UCL - LASCO SEMINAR : Laboratory of Analysis of Organizational Communication

[COMU2151]

[20h] 5 credits

Teacher(s): Thierry Libaert

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods

Aims

At the term of this seminar, the student must have acquired and developed the following skills:
- the methodological capacity in front of questions coming from internal and external communication in organizations, seen under this double angle : process (processes and phenomena of communication) and strategic (politics and management of corporate communication);
- the epistemological approach relative to big questions covering organizational communication;
- the capacity to be confronted with concrete research questions in the sector, and to intervene within researchers' teams specialized in this area, in particular the Laboratory of Analysis of Organizational Communication ( Lasco) within COMU, UCL.
The aim of this seminar is to prepare, by the active participation in researches, by critical reading and by personal work, for a doctoral thesis, on one of the themes covering his specialization: in particular in the choice of the research area, the determination of the problem, the proposition of appropriate methods of analysis

Main themes

This seminar is organised as an extension to research by the LASCO (Laboratoire d'analyse des systèmes de communication d'organisation, or Laboratory for analysing systems of organisational communication). It will focus mainly on the following objectives:
1. a study of the internal communications of organisations, and of associated phenomena;
2. a study of the (internal and external) communication strategies of organisations, and of associated phenomena;
3. a study of theoretical frameworks and of methods and techniques of work used in these various fields.
An annual topic is proposed (for example: organisational immersion, aesthetic of the organizations, institutional marking, etc) The seminar rests on scientific readings of works and the realization of research tasks related to the topic of the year, in group and only.

Content and teaching methods

Within the framework of these theoretical orientations, the seminar will deepen certain substantive organisational issues such as:
notions of culture, environment and system in respect of organisational interaction;
systems of membership, legitimation and protest in organisations;
processes of creating symbols in organisations;
discursive strategies for integrating organisational actors;
processes for propagating the organisations internal and external interactional models;
processes for drawing up, and disseminating, metaphorical representations of the organisation and of organisational communication;
processes of change;
the drawing up of observation and analysis methodology based on the organisations symbolic and cultural dimensions, and on the behaviour of actors in the organisation.
Methodology
Every year, the seminar will focus on one of the theoretical orientations and organisational issues referred to. Students will also have a substantial amount of reading to do.