphasize certain aspects of an organization.
• Specialization (division of labor)
• standardization: replaceability, standardized machines/ -parts → easily replaceable
• predictability: problem with the machine can be fixed/ changed through rational thinking
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