Marlina Davidson - Multiple Paradigms

Deetz (2001) starts out his essay by giving an overview of how the term organizational communication is used. He contends that it is more interesting to ask “What do we see or what are we able to do if we think of organizational communication in one way versus another” rather than asking the question “What is organizational communication?” Deetz follows this by describing three different ways of conceptualizing “organizational communication.” The first way is to focus on the development of organizational communication as a specialty in communication departments and associations. The second is focusing on communication as a phenomenon that exists in organizations. The third is to think of communication as a way to describe and explain organizations. Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the different ways scholars define and describe organizational communication. Thinking about the idea of conceptualizing “organizational communication” in different ways and the three presented by Deetz, my questions are:

1. Do you believe this is a good way to define what organizational communication is and how it describes our discipline?
2. What are the benefits/disadvantages of not answering the questions “What is organizational communication?” but discovering the different ways in which we think about organizational communication and conceptualize it?
3. Can we think of any other ways of conceptualizing “organizational communication” other than those suggested by Deetz?