Power, hegemony and control in organizations: Some critical approaches

Controlling the organizational discourse is one of the crucial aspects to understand from this topic. Mumby (1995) a critical scholar believes that power relationship are produced and reproduced through organization discourse. Researchers also believe that the organizational behavior is socially constructed through communicative interaction. Moving on, these traditions include the use of critical studies that have been developed from hundred years of capitalistic growth in economy; such as the Karl Marx legacy, critical theory, and postmodernism and feminist theory (Gender Studies), they all have the same assumption that language and discourse are central. There are number of ways in which organizational discourse appears as “producing” or “reproducing” the power structure in the working environment. For instance, choices of word in a sentence could have different meaning for different people with different background or culture. Clair (1996, in Miller p. 105) examined the ways in which the phrase “real job” (as in “when are you going to get a real job?”) contains different understanding. For the political function, the creator of rules, norms, beliefs, and values in their organization, might implying that real job are not the kind of job held by college students. Or, the jobs that have been done by other types of employment are not a “real job”. This seems misleading, because the setting for a social-discourse in an organization is constructed in such a way, the employees are then having to believe. If decision is always made from top to bottom, then it will only support the dominant coalition. Moreover, this case can even be worst when it touch issue such as gender. Therefore, Karl Marx had urged that workers should revolt and overturn this system.