MANAGEMENT

Management

Management

The manner in which communication is used and understood depends in large part on the organization's orientation to management. Despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that effective communication is key to organizational efficacy, not all organizations are managed in ways that foster effective communicative processes. In fact, research suggests that organizational communication practices tend to reflect, as well to be determined by, managerial philosophy (Mohan, 2008). Thus, organizational communication “works” only to the extent that its value is acknowledged and exploited by management.

In contrast to the “classical” approach are more contemporary orientations, notably the “human resources” and “systems” orientations. Deriving from an emerging concern with the plight of workers during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the human resources approach is concerned with the total organizational climate and with how an organization can encourage participation, motivation, and ultimately enhance productivity through effective communication processes (Miller, 2006). Here, individuals are perceived as being “situated” in organizational circumstances that are discovered and even created through communication. Moreover, employees' motives for working productively are thought to be rooted in their needs and interests, which can be recognized not only with tangible rewards but also with information (feedback) they give and receive (Eisenberg, 2007). Thus, management is concerned with “situating” the individual in whatever position maximizes his or her effectiveness and productivity. Clearly, communication's role in this management scheme is of utmost importance, as it requires open, honest, and thoughtful communication between managers and employees.

Leadership communication is cast as more dialogic than monologic (as in the mechanistic perspective); through interaction, feedback, and sharing, leaders and constituents co-construct, contest, and co-author meanings associated with their relationships and the current status and future possibilities of the collectives in which they are embedded (Daniels, 2008). Thus, from the interpretive-symbolic perspective, “shared” visions are not simply created by leaders and “shared” with constituents, but rather are a product of the ongoing conversation or dialogue among leaders and followers about each other's dreams for the collective. Similarly, from this perspective, when a leader tells a story to constituents to highlight a “shared” value, storytelling is not cast as a monologue but rather as a dialogic discourse process in which leader and constituents are simultaneously co-constructing the story and the leaderconstituent relationship.

In considering the discourse of the team meeting, Mumby and Stohl framed the incident from a critical perspective and offered an analysis in which they questioned the monolithic nature of team member identity promoted by the self-led team design—“team member first and foremost” (Mohan, 2008). Among other issues, they suggested that the team design, under the guise of neutrality, had constructed a definition of absence associated with the dominant interests of the organization; as a consequence, what were once legitimate accounts of absence (such as an ill wife) were no longer accepted as legitimate and meaningful. In sum, the Mumby and Stohl analysis suggests that within the group alternative voices are muted and marginalized and that the group and its leader may be unwittingly producing and reproducing “meanings” that systematically privilege certain ...