Stanley Deetz

Power, Discourse, and the Workplace: Reclaiming the Critical Tradition

In the past ten yean the critical tradition has made significant contributions to communication studies in organizations, challenging the hegemony of mainstream, functionalist approaches. As a result, issues of power and control have become legitimate areas of study for organizational researchers. This chapter assesses that critical turn and argues that, while such a move was long overdue, its effect hat been diffused because of a lack of clarity in conceptualizing the relationships among power, discourse, and the workplace. As such, after delineating the seminal contributions of Mara, Braverman, and Burawoy to the question of workplace control, we suggest how this issue can be more powerfully conceptualized in modem, dispersed-ownership, managerially oriented organizations. By focusing on the relationship between power and discourse, we show how particular systems of interest representation emerge in the modem organization. Our aim is to demonstrate that the configuration of power in organizations is jus...

Metaphor analysis of social reality in organizations

Many organizational theorists have adopted models of organizations as consensual social realities. These realities are often inadequately described because the process by which they are produced and reproduced in organizations is not discussed. This paper briefly describes how this process takes place in discourse, providing a basis for analyzing organizational social realities. Following research on the metaphorical structure of language, a method of metaphor analysis which reveals these meaning structures is described. Analysis of metaphors displayed in organizational talk allows the explication of the implied possibilities inherent in the current organizational reality.

Words without things: Toward a social phenomenology of language

In prepredicative experience language is constitutive of the possibilities for meaning and action. Language as a tradition— meaningful prior to subjective existence—gives a “world” to things, thereby enabling things to acquire a particular nature and to exhibit possibilities for action to man. Communication and understanding are possible, not because words have unambiguous referents, but because speaking develops an interpretive stance in which the nature of things is disclosed.

Critical-Cultural Research: New Sensibilities and Old Realities

Critical perspectives on cultural research in organizations have received much attention recently. Future directions for this work are explored here through a review of central concepts and research. Continuation, but with greater theoretical focus, is expected for studies of language, metaphor, stories, and myths, which investigate the creation and maintenance of domination through systematically distorted communication. New work with participative research procedures holds promise of providing greater organizational change. Generally, future research will be more empirical, focus more on structures and material conditions, and be more closely related to the lives of people in host organizations.

The micro-politics of identity formation in the workplace: The case of a knowledge intensive firm*

SummaryThis essay has been by necessity a gloss of a complex look at the relations of power, control, and personal identity construction in a workplace. Features of the nature of the work process combine with social strategies to construct a reproductive self-referential system. Corporate organizations are central institutions in contemporary life; they make developmental decisions for individuals and for society as a whole. While they are in this sense political to the core, we have not done enough to understand how this politics works or to explore its relation to people in a democratic society. Using a phenomenologically-based communication analysis enables a sensitive analysis of the multiple forms of power and domination as they exist in corporate sites. Although I have given only an outline of one case study here, this example suggests that phenomenologically-based projects can show harmful and unwarranted control, and can be a first step to fostering corporate practices that lead to decisions which are less wasteful of resources and more fully accomplish the goals of democratic society.

Engagement as Co-Generative Theorizing

To meet current and ever shifting problems people continually need new and better ways to attend to, talk about, and respond in the world. All communities can have an impoverished language for talking about human interaction and making decisions in times of fundamental and rapid change. Three current impoverishments are discussed. Engaged scholarship using co-generative theorizing can initiate productive conversations enriching the languages of both scholarly and everyday life communities.

Reclaiming the subject matter as a guide to mutual understanding: Effectiveness and ethics in interpersonal interaction

Personal identity and mutual understanding are primary products of interpersonal interaction. Descriptive accounts of interpersonal relationships need to be augmented by consideration of the ethical issues raised by the nature of identity formation and mutual understanding. Ethical ideals developed in the enlightenment tradition fail to account for the ethical concern with social systems and the manners by which personal identity and meaning are formed. This essay presents Gadamers ontology of understanding as a developmental foundation for interpersonal system ethics. Interaction is conceptualized in terms of the demand that the subject matter places on openly formed mutual understanding and unethical interaction is shown as practices which prohibit this development. Several examples are given of the processes by which understanding is blocked. The essay concludes with descriptions of ways of overcoming these blocks.

Conceptualizing human understanding: Gadamer's hermeneutics and American communication studies

American descriptions of the communicative process differ from hermeneutic descriptions in their assumed conception of human understanding. American studies have generally assumed a “reproductive” view of understanding — trying to discover means for avoiding intersubjective misunderstandings by eliminating prejudices. Gadamer presented a “productive” view — trying to increase understanding by developing a positive concept of prejudice and presenting the interaction structure as more fundamental than the interactants. Developing an American hermeneutic consciousness along the model characterized by Gadamer not only places in perspective the view of American scholars but reveals alternatives to current research inadequacies and, thus, has implications for future communication studies.

Transforming communication, transforming business: Stimulating value negotiation for more responsive and responsible workplaces

If commercial corporations are to stay economically viable and the general society is to stay healthy, corporate decisions must be even more responsive to rapidly changing environments and stakeholder needs and responsible in increasingly complex and interdependent social contexts. The dominant economic conception of corporations and the accompanying emphasis on profitability, value-neutral rationality, and managerial control is increasingly problematic. Public values have a right of representation in corporate decisions but current means of representation through the marketplace and through governmental guidance are limited in effect. Replacing the economic conception with a stakeholder model recognizing multiple forms of ownership and enabling wide-spread participation can help initiate important value debate leading to both economic and social benefits. But even with more stakeholder participation, value debate has not and will not necessary resulted. Many new programs have increased the number offorums in which representation and debate could occur, but have not increasedvoice. Richer conceptions of communication, negotiation, and rationality are necessary if we are to reform corporations in significant ways.

Thinking About the Future of Communication Studies

This chapter presents the authors’ thoughts on the future of communication studies. They argue that communication scholars and teachers should direct their attention to significant problems of our times (e.g., people making choices together). The authors assert that adequate conceptions of communication and negotiation can facilitate democratic processes and better joint decisions.