Critical Approaches

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Critical Approaches

• COMM 254 Organizational Communication

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A New Frame of Reference (see pp. 119-120)

• Unitary
• Characteristic of Classical Approaches (Human
  Relations and Human Resources Approaches also?)
• Pluralist
• Characteristic of Systems and Cultural Approaches
• Radical
• Characteristic of Critical Approaches

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A New Frame of Reference (see pp. 119-120)

• Unitary
• Theorists offer a tool for organizational control
• Pluralist
• Theorists offer a value-neutral tool for
  understanding or explanation
• Radical
• Theorists offer a value-grounded tool for
  identifying sites of domination and moving toward
  emancipation

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Emanci What?

• Recognize that organizations are social
  structures that inherently lead to imbalances of
  power, alienation, and oppression.
• Through critical awareness and action, develop
  normative alternatives which might enable humans
  to transcend their unhappy situation (p. 121).
• Emancipation vs. Empowerment???

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Power A Traditional View

• Any means or resource that may be employed to
  gain compliance and cooperation from others.
• Can you name some?
• See p. 123

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Power A Critical View

• Traditional View

• Power as social exchange

Critical View

• Power as systematically distorted communication
  (see pp. 135 138)

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Power A Critical View

• Traditional View

• Focus on surface structure (e.g., Who has status?)

Critical View

• Focus on deep structure (e.g., How did status
  come to be defined as it has?)

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Power A Critical View

• Traditional View

• Indirect/secondary connection to communication
  behavior

Critical View

• Direct/primary connection to communication
  behavior (e.g., labels, phrases, narratives,
  decision premises)

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Power A Critical View

• Traditional View

• Accepts what is at face value

Critical View

• Sees what is as an unacceptable distortion of
  reality or of what should be

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Ideology and Hegemony

• Ideology Taken for granted assumptions about
  reality that shape our understanding of
• what exists (hierarchy?)
• what is good (the bottom line?)
• what is possible (the glass ceiling?)

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Ideology and Hegemony

• Hegemony A process in which a dominant group
  leads another group to accept subordination
  (i.e., accept a particular ideology) as the norm.
• Not simple domination but manufactured consent.
• The oppressed actively participate in their own
  oppression.
• Those in power may be just as blind as the
  oppressed.

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A New Way to Do Organizing

• S

• elf
• anaged
• ork
• eam

M
W
T
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Characteristics of SMWTs

• Typically 5 to 15 individuals
• Produce and entire product or provide an entire
  service (requisite variety)
• Members learn many/most/all tasks and rotate job
  responsibilities (redundancy)
• Complete shared authority for traditional
  management functions

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Types of Organizational Control
Simple control
Technological control
Bureaucratic control
Concertive control
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Concertive Control Organizational Peer Pressure

• Depends on
• Organizational identification
• Organizationally advantageous shared value
  systems
• Reinforced by slogans, mission statements,
  stories, and rituals
• Value-inconsistent behavior is self-regulated
  (disciplined) by the group as a whole
• Results in greater total amount of control in the
  organization