CMN 2148 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Feminist Theory, Blue-Collar Worker, Organizational Communication

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Communication
• Course: CMN 2148
• Professor: Mary Hawkins

Document Summary

Communication cannot be reduced to an informational issue where meanings are assume to be already existing, must be seen as a process. Communication constitutes organization (cco): communication processes or flows which generate and sustain organizations through balance between agency and structure. Discusses how organization develop identities, exercise power and influence, sustain themselves. Attempts to understand the interactions and balances among agency (communicative actions) and broad structures. Addresses how agency and structures are mutually constitutive. Secondness: all the people (agents) engaging in these activities. = thirdness: abstract representation of what an organization is about. Postmodernism:: theoretical perspectives representing an alienation from the past, skepticism about authority structures, ambiguity of meanings and mass cultures. Seeks to understand how multiple meanings/ interpretations of organizational events influence multiple diverse behaviours (essential in a democratic organization) Deconstruction: examination of taken-for-granted assumptions, examination of myths we utilize to explain how things are the way they are, uncovering interests involved in socially constructed meanings.