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Editorial
Arlette Bouzon
Current perspectives in organizational and strategic communication: Corporate news and theoretical approaches in question
The current economic outlook is present in the conception of this special issue of the Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change, and the present delivery shows the importance of communication in the life of companies in general and more specifically of organizations. More than an activity in the extensive meaning of the term (at the crossing of the technical, the economical and the social), communication can indeed be considered as one of the founding principles of any social life: it contributes to the processes of exchanges between individuals and therefore constitutes one of the essential modes of self-realization, identitary construction and\or secondary socialization of individuals (in the meaning of Shepherd and Luckmann, 1966). It leads to a diversity of speech, sometimes caricatural, and symbolizes quite well what is at play in the different social worlds, in particular the professional ones. For
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a long time marginal, the corresponding academic research was confined to the specific field of the company (profit-seeking). It then expanded to organizations in general, namely, any social unit having a set of activities aimed at specific purposes. Within fifteen years, organizational and strategic communications have become a central object of analysis for an increasing number of researchers from varied horizons (e.g. their development within the ECREA association since 2007). Today, they mainly concern the processes of communication, and the cognitive and social phenomena connected to them, and are at the heart of numerous debates. This issue aims to be an echo of all these debates. But this research on the communication of and in organizations is not easy to carry out. Indeed, it offers the academic researcher a wide range of questions that differ depending on the studied object (a content or a process), and vary according to its finality (describing a situation, understanding a mechanism or explaining a functioning). To bring to the fore a better understanding of the phenomena to be studied, these analysis call on different sorts of knowledge, stemming in particular from sociology, management or psychology. The investigations feed on multiple methodological experiments. Through this panorama of current international scientific works on the communication of organizations, this issue suggests that the reader question the foundations of the link between communication and organization, but also the specificities of this field of research.
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a project should be encouraged. They still call on diverse communicational problematics and mobilize a multiplicity of paradigms, theoretical references and methods of investigation. Today, they appear to be a space of fragmented problematics reinforced by the search for explanatory pluri-dimensional models, with sometimes a background of criticism and overtaking of dominant paradigms. But let us not be pessimistic. The mosaic of the contributions published in this issue is not without coherence: strong points and fertile paths emerge. The confrontation of lived experiences with the works of researchers from different backgrounds (Spain, France, Australia, Portugal, the Netherlands) brings to light a certain number of constant dimensions, so that the field of research that emerged at the junction of questionings (on communication policies and their effects, on the processes of communication observed at the level of the work collectives, or on the analysis of the interactions at work) seems to be the place for a certain number of common problematics with foundations enriched by multiple contributions. In the end, the options the researchers in organizational communication face are not much different from those of the other disciplines of the human and social sciences. Because methods do not belong to an established science, they are procedures whose use is left to each individuals appreciation. The diversity of the approaches, without rejecting one a priori, appears to be a source of wealth and discovery in a field still far from being formalized. This is why, as coordinators of this issue, sometimes confronted by impassioned speeches, we do feel that there is room for a scientific approach and reading of the relationship and place of communication in and\or on organizations, by trying in particular to go beyond the underlying classical oppositions (external communication versus internal communication, professional communication (public relations, advertising versus interpersonal communication, media communication versus public relations). This is the reason why we decided not to restrict ourselves to a single frame of established structure, but to select an article associating a reflection on the theoretical bases with a focus on diverse forms of organizations the university, the company, a business sector such as tourism subject to deep changes. This is what any organization experiences today.
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etc. This situation makes employees more isolated, but paradoxically more dependent. Yet, seen from an interpretativist perspective, the corresponding processes of communication whether mediatized or interpersonal, financed or spontaneous are established and also constituent of the organizations themselves. They can be approached through a communicational problematics or one where communication would play a central role. Today international research is the object of numerous empirical works. They concern the content or modalities of the acts of communication or try to understand the role of communication in working situations. They deal with the discursive construction of the context and/or the situation at work, work being then defined as a situated action, a communicational activity in itself. This issue is a good example of all that. Perhaps this is the reason why our call for papers, widely publicized, aroused such interest: more than fifteen contributors submitted an abstract. The six final communications were selected first based on their content, and then based on an anonymously peer-reviewed text assessed for expertise. This issue gathers contributions that illustrate research carried out in different directions, with plural objects, frames of analysis or steps of research. By taking as their guiding principle communication confronted with todays complex world, the authors, some through field studies, questioned the importance and\or the role of communication in the transformations of the organization. The concepts of identity and culture, of politics and strategic effects, are considered in fine as controversial categories of analysis.
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space. Structured and structuring, it is no longer limited to its instrumental perspective, where the cognitive work of the actor is underestimated. It brings to light the performance of the individuals in a situation. Therefore, organization and communication participate in their mutual construction. They are emergent realities that form an inseparable couple, and can be understood only through an interdisciplinary approach.
To conclude
One of the ambitions of this special issue of the OTSC is to offer the reader, whether informed or not, a representation of all the significant recent debates on organizational communication. The various contributions demonstrate the complexity of the phenomena at work in organizations. Each author has tried in his or her own way, to underline the springs of collective action and the existing relations between the actors (internal and external) in a given organization. In doing so, they have developed explanatory models that, sometimes by being inspired from other disciplines, show themselves as strongly dependent on their own culture, and participate in the conceptual renewal of the discipline. They appear to participate in a more general questioning on collective intelligence and communication, an intelligence that today still remains an enigma even if it has led to a plurality of models and has already mobilized many researchers from various disciplines. Arlette Bouzon has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
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Editors Leon Barkho Jnkping University ajms@intellectbooks.com Ibrahim Saleh Cape Town University
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