Aims

1. To control a theoretical framework enabling students to analyse and understand the phenomena, processes and activities of communication in their links with organisations and organised action.
2. To embrace a methodological approach involving diagnosis and intervention.

Main themes

The course aims to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework that will give students a better understanding of communication/organisation. The theoretical reference basis consists of the analysis of systems, of their dynamics, and of their inter relations in a socio pragmatic perspective.

Content and teaching methods

The course starts off with an introduction to basic concepts: the system and its sub systems; the organisation as memory and project; the syntactical, semantic and pragmatic levels of communication; and the operational closure. It then continues with exercises in modelling complex systems, and finally addresses the issue of change in organisations. Particular attention will be paid to an analysis of the role of communication in the behaviour of change.
The course will link what has been learned from the sociology of organisations and the theory of communication. It sees the organisation as a contextualised system of behaviours in interactions, and regulated by different cultures. It will address the question of change and the induction of change in communication systems from a methodological point of view, and in terms of the analysis of the place of communication policies that have been put in place.

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