COMUNICAÇÃO E MUDANÇA EM ORGANIZAÇÕES BRASILEIRAS: DESVENDANDO UM QUADRO DE REFERÊNCIA SOB A ÓTICA DO SUJEITO E DA RECONSTRUÇÃO DE IDENTIDADES / COMMUNICATION AND CHANGE IN BRAZILIAN ORGANIZATIONS: COMPOSING A FRAME OF REFERENCE FOCUSED ON THE SUBJECT ANDTHE RECONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITIES

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2001

RESUMO

One of the most important focuses, in recent Management literature, has been on searching ways for achieving an effective organizational change implementation. Facing organizations difficulties to manage very frequent and intensive changes, several authors have focused their researches on trying to identify factors which can improve transition processes possibilities of success. Among such factors, communication has been claimed as the one which is most supposed either to contribute or to create difficulties for people engagement or, as some people prefer to affirm, for reducing people resistances. However, what can be observed in such texts, is that they still privilege a concept of communication as a mere instrument for internally diffusing institutional intentions and for increasing people comprehension level about planned change objectives. Such instrumental vision, inspired in a ballistic model of communication analysis (Giordano, 1998), has been accompanied by an old belief in human resistances as the biggest obstacle to be faced by organizations in their change processes. This study supports the thesis that this is a simplistic vision, which doesn t take into account the complexity of change processes in organizations. Therefore, the study tries to modify this way of approaching the issues involving change, organizational communication and people, adopting an interpretative focus (Giordano, 1998) for communication analysis. The basic supposition is that communication is the arena in which the people and the organization can create sense and reconstruct their identities (Ford and Ford, 1995; Giddens, 1984; Taylor, 1993; Weick, 1995), as well as individuals have the chance to reconstitute themselves as subjects in change situation (Olivier, 1995). Using the text and conversation metaphor proposed by Taylor (1993), it composes, then, a referential picture about the several aspects that characterize organizational multidirectional communication, in order to answer the following question: How do the aspects related to communication affect subjectivity, sense making, and identities reconstruction processes for people which participate in organizational changes? The pictures addresses three basic dimensions: individuals and their identities; their perceptions about context; and their relationship with other identities present in organization. Based on the mentioned picture, a research was accomplished in five important organizations from different areas of activities in Brazil, which pass for moments of intense changes. From results obtained by means of semi-open interviews with 75 people that work for those organizations, accomplished between May and December 2000, it was possible to find that people`s subjectivity, sense making and identities reconstruction processes, in a context of organizational change, are, among other aspects, strongly related to: the level of clearness by which individuals access the definitions related to the content and the probable implications of change; the way people perceive that change affect organizational identity, social role, ideology, and chances of success; the way individuals perceive that change affects their personal and social identities; the historical relationship between the institution and individuals, mainly in terms of trust and mutual respect; the way and the intensity with which organization creates opportunities for people to make use of words; people management policies and practices, as well as the resources allocated by organization, in order to permit that individuals can develop their personal and professional profile, in a way they can perceive to have chances of success in the new context; the level of equality of conditions offered to the different actors in change process; the emphasis and the way organization creates opportunities so that the people can reconstruct its coexistence space and solidarity.

ASSUNTO(S)

criacao de sentido identity organizational communication sense making comunicacao organizacional subjectivity mudanca organizacional subjetividade identidade organizational change

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