Engaging Organisational Communication Theory and Research: Multiple Perspectives

Citation

Bensiali, A.K. (2009), "Engaging Organisational Communication Theory and Research: Multiple Perspectives", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 489-491. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730910968741

Steve May and Dennis K. Mumby are the Editors of this book with contributions from 11 other scholars writing about significant areas, all related to organisational communication. At the end of each chapter, there is a rich reference and reading list. The book, with a distinctive style, presents a combination of accounts on theory and practice and contributions from the authors, “engaged” with personal stories and their understanding of theories. Their engagement illustrates how those accounts have influenced and been influenced by research, teaching and practice. It provides students and readers of the various chapters with a macro and micro view of concepts and components that have influenced organisational communication and are shaping it.

The book presents complex issues and powerful concepts that even scholars grapple with and is meant for undergraduate and graduate students. It presents valuable background knowledge as well as recent research on organisation, communication and organisational communication. The authors introduce and discuss key aspects of organisational communication and the pertaining major theoretical development namely postpositivism, social constructionism and rhetorical, critical, structuration and postmodern theories.

The first and last chapters, written by the Editors, May and Mumby, guide and navigate the reader in a scholarly and academic style, and present a wealth of concepts and theories. In the first, the editors introduce and frame each of the subsequent nine chapters and then propose how the theory, in the concepts they address, can be “engaged” in the process of knowledge production.

In the last chapter, they summarise each of the preceding nine chapters and highlight key discussions, assumptions, perspectives and orientations. They conclude with a section on teaching as engagement and the notion of dichotomy of theory and practice, and the role of teachers and teaching, not only in transmitting knowledge, but also in facilitating to create a context for the construction of knowledge and recreating critical learning contexts.

In Chapter 2, Steven Corman introduces the concept of postpositivism which, in the context of communication, assumes that interpretations, first emerge from a person's position in a specific context and then should be tested and criticised before a status of knowledge is reached. It argues, through questioning various concepts, how postpositivism can capture the process of communication and what models might integrate the physical act of communicating, its content and that of organisational activities.

In Chapter 3, Brenda Allen introduces social constructionism which helps understand how socio‐cultural processes can affect understandings of the world. She describes, from personal experience, how identities are co‐constructed in micro‐practices enacted within macro‐social systems. Allen discusses social constructionism, pertaining assumptions and critiques and highlights how communication scholars rely on social constructionism to study the processes of organising and how humans create knowledge. Social constructionism highlights the characteristics of knowledge and how it is produced and reproduced. It also highlights the centrality of language and the significance of social interaction processes.

In the next chapter, George Cheney with Daniel Lair, presents the history of rhetorical studies and the development of organisational rhetoric and its contribution to the use of language and other symbols in organisational communication. The chapter describes developments of rhetorical concepts, studies and research and sets a number of questions on how rhetoric is used in and by organisations whether in persuasion or as communication strategies to maintain or achieve one outcome or another or consolidate power within parts of an organisations. The author concludes with a summary of rhetoric perspectives and the key principles in the study of organisational rhetoric.

Stanley Deetz explains, in Chapter 5, how critical theory has been instrumental for the understanding of organisations, their cultures and the dynamics within them and the relationship between power, language and conflict and how they are shaped by knowledge, identity and decision making. The chapter describes examples of organisations and their internal cultural workings, processes of consensus and dissensus, the modes of participation of their people and how they are impacted by the decision making and the regimes they are subjected to. Consequently, the author argues that critical theory is far less interested in predicting the future than in making it. Deetz concludes that this theory will shape and be shaped by many categories of scholars and appeals for more positive work and alternatives to be deployed.

In Chapter 6, Bryan Taylor introduces the concept of post‐modernity and highlight the difficulty with the use of the term and makes a clear distinction between post‐modernity as a historical moment and postmodernism as a theoretical perspective. Postmodern organisational communication theory is characterised by a set of assumptions about organisations and their time/place under postmodern conditions. He argues that organisations are viewed by postmodern theorists and scholars as inter‐textual (discourse‐based) and that organisational culture and the identities they create are fragmented and decentred and that the assumptions made need to be explored more fully.

In Chapter 9, James Taylor sets a couple of key issues regarding organisation and its relation to communication. One of his conclusions is that communication is not a phenomenon of messaging or knowledge transmission but instead is a practical activity that leads to the formation of relationships generating shared knowledge and leading to the formation of collective as well as individual identities and associational patterns. Hence, presenting the dual role of language as a medium of interaction and as a medium of sense‐making. The author describes the concept of worldview and how organisations are categorised and even individuals within one organisation connect as small groups depending on what distinguishes them as classes or communities of practice sharing the same worldview. The diversity of worldviews within the same organisation poses challenges that can be multiplied when dealing with big organisations such as multinationals that have many components organisations and therefore portray a mosaic of worldviews, which will create a challenge of integration. This makes an organisation as a story of challenge and response that is never completely finished, just like life that is always evolving and taking humankind further and to new grounds on the continuum of and limitless knowledge.

In Chapter 10, Cynthia Stohl highlights the types of communication and organisational changes that are happening around us. She starts with a story to illustrate the intercultural differences between behaviour, attitude and interpretations of nations as well as sub‐cultural differences that exist within the same organisation such as between workers and management or even between the categories of staff. The author argues the need for a theory of globalisation to systematically contextualise the events that were happening in the organisational world. She presents four sections namely globalising organisations, organising and then theorising globalisation and finally the combination of organising and communicating. This categorisation paints the interconnectedness between organisation, globalisation and communication and how they affect each other, and any search for a simple and comprehensive theory is considered shear naivety.