Evolution Part I

To my way of thinking, for too many people today still get upset at the mention of the word "evolution." Everything evolves - sometimes in a positive way and sometimes not - so what is the big deal? Nevertheless, I wish to talk a bit about evolution as it applies to organizational communication. It is hard to find any one who does not belong to some kind of organization. For most of us, despite the current job market, the organization is where we work. For others, students for example, it may be the classroom, a fraternity or sorority, or an athletic team. And for others, it may be the local church or community association. For probably close to a century, scholars have been looking at how communication within organizations occurs. What makes it work more effectively? What happens when it does not work so well?

Not surprisingly, early scholars looked at this topic as it applied to the work place. Their initial perspective was to examine the traditional boss-employee relationship. The boss, they said, was concerned with two things: maintaining a certain level of productivity among his or her workers and doing what was necessary to maintain a certain level of control over the workers. The overall thinking here was that employees were there to follow the orders of the boss. The boss barks and the workers jump. What could be more straightforward than that? But then several people began playing around with the notion that perhaps the boss-worker relationship, as it had been previously defined, was not quite so one-dimensional. Perhaps the workers were more than some kind of mindless conglomeration of individuals. One of the first scholars to consider this perspective was John Dewey back in 1927, the same year Babe Ruth sent the sports world on fire by hitting 60 home runs in one season.

As brilliant as Dewey was, he was not as colorful as The Bambino. Nevertheless, his notion that workers within organizations were individuals with their own perspectives, ideas, creative juices and, at times, in possession of abilities and skills that even the boss did not have set in motion scholarly work that began looking at the supervisor-worker relationship as never before. Issues such as employee morale, retention, ways to bring out the best in workers, and ways in which communication between the boss and their employees could be enhanced began to be explored. Thanks to Dewey, the human relations perspective on organizational communication received a major jump start. Now, over 80 years later, it is hard not to find articles in mainstream and scholarly publications, for instance, on some aspect of this important topic. As with the exploits of  Ruth, Dewey's continue to enthrall.