Deetz theory. Hope you enjoy my presentation.

1. Presented by:
Michelle I. Herrera
MPS in Public Administration
Presented by:
Michelle I. Herrera
MPS in Public Administration
Deetz ManagerialisM anD
OrganizatiOnal
DeMOcracy
Of stanley Deetz
Deetz ManagerialisM anD
OrganizatiOnal
DeMOcracy
Of stanley Deetz

3. Pacific Gas and Electric Company

4.  Corporate managers who make decisions
without regard for the negative consequences
to their employees, consumers, or the general
public
 Something is wrong with the way decisions are
reached at the highest levels of business
ERIN BROCKOVICH

5. Stanley Deetz
a theorist who uses critical communication theory to
balance corporate and human interests
BASIC APPROACH
•Explore ways to ensure financial health of institutions
while also increasing the representation of diverse human
interests
•Regard institutions as political as well as financial
institutions
•Show how communication practices often distort
decision-making within institutions

6. Corporate colonization of everyday
life
• Intrusive presence of big corporations
(AT&T, IBM, Microsoft)
• Concentration of power in few corporate
hands (newspapers, telephone, satelite)
• Corporations “control and colonize” modern
life for the vast majority of citizens
• Workweek has increased from 40 – 50 hours
per week

7. Deetz theory of communication is critical
in that he wants to critique the easy
assumption that “what goods for General
Motors is good for the country”
He wants to examine communication
practices in organizations that undermine
fully representative decision making and
thus reduce the quality, innovation, and
fairness of company policy

8. Information versus Communication
• Information is really in formation, constitutive of
reality more than it is reflective of reality
• Corporate information is really political process,
undemocratic and have consequences usually hurt
democracy
• Focusing on language leads us to consider how
meanings are created and WHOSE meanings are
embedded in the use of language
• Language is not neutral, it is political
• Corporate language is discursive control, it excludes
more than it includes

9. FOUR CORPORATE PRACTICES
TO DECISION MAKING
provides the core of his
critique of managerialism
FOUR CORPORATE PRACTICES
TO DECISION MAKING
provides the core of his
critique of managerialism

10. STRATEGY: OVERT MANAGERIAL MOVES TO
EXTEND CONTROL
Managerialism
- as discourse based on “a kind of systematic logic, a set of
routine practices, and ideology” that values control above
all else
•“Because I’m the boss.”
• “Because I say so.”
• “If you don’t like it, quit.”
• “It’s my way or the highway.”

11. Choice is often limited to loyalty or exit
—“love it or leave it.
The control drive of
managerialism seeks
the medium of it s
extension, and money
is it…..
Values control above all else
Eliminates employee voices
Prizes managerial over stockholder control
Fear of public conflict

12. CONSENT: UNWITTING ALLEGIANCE TO
COVERT CONTROL
Corporations demand
the overriding loyalty
of employees or their
consent

13. DEETZ BLAME through managerial
control of workplace ,language,
information, forms, symbols,
rituals and stories
Deetz views them as attempts to
produce and reproduce culture
that is sympathetic to managerial
interests
CONSENT: employees actively unknowingly accomplishes the
interest of others in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own
interest.

14. Workers deceives themselves
because they believe they are
interacting freely while in reality
certain options are available.
Managerialism promotes worker consent through a process of
SYSTEMATICALLY DISTORTED COMMUNICATION operates
under RADAR.
DISCURSIVE CLOSURE: suppression of conflict w/o employees
realizing that they are complicit in their own censorship
“disqualified to speak on important issues’
“discourage members to talk about certain subjects”

15. INVOLVEMENT: FREE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS
BUT NO VOICE
Involvement includes suggestion
boxes, employee consultation,
corporate democracy
But real democracy requires an open
forum of free expression for all those
affected by decisions, and some
participation in the final decisions.
The right to expression is good, but
the right to be informed and to have
an effect is just as important.

16. Through involvement, employees
have a chance to air their
grievances, state their desires, and
recommend alternative of working.
When workers find out that their
ideas aren’t represented in the final
decision, they quickly become
cynical about the process
Through involvement, employees
have a chance to air their
grievances, state their desires, and
recommend alternative of working.
When workers find out that their
ideas aren’t represented in the final
decision, they quickly become
cynical about the process

17. “It’s possible when all stakeholders realize that
their communication creates reality rather than
merely describing it.”
Meaningful democracy requires not only
that people have a chance to discuss
the issues, they also need to have a
voice for the final outcome.
REAL PARTICIPATION – expressing
interests that are freely and openly
formed and then having interests
reflected in joint decisions.

18. PARTICIPATION: STAKEHOLDER DEMOCRACY
IN ACTION
Deetz is convinced that “meaningful
democratic participation” creates better
citizens and better social choices and
provides important economic benefits”
“OPEN NEGOTIATION POWER”
joint, open decisions in the workplace

19. 6 GROUPS STAKEHOLDERS NEEDS AND
DESIRES
Investors - security of principal
Workers – reasonable wage, safe working conditions
Consumers – quality goods and services
Suppliers – stable demand
Host Communities – payment for services
Greater Society and world community –
environmental care, quality of family
“NATURE DID NOT MAKE CORPORATIONS, WE DID”