Put on your waders, we're going in deep...
Critical Approaches in OrgComm adopt a radical frame of reference by considering orgs as sites of domination and that theorists can emancipate people from the dominating forces, taking an active role in creating change.
One heralded agent for change is Karl Marx.
Marx was a German intellect who thought that there was an inherent imbalance between owners and workers in a capitalist society, and that eventually the workers would revolt.
- Critical theorists believe that certain societal structures and processes lead to fundamental imbalances of power.
- These imbalances lead to alienation and oppression for certain social classes and groups.
- The role of the theorist is to explore and uncover these imbalances and bring them to the attention of the oppressed.
1. Power is the most important term to critical theorists, and it is related to constructs of control and domination.
- In the radical approach, theorists are concerned with the deep structure that produces and reproduces relationships in org structure - patterns.
- Substructure - economic and production base
- Modes of production - economic conditions that underlie production
- Imbalances therein create conflict between workers and owners, leading to alienation.
Org narratives can be looked at as they potentially legitimize dominate forms of org reality and lead to ways to react to things making a script of the meaning of the organization - dogma.
4. Ideology - Ideology defined in this context is the assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events.
- This is more than a set of beliefs and attitudes, it structures thought and controls interpretations of reality. This tells us what exists, what is good, what is possible.
- Ideology also deals with assumptions that are rarely questioned or scrutinized.
- The subjugated group often becomes complicit in the control (power) process.
- The critical theorist here is like a psychoanalyst, they break down resistance to reveal social structures and processes that have lead to hegemony.
Two Critical Approaches in Communication
I. The Theory of Concertive Control - Power relationships can be transformed in an era of team-based and alternative forms of orgs.
Three broad strategies for exerting control:
- Simple control - direct and authoritarian exertion of control in the workplace.
- Technological control - exerted through technology like in assembly lines or computer programs. (Bristol compressors and WordPerfect layoffs.)
- Bureaucratic control - based on the power of structure and the rational/legal rules.
Discipline - Communication interactions develop a system of rewards and punishments that conform or deviate from the values identified as important by the work group.
The Discipline is meted out by the work group.
II. Feminist Theories of OrgComm - Gender permeates organizational life and many bureaucracies are patriarchal. It would appear that traditional characteristics of logic, aggressiveness and competitiveness prevail.
The Framing of Sexual Harassment
- Women tend to "story" sexual harassment in ways that normalize it and supress further discussion of it as an oppressive influence in the workplace.
- Talked the talk of cooperation and flexibility but did not walk the walk.
- The org was marked by emotion and conflict and dismissed as just the way women are.
- Many women played into the sexual stereotypes of women.
- Women felt empowered to work with other women who could empathize.
- How women use or don't use their bodies in the work place, how they see themselves physically and what it means emotionally.
