Week 6: Critical approaches

Hello, I'm Karl Marx!

This week lecture introduced the Karl Marx’s Legacy where he argues that certain societal structures and processes lead to power imbalances which may further lead to alienation and oppression for certain social groups. The ultimate goal for critical theorists is to uncover the imbalances and create awareness for the oppressed group which then allows the possibility of emancipation, to liberate the oppressed group either through direct political action, individual resistance or awareness. To further understand critical approach, we were taught on ideology and hegemony. Ideology refers to the taken-for-granted assumptions about reality that influence perception of situations and events. It is not just a believe but ideology is what shapes our understanding and controls our interpretation of reality. Ideologies are rarely questioned and it can influence behaviours, it is related to the ways which are used to justify and legitimize actions. Ideology is tied to systems of power and domination which leads to hegemony.

Hegemony concept is developed by Gramsci and it describes about the way a dominant group rules over another group to accept subordination as the norm, not just to accept but also to actively participate and adopt in the process.  This lecture also introduces two theories, concertive control theory and feminist theories. Concertive control theory explains how power relationships can be transformed in an era of team-based and alternative form organisations while feminist theories talks about the different feminist perspectives such as liberal, radical, standpoint, postmodern and pluralist.

In Tutorials this week, my group were asked to develop innovative ideas for improving the communication and organisations (CNO) course. The most popular idea that will be generated by votes in class will be institute as class policy for the following semester of CNO. After brainstorming ideas through BB7, Julian, the presenter of the week from our group concluded with 4 reasonable ideas for the new class policy. One was to scrap readings, class presentation and online discussion to make way for critical analysis of movies or TV screening with organizational communication theories. Some movies like ‘Devil Wears Prada’ can explain on the manager-subordinate relationship, ‘The West Wing’ can help us understand on critical approaches and ‘500 Days of Summer’ gives a better understanding on flat organisation. Idea two was to go on a field trip that will replace one or two days of our tutorial classes. The field trips allows us to observe different organisational communication behaviour for example field trip to chocolate factory can provide a visual aid to the understanding of machine metaphor, police training centre can explain on how classical approach works and visit to a multinational cooperation will aid a better understanding on organisational diversity. The third idea was to have interactive in-class sessions such as role-playing, games, pop-quiz with prizes! We love incentives such as extra bonus marks for assignments, a get-away pass for being late, free meal and etc. The last idea was to incorporate research paper assignment two with our internship requirement. Students are to attend internship few weeks earlier for time to conduct CNO research for assignment two. The research report will only be required to hand in at the end of internship period. The idea for this is for the convenience of student to get permission from the company for research. At the end of the day, all students voted field trip as the preferred choice for implementation into CNO subject next semester because as a communication degree student in Taylor’s, we often only required to write, write and write. We rarely organize trips to go out of classes to see, learn and touch for a better understanding of our subjects.