Ethical communicative practice as a basis for evaluating corporate cultures

Abstract

Organizational cultures can be evaluated through an analysis of site specific micro communicative practices within a critical theory of communication and organizations. In order to do so, corporate organizations are presented as social/historical institutions designed to fulfill needs for competing groups including owners, workers, managers, consumers, and the general public. Through arbitrary institutional advantages and distorted communicative practices, conflicts between these interests are often suppressed and the variety of legitimate interests are not fully represented. Conceptualizing communicative action as the attempt to reach mutual understanding describes an immanent moral standard within human culture, helps identify practices which limit the communicative process, and provides a basis for evaluating specific cultural activities within corporations.

Notes

Stanley A. Deetz (Ph. D., Ohio University) is Professor of Communication at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 4 Huntington Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. He is author of Democncy in an Age of Corporate Colonization (SUNY Press, 1992) and editor or author of six other books. He has published numerous essays in scholarly journals and books regarding decision making, human relations, and communication in corporate organizations and has lectured widely in the U. S. and Europe. He has served as a consultant on culture, diversity, and decision making for several major corporations. His current research focuses on international knowledge‐intensive businesses and is sponsored by a grant from the Rickard Malmsten Foundation and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to Sweden, Spring 1994.