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The new communication order: Management, language, and morality in a multinational corporation
Author(s) -
COHEN SUSANNE
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12133
Subject(s) - morality , capitalism , multinational corporation , corporation , globalization , sociology , ideology , order (exchange) , critical management studies , fordism , public relations , politics , social science , political science , economics , law , economy , finance
“Communication” is central to participative management strategies associated with post‐Fordist capitalism. Although exhortations to manage via “communication” instrumentalize managerial linguistic practices, they also moralize them in reference to a larger therapeutic moral order. By drawing from fieldwork conducted in the office of a Russian factory affiliated with a U.S. multinational corporation and by attending to metadiscourses in training manuals, managerial meetings, and conversations with company staff, I examine how “communication” can serve as a touchstone for managers and professionals endeavoring to exemplify moral personhood and create moral workplaces, even as it leaves fundamental inequalities of global capitalism intact. I also highlight the substantial transformations that “communication” can undergo in its global circulation and the particular tensions between morality and instrumentality that arise in post‐Fordist overseas manufacturing. [ capitalism, morality, language and political economy, language ideology, management, globalization, postsocialism ]