Aims

By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. identify, analyse and understand a range of communication phenomena, mechanisms and processes, and their links to concepts of organisation and organised action;
2. adopt a critical, theoretical approach towards the different forms of and strategies involved in " organisational communication " from the point of view of a theory of organisational communication.

Main themes

The course deals with the following key issues:
- the concept of organisation and its development in organisational sociology (organisational structures, contingency, environmental influence, systems of authority and power etc)
- Communication theories and their links to organisations (transmissive and systemic approaches, images and representations etc);
- Notions of " operational ", " integrative " and " self-organising " communication, notions of internal and external communication;
- The organisation as a system of culturally regulated behaviour (notions of business culture and " corporate culture ");
- Policies and strategies of organisational communication ("business communication", public relations, advertising, business press etc) as modes of intervention and legitimacy.