Power, Discourse, and the Workplace: Reclaiming the Critical Tradition

In the past ten yean the critical tradition has made significant contributions to communication studies in organizations, challenging the hegemony of mainstream, functionalist approaches. As a result, issues of power and control have become legitimate areas of study for organizational researchers. This chapter assesses that critical turn and argues that, while such a move was long overdue, its effect hat been diffused because of a lack of clarity in conceptualizing the relationships among power, discourse, and the workplace. As such, after delineating the seminal contributions of Mara, Braverman, and Burawoy to the question of workplace control, we suggest how this issue can be more powerfully conceptualized in modem, dispersed-ownership, managerially oriented organizations. By focusing on the relationship between power and discourse, we show how particular systems of interest representation emerge in the modem organization. Our aim is to demonstrate that the configuration of power in organizations is jus...

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