Chapter 6: Paradigms, Traditions & Modern Theories Part 1

Learning Objectives

• Differentiate among the four approaches to theorizing about organizations: postpositive, interpretive, critical, and postmodern.
• Understand how these approaches are driven by decisions about ontology (how things exist), epistemology (how things are known), and axiology (what is worth knowing).
• Differentiate among the seven traditions of communication theory and understand how each approaches the nature of communication and how meaning is exchanged
• Understand the basic precepts of systems theory and Karl Weick’s theory of organizing and sensemaking.

Expanding Your View

Up to now, your introduction to organizational communication has been fairly straightforward. The definition of an “organization” emphasized aspects of the workplace that you probably expected—structure, goals, personnel, etc., and the definition of “communication” featured elements that can be easily understood—source, message, channel, receiver. You’ve explored classical theories of organizational communication that are driven by attitudes you have likely encountered on the job—your supervisor’s desire for machine-like efficiency or your company’s view of employees as “human resources” that must be beneficially managed.

This chapter complicates these pictures. By expanding your view of “organization” and “communication,” you can better understand the often bewildering and messy realities of everyday life on the job. Modern theories of organizational communication—the subject of the next few chapters—are driven by a recognition that “real life” in the workplace seldom conforms to such ideals as smoothly operating hierarchies and clearly transmitted messages. For example, has your boss ever yelled at you? Irrational behavior can be difficult to square with classical theories of organization and communication. Though a message is obviously being transmitted from a source (your boss) to a receiver (you), insults generate far more mental stimulation than is necessary and, in fact, introduce inaccuracies that will likely cause you to misinterpret the message. Cursing hardly reflects the scientific management advocated by Frederick Taylor, the impersonal environment espoused by Max Weber, and the precise wording of commands favored by Henri Fayol. By these lights, your boss’s yelling is inefficient and counterproductive. Neither are curses and insults conducive to good human relations in the workplace—or to satisfying your hierarchy of needs, giving you positive motivation and enjoyment in your job, or encouraging your involvement in workplace decisions. By all these accounts, yelling and cursing is bad management—and yet, it occurs daily in organizations worldwide.

In this chapter, we will expand our view of organization and communication in ways that allow us to consider some new perspectives: Did your boss yell to assert power over you? Was this assertion of power rooted in historical prejudices or in attitudes that prevail in the surrounding society? Is aggression tied to the very nature of organizing itself? Or is aggression rooted in the culture of your particular organization, a pattern that employees past and present have established, so that yelling is way that people “make sense” of a super-competitive work environment? Learning about modern theories of organizational communication will help us explore such questions.

Before describing these theories, however, we must first revisit the assumptions that we have built up in the preceding chapters. This is because modern theories are often based on different assumptions about the nature of organizations and communication than are classical theories. We are not asking you to discard classical thinking; the theories developed by Taylor, Weber, Fayol, and scholars in the human relations and human resources traditions address real issues in the workplace and remain influential. Rather, we are asking you to build on the foundation of classical theory and now expand your view.

When you think of an “organization” you probably think of it as an object with its own existence. Most people do. A corporation, for example, is considered a “person” under United States law for purposes ranging from taxation to free speech. Clearly, however, thinking of an organization as an object is a metaphor. Nevertheless, the way that we conceptualize an “organization” has very real consequences for organizational communication theory.

Three Decisions about Theory

As we begin theorizing about organizational communication, it is important to understand that theories are based on a series of assumptions. These assumptions stem from our philosophical understandings of the world: ontology, epistemology, and axiology. For a deeper look at these concepts, watch the following video.

Ontology

Our ontology is how we think about the nature of being. Some theorists believe an organization exists independently from how people perceive it; others believe an organization exists only in relation to the perceptions of its people or in relation to society. Do we think of an organization as having its own existence and own behaviors that continue independently of the various managers and employees who come and go over time? Or do we believe these individuals create and continuously re-create the organization and therefore drive its behaviors? Or is our concept of the organization, and our expectations for the form it should take and what it should do, determined by larger historical and cultural forces?

Epistemology

Our epistemology is how we believe things come to be known. Do we believe that knowledge about an organization is attained by observing collective actions and measuring aggregate behaviors? Or by listening to individual members of an organization and interpreting organizational life on their terms? Or by tracing the historical and cultural forces that have shaped people’s expectations for what an organization should be and the roles that managers and employees should play?

Axiology

Our axiology is what we believe is worth knowing. Many social scientists believe that only empirical evidence, or what can be directly and impartially observed and measured, is worth knowing. Others ask whether any research is truly value-neutral or can be based on “just the facts.” Does not the choice of research method influence what is found? Indeed, is not a decision to accept only what can be measured in itself a value judgment? Where some scholars strive to produce impartial knowledge, which organizational management can use to improve results, others believe such a goal implicitly supports the current system and those in power. Furthermore, where some researchers measure aggregate responses, others strive to hear organizational members on their own terms while giving voice to the powerless and thereby effecting social change.

1. Postpositive - assumes that an organization is an object with an independent existence—that is to say, it has an “objective” rather than “subjective” reality. Therefore, organizational behaviors are best studied in the aggregate through empirical observations that leads to measurable results. (sometimes called positivist or functionalist.)
2. Interpretive - holds that organizations have subjective existences and, in fact, are constituted through their members’ communication. As such, it is not enough to observe aggregate behaviors; individual mindsets must also be interpreted.
3. Critical - employs theory as a framework to expose the hidden power structures in organizations and the ways that dominant interests distort meaning, thought, consciousness, and communicative action to maintain their domination by marginalizing alternative expressions
4. Post modern – holds that organizations come into existence as temporary combinations of interests against the threatening fluidity of larger historical and cultural discourses. As a reflection of these discourses, the organization is a “text” that can be “read” to trace back how its hidden power relations were formed. perspectives on organizations.

The postpositive (aka positivist or functionalist) approach dominated organizational studies through the 1970s (Redding & Tompkins, 1988). However, in the 1979, Burrell and Morgana published an influential paper asking four basic questions which created a stir:

• Do social realities, such as organizations, have objective or subjective existence; i.e., do they exist on their own or only in people’s minds?
• Can one understand these social realities through observation or must they be directly experienced?
• Is knowledge best gained by scientific methods or by participating in a social reality from the inside?
• Do people have free will or are they determined by their environments?

The debate was whether social realities exist objectively or subjectively, and whether their basic state of existence is one of order or conflict. As seen on the matrix below, organizational post-positivist scholars would believe in an objective reality and that the state of existence is one of order. Where do the other paradigms fall on this chart?

During the 1980s and beyond, scholars used Burrell and Morgan’s matrix to flush out new approaches for organizational research. Critical scholar Stanley Deetz (2001) evaluated decades of research and created a newer matrix to show evolving trends.

He proposed a new matrix that retains the order-versus-conflict axis (what Deetz called “consensus” versus “dissensus”) but substituted a new second axis. For Deetz, the two basic questions are: (1) is order or conflict the natural state of an organization; and (2) should researchers apply “knowledge to,” or derive “knowledge from,” an organization—that is, should they start with an existing theory and see how an organization might fit, or study an organization on its own terms? (Deetz called these the “elite/a priori” versus the “local/emergent” approach.) Note: Deetz preferred the terms “normative” and “dialogic” for postpositive and postmodern as noted on the matrix. This matrix clearly addresses both ontological and epistemological roots of theorizing.

According to Deetz’s ideas, postpositive researchers believe that order is the natural state of an organization, and look to fit a given organization into an existing theory of how order is produced. Interpretive researchers likewise believe that order is the natural state of an organization, but they study each organization on its own terms and how its members establish patterns of conduct. Critical researchers, on the other hand, believe that conflict is the natural state of an organization and bring existing theories about conflicts over power to their analyses of a given organization. Postmodern researchers also believe that conflict is the natural state of an organization, but they look to deconstruct the particular power relations that have emerged in a given organization.

Two questions originally posed by Burrell and Morgan can be recast to provide one more helpful framework for understanding the differences between the postpositive, interpretive, critical, and postmodern approaches. Those questions are: (1) what is the nature of reality; and (2) what is the source of structure? As to the first question, can an organization have a reality that is independent of people’s perception of it? Or can it only be understood in relation to someone’s point of view? For the second question, the distinction between structure and agency is essential to understanding a researcher’s paradigm. Are people determined by their environments (structure) or do they have free will (agency). Applied to organizations, the question becomes whether its structures are determined by socio-historical processes that operate outside the organization or are created through agency of its members. These distinctions help form the final matrix.

Thus, postpositive theorists believe the structures established by an organization’s members literally take on a life of their own, attaining an objective reality that endures independently over time. Critical theorists also believe that organizational structures have a fixed reality, but they see these structures originating in socio-historical processes that operate outside the organization. On the other hand, interpretive theorists believe that an organization has a subjective reality and exists only in relation to the viewpoints of the people inside the organization. Postmodern theorists also believe an organization has a subjective reality, but they see this reality existing in relation to socio-historical points of view that originate outside the organization.

The goal is not to choose the “best” approach to organizational communication, but to appreciate and the nuances of each and how each provides a different way of looking at and understanding organizational communication. The table below compares the four paradigms across ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies. Which paradigms fit the classical approaches toward organizational communication?

What Communication Is: Seven Traditions

Alongside ontological, epistemological, and axiological approaches to understanding organizational communication, there are also assumptions about what organizational communication is and does. You have probably heard the proverbial question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound? Similarly, we might ask: If you send a message that the receiver does not understand, has communication taken place? This brings the idea of meaning into the equation.

Some theorists believe that the meaning of a message lies in the sender. You think up a message and transmit it, and then the receiver must decode what you mean. But other theorists believe the meaning of a message is something that the sender and receiver construct together as they interact through their communication. Still other theorists believe that meaning resides in the channel—perhaps in the signs and symbols that, over time, humans invested with implied meanings, or perhaps in the larger structures of history and culture that condition how we perceive the world. Craig (1999) identified seven traditions within communication theory. Each tradition wrestles with the question of how people derive meaning from communication. And if we grant that communication only takes place when meaning is exchanged, then the issue of how people derive meaning is another way of putting the question: What is communication?

A helpful way of grasping the seven theoretical traditions is to pose a single communication scenario and then consider it from each of the seven approaches. For this example, it will be an annual employee recognition luncheon in which awards are given to those who reach five or ten or fifteen years of service, and so on, up until retirement. During this festive event a catered lunch is served in a large room, speeches are made by key executives, long-serving employees come forward as their names are called and receive a certificate or plaque, and the luncheon concludes on a light note as employees organize a mock ceremony to give out humorous awards. Read each tradition. What do they have in common? Where do they deviate?

Cybernetic Tradition

Theorists in the cybernetic tradition start with the assumption that an organization is a system comprised of many interdependent parts. The annual employee recognition luncheon is a particularly good occasion to see all those parts in action:

• The top executives who make speeches and set policies for giving awards;
• The managers who implement the policies;
• The human resources department that generated the list of employees eligible for awards and organized the luncheon;
• The corporate communications department that will send out a press release after the event;
• The accounting department that processed purchase orders and payments to the caterer;
• The information technology department that set up the audiovisual equipment for the awards ceremony;
• The maintenance department that prepared the room and will clean up afterward; and finally,
• The employees who attended the luncheon, received awards, and put on the humorous entertainment.

All of these parts depend on each other—and must communicate together—to make the annual employee recognition luncheon happen. In the cybernetic tradition, then, communication is theorized as information processing. But cybernetic theorists do not stop at charting information pathways. They are also interested in how a system continually makes adjustments needed to sustain itself. Indeed, the word “cybernetics” was coined from the Greek word for “steersman” by MIT scientist Norbert Wiener. In devising a new antiaircraft firing system during World War II, he addressed a major problem: though existing systems could feed back information on firing trajectories, targets would pass by before human operators could make adjustments. He saw that the new system must regulate itself by acting on its own feedback, a principle Wiener then extended to human societies.

Communication theorists picked up on this idea by casting the communication process as a self-regulating system in which people act on feedback, adjust their messages, gradually eliminate distortions, and arrive at intended meanings.

Adjustments are made via feedback loops which connect the various parts of the system into networks. Our example of the employee awards luncheon illustrates several of these networks in play. Top executives, who want to annually honor loyal employees, must get feedback from the human resources department for a list of who is eligible. To organize the event, the human resources department must get feedback from the maintenance department on the room setup, the IT department on audiovisual equipment, and the accounting department on the budget for the caterer. To publicize the event, the corporate communication department must get feedback from top executives on the desired tone or theme of the press release. Moreover, the system cannot survive just by feeding on itself. 

Inputs and resources are gathered from the surrounding environment—for example, by soliciting proposals from local caterers, and by talking to local media about possible news and feature story angles. Through all these avenues of organizational communication, the system processes the information it needs to keep on going.

Phenomenological Tradition

Imagine yourself as a new employee who is attending the annual recognition luncheon for the first time. As you watch the first group of honorees go forward and accept their five-year service certificates, you picture yourself in their shoes and ponder, “Is this company a place I want to be in five years? Or is it a steppingstone?” Then you see the ten-year honorees and think, “Wow, ten years! If I’m still here in ten years, that means I’m committed long-term.” Also, you notice that ten-year employees tend to be people who have better job titles and higher pay, so that longevity has its rewards. Finally, you see plaques handed out to retirees and say to yourself, “I can’t even relate! What will my career have been like when I look back on it, someday? What do I want to be known for?” In the days after the luncheon, you run into some five- and ten-year honorees you know, tactfully engage them in conversation, and try to feel out their answers to the question, “Is it worth it to stay long enough to earn a service award?”

According to the phenomenological tradition, you derive meaning by directly experiencing a particular phenomenon. At the luncheon you are confronted with the phenomenon of employee loyalty and longevity and based on this experience you weigh your perceptions. Thus, you come to know your organizational world by directly and consciously engaging in it, pondering its meaning for you, interpreting that meaning through language to define and express it, and then continually reconstructing the interpretation in light of new experiences. Dialogue is another important concept in the Phenomenological tradition. The annual luncheon was a type of dialogue as you listened to the various speeches and presentations. Then after the event, you dialogued one-on-one with coworkers who had been honored for their long service. Through these dialogues you open yourself to the experiences of others and can integrate this into your own experience.

Sociopsychological Tradition

The basic assumption of the sociopsychological tradition is that people control their own intentions and influence is rooted in human psychological processes. Thus, communication is one person’s intention to impact another person’s intention. Such a notion is problematic, however, for many communication theorists. Where sociopsychological theorists see individuality as an objective fact, postmodern theorists hold that people’s intentions are subjectively conditioned by their histories and societies. And where sociopsychological theorists believe that the meaning of a communication resides in the individual, sociocultural theorists believe that meaning arises from the interaction.

But for now, let’s relate this tradition to the annual employee recognition luncheon. First, consider the speeches given by top executives to celebrate company values and, by implication, the loyalty these values merit from employees. One theory suggests that, psychologically, you are more likely to be persuaded if sufficiently motivated to carefully consider the arguments, and less likely if the speakers utter cliches you’ve heard before (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Another theory claims that opinions are best understood not as a single point on a line, but as a continuum between acceptable and unacceptable; the more that the execs pitch their arguments on company loyalty toward the edge of this continuum, the more likely they can push the boundaries of what you will accept (Sherif, et al., 1965). Still another leading theory proposes that if the speakers can make you feel an inner conflict between self-interest and group loyalties, you will be psychologically driven to resolve the conflict rather than feel torn (Festinger, 1957).

Then there are the conversations you had with longer-tenured coworkers. One theory of interpersonal communication holds that people’s personalities are structured like the layers of an onion; to elicit your coworkers’ inner feelings about staying long-term with the company, you had to go beyond mere chit-chat about sports and the weather, and instead penetrate into their goals, convictions, fears, fantasies and, at the deepest level, their self-concepts (Altman & Taylor, 1973). Another theory claims that people experience an ongoing psychological tension between their need for being connected and need for feeling unique, and between their need for being open and need for keeping some things to themselves (Baxter, 1998). In order to elicit coworkers’ true feelings about their service with the company, and to expose your own concerns, you must both navigate these tensions.

The main lesson here is that a sociopsychological view locates the meaning of communication within the mind of each individual. The company executives acted with the intention of promoting employee loyalty in the hope of influencing your intention. And when you acted on your intention to elicit information from long-serving coworkers, they were prompted by their own intention to be more, or to be less, open toward your questions. Human communicative behaviors, then, are seen as seen as rooted in human psychologies. So, if communication is defined as a process whereby one person intends to stimulate meaning in the mind of another, then the task of the researcher is to discover what stimuli elicit what responses.

Sociocultural Tradition

For the sociocultural theorist, the meaning of a communication lies not within individuals, but arises from interaction as people engage in discourse and socially construct what they jointly perceive to be real. George Herbert Mead (1934), a founder of the sociocultural tradition, noted people only develop a sense of self by being around other people. Further, since speech is the means by which people interact, then people develop their sense of self through communication. Indeed, without language, which arose because humans exist in society, there would be no thought.

Another theorist in the sociocultural tradition, Erving Goffman (1959), likened social interaction to a drama. Imagine yourself in an ordinary conversation and (being honest) think how you take a role (anything from clown to peacemaker) and “play to the audience” by communicating in ways that (you believe) will make you socially acceptable. Pearce and Cronen (1980) described conversational interaction as a “coordinated management of meaning” in which people not only co-construct a social world but are, in turn, shaped by that world.

Given these assumptions, theorists in the sociocultural tradition look at the ways communication is used by people in interactions to produce—and then reproduce—stable patterns of social order. Sociocultural theorists of organizational communication, then, are interested in how organizational cultures arise as their members communicate with one another. And they would take a keen interest in the annual employee awards luncheon. First, there is the ritual aspect of the event as people on the platform speak structured sequences of words (an employee’s name is called, he or she comes forward, and the certificate is given with praise, smiles, and handshakes) that ultimately pay homage to the sacred object of the company. Second, the awards ceremony constitutes a story which fosters a “loyalty myth.” As the myth is enacted, the audience learns how they too are expected to fit into the story. Then, third, the awards ceremony is a “social drama” in which awardees gain honor by their perseverance, thus showing the audience how they can likewise win approval and continue to belong.

Organizational cultures are maintained not only through public events but also in natural conversation as employees spontaneously use “insider” talk. Such talk begins to form patterns that reproduce the values and assumptions of an organization culture (Philipsen, 1997). Over time, the patterns seem so natural that employees use the talk without thinking and take the underlying cultural assumptions for granted. For example, if people address each other with formal titles—or, alternately, if they use first names—this talk reproduces assumptions about how organization members should relate to one another.

Sociocultural researchers often look for words and phrases that keep recurring in significant ways. So perhaps the employee awards luncheon featured talk about the company as a “family” (a metaphor), or praised award recipients for being “customer-oriented” (a stock phrase), or continually referred to “aggressive” growth, “aggressive” marketing, an “aggressive” strategy, and so forth (a buzzword). Chances are that, when you later spoke one-on-one with award recipients, their use of such insider language in spontaneous conversation reflected their integration into the organizational culture.

Semiotic Tradition

Semiotics is the study of signs—and a classic example is how the presence smoke is the sign of a fire. Charles Saunders Peirce (1958), a founding theorist of semiotics, would have called smoke an index or a trace that points to another object. Other signs are icons or abstract representations of another object—for example, the stylized image of a pedestrian on a traffic crossing light. Yet other signs are symbols that have a purely arbitrary relationship to another object. Think of how a red octagon means “stop” and a yellow inverted triangle means “yield.”

The most common symbols of all are words. Consider: the word “dog” has no inherent relation to the actual animal. Instead, the word “dog” may connote a friendly pet to one person and a dangerous beast to another. To explain how words work, Ogden and Richards (1923) proposed a triangle of meaning. They theorized that meaning emerges from the interplay between a referent (in our example, a dog), a symbol (the word “dog”), and the reference (what a person thinks when he or she hears the word). As such, the meaning of “dog,” whether a cute pet or dangerous animal, resides not in the word but, rather, in the mind of the person. In other words, the meaning of a thing is subjective for each person. Thus, as we communicate about that thing, there is an encounter between the different meanings we each carry. The encounter is mediated by a sign—whether the sign is a word or an image—and that sign makes it possible for some meaning, at least, to be shared between communicators.

The annual employee recognition luncheon is replete with signs and symbols. In addition to the many words that are used, shared meaning is created by the symbol of the award certificates and plaques, by the printed program with elegant cursive script, by the cake and the balloons with congratulatory messages, by the round tables that were set up rather than the room’s usual conference seating, by the festive centerpieces on the tables, by the company posters and slogans posted on the walls, by the formal business attire of the executives who presented the awards, and by the large company logo that is hung on the podium and printed on items ranging from table napkins to tee shirts. All of these symbols enable important meanings—about company values, about employee loyalty, about labor-management relations—to be communicated and shared by dozens of people, even though each brings their own subjective thoughts to the event.

Finally, the company itself becomes a symbol as it takes on a distinctive corporate image. In the same way, Apple Corporation has come to symbolize high-tech innovation, a corporate image that instills its employees with a strong sense of organizational identity. By contrast, government agencies are often seen as bureaucratic and wasteful so that administrators must work hard to imbue their employees with a countervailing image of public service. The same semiotic process is at work as the college or university you attend strives to symbolize learning (if teaching is emphasized), or discovery (if research is emphasized), or opportunity (if career training is emphasized), or advancement (if nontraditional student are emphasized).

Critical Tradition

The critical tradition theorizes communication as discursive reflection, or a means to reflect on how discourses create dominant and marginalized voices. After witnessing or hearing about the employee awards luncheon, a critical theorist would likely ask who decided that employee loyalty would be the only value recognized and the only value which deserved a special annual celebration. The decision, of course, was made by the dominant interests who hold power in the organization. The luncheon reifies their interests (by establishing loyalty to the company as a taken-for-granted part of organizational life) and universalizes their interests (by equating management interests with “company interests” so that other interpretations seem irrational). Even though employees are expected to be loyal in order to gain approval, the company has no corresponding obligation of loyalty to the employees and may lay them off as needed. Not only is this proposition tacitly accepted—but to suggest that a second luncheon be held, to make a public accounting of the company’s loyalty to its workers, would seem irrational. So would the suggestion that workers, rather than the human resources director, should plan the annual luncheon and decide what values should be recognized and what awards given. Yes, the employees are permitted by the leadership to plan a humorous “awards” segment, but that is only a parody, a way to control workers by giving them a sense of participation without any real substance.

Then, too, a critical theorist would point out how the awards luncheon, by celebrating only those employees who have served long term, actually silences the voices of traditionally marginalized workers. Historically underrepresented groups (women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, the working poor) have often lacked the access to acquire skills which would make them promotable in the corporate world. Because they are disproportionately placed in low-wage jobs, they are the first to be laid off or shunted into temporary work. Yet they do work that the company needs. Why is there no event to celebrate their contributions? Instead, the emphasis on longevity only marginalizes them further.

This all happens because the system follows an ideology that, in ways made to seem natural and inevitable, structures power relations to favor some at the expense of others. The task of critical scholars is to “denaturalize” unjust ideologies and structures that are taken for granted, exposing them to resistance and discussion, and thereby reopening choices and possibilities the system had foreclosed. Thus, critical scholarship infuses research with action.

Rhetorical

The rhetorical approach is a scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as the practical art of discourse and persuasion. Rhetorical theorists examine the processes by which speaker (or rhetor) and listeners move toward each other and find common grounds to go forward. Studies of organizational rhetoric distinguish between external rhetoric aimed at stakeholders outside the organization and internal rhetoric aimed at employees. Hoffman and Ford (2009) classified four types of external rhetoric: to create and maintain an organization’s public identity, to manage issues, to manage risks, and to manage crises. Internal rhetoric, on the other hand, aims to align employees with organizational values and imperatives so they are motivated to do their jobs.

Thus, the rhetoric of the annual employee recognition luncheon is internal, an attempt by management to find common ground with employees and persuade them to adopt company values. After the luncheon, the company will engage in external rhetoric as the corporate communications office issues a press release that, when carried by local media, will hopefully reinforce the company’s image as a great workplace that inspires employee loyalty.

Rhetorical theory offers many avenues for analyzing the speeches heard at the awards luncheon. The classical theory of Aristotle, for example, holds that speakers must invent a persuasive argument, effectively arrange its points, word it an appropriate style, and deliver it in a suitable manner, while drawing on a memory of phrases, stories, and ideas to extemporaneously flesh out the argument for a given occasion or audience. Today we call this method the five canons of rhetoric. Yet to be compelling, arguments must be grounded in the shared topoi or mental topology of rhetor and audience. Thus, if everyone agrees that profit is good for both management and labor, then speeches at the awards luncheon can extol honorees for their contributions to the bottom line. But if the organization is nonprofit, like the college or university you attend, then arguments based on profit making would fall flat. Aristotle also theorized that artful rhetors can employ three types of proofs: logic (logos), emotion (pathos), and speaker credibility (ethos). Executives who spoke at the luncheon likely tried all three by stating how loyal employees are rewarded (logic), how such employees’ dedication is admirable (emotion), and how management can be trusted and believed (speaker credibility).

Traditions Conclusion

As with the underlying paradigms, there is not correct tradition in the field of organizational communication. By first grasping the underlying approaches and how each looks at organizational communication in a different way, you will be better equipped to understand specific theories and “where they’re coming from.”

Prior to the 1970s, the postpositive approach dominated organizational communication research. Yet, instead of trying to objectively study time and motion to create more effective workers, some research started to look at an organization as a dynamic interdependent system. As such, one of the early theories to emerge after the classical period aligned with the postpositivist system but developed a new way of looking at the organization using a scientific viewpoint. For example, if organizations created the most effective way to produce a watch, but failed to realize consumers no longer wanted analog, but digital watches, does the efficiency of the organization matter? System theory explores how the effectiveness of an organization depends not just on the internal organization, but external processes and developments as well.

Postpositive Approach: Systems Theory

Systems theory is based on the metaphor of the organization as a biological organism, so that the organization is seen as an open system that interacts with its environment in order to acquire the resources it needs to survive and grow. In 1956 the Canadian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy first published his “general system theory” which proposed that traits found in biological systems could be applied to any system.

A decade later, the notion of applying the theory to organizations was popularized by Katz and Kahn (1966). The old metaphor of the organization as a machine was replaced by the metaphor of a biological organism. As a result, the conception of the organization as a closed system was replaced by that of an open system. Where a machine operates on its own (closed system), a biological organism can only survive by interacting with and gathering inputs from its surrounding environment (open system).

• A closed system is only concerned with input and output.
  • Inputs are the resources and information needed to supply the organizational system.
  • Outputs are the outcomes, products, and services created by the organization.
• An open system encompasses input, throughput, and output.
  • Throughputs are the activities within the organization that gets the work done.

Like an organism, an organization is not an undifferentiated hodgepodge of parts but a system with a hierarchical ordering. Further, these ordered parts are interdependent since they rely on one another to properly function. Being interdependent, the system enjoys the property of holism, the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As parts of the system must work together, feedback also becomes essential to help spread information and correct any deviations. Negative feedback assists in getting a system’s processes back in the direction of their goals, while positive feedback tries to amplify current processes that are working.

In addition to communication within the system, the organism requires exchange. Exchange is external communication which brings in the resources needed for organizational growth. Without exchange, the organization will feed on itself and ultimately die (known as entropy). Systems tend to run down and deteriorate leading to disorganization. The open system nature of organizations allows its boundaries to be permeable to allow for this exchange with the surrounding environment, creating a healthier organization with more balance (think homeostasis or equilibrium). For example, organizational workers known as boundary scanners will scan the environment to understand things such as the economy, available resources, competitors, etc., to help make effective decisions for the organization.

Since systems are interdependent, meaning decisions made in one part affect the other parts, when organizations make goals, they are often contingent and negotiated across the moving parts. Systems theory suggests that there is no one best way to organize and that all ways of organizing are not equally effective. This concept is known as equifinality, or the idea that an organization may not know what the best way to do something is, and that communication between the parts is essential to find the most effective way to do something. Reflection and hindsight may also show new methods for the future which may be more effective.

Perhaps the most influential single theory to emerge from the systems approach was proposed in the 1960s by Karl Weick. The theory begins with the observation that an organization’s environment includes information as well as material resources, however, the information is more essential than the material resources. Our information environment (think about those permeable borders of system theory) continues to grow increasingly complex as societal norms and technology evolve. Organizations exist in both complex and unpredictable environments. Weick noted that some communication situations cannot be handled by standardized rules or routines – essentially, we are going to run into situations where we don’t know what to do and there isn’t a clear rule to guide us.

These complex factors introduce what he called equivocality, or uncertainty, into the organization. He theorized that the goal of organizational communication is therefore to reduce equivocality. Communication is used to identify the meaning of a situation or event, yet he recognized that different organizational members might interpret the situation differently or ascribe different meaning to it based on their individual situations and histories. Thus, how members of an organization use communication to make sense of equivocal situations is the heart of this theory.

To engage in sensemaking, we start with information, which Weick calls the lifeblood of the organization. Then, based on institutional knowledge and organizational culture, as well as the internal informational culture of the workers involved, members will engage in enactment. (While a post positivist approach, take note of the interpretive aspects related to individual understandings of information in Weick’s theory.) Weick then draws on Darwin’s theory of evolution to explain how to determine informational meanings. He posits that organizational members will evaluate all possible interpretations of the information and determine which one holds the most promise for being correct. Thus, a part of the organizing process is selection. Organizational members bring different interpretations of what is happening, and they have to engage in collective sense-making to select the best interpretation. They will then retain successful sense-making strategies to use in similar situations in the future. The process of enactment, evaluation, and retainment is known as retrospective sensemaking.

While people often think they plan then act, Weick says it is the opposite, that people act first, then examine those actions to explain the meaning of their actions. That is the meaning of retrospective sensemaking, that often our adaptive unconscious creates our actions, which we then rationalize and explain later.

Weick also explores the communication networks seen within organizations that are used in the sensemaking processes. Some communication networks are loosely coupled or weak which can be advantageous. Teams within an organization may never communicate with each other making sensemaking across teams more difficult. On one hand this may create an information deficit, on the other, goals can be achieved without worrying about extensive communication or consensus and if a major disruption happens within one group, it is less likely to drastically effect other teams (Eisenberg, 1984).

Organization members muddle through complexities, perceive over time what works, and collectively reduce equivocality and make sense of their workplace. They also operate in loosely coupled teams which creates a system of survival amid interdependence and uncertainty. Thus, Weick has constructed a theory of organizing that is rooted in systems theory and follows a post positive research agenda of observing and measuring aggregate behaviors. And yet his theory usefully draws on interpretive principles about the social constructedness of collective environments.

Key Takeaways & Summary

Now that you’ve read the chapter, write a summative conclusion with your key takeaways. What information do you want to remember? How does it all tie together, and why does this information matter? You will thank yourself when it’s time for the exam.

Authors & Attribution

The content in this chapter was remixed, adapted and/or authored by Seroka, L. (2025) from:

• Chapter 4: Modern Theories of Organizational Communication found within Organizational Communication – Theory, Research, and Practice by Anonymous on LibreTexts licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

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