Contenu du sommaire : Organisations.

Communication can be analyzed according to three modalities, as a procedure (operation), as a representation of the procedure and as a social action which is accomplished through the opertion. The article which follows describes the underlying structure of, first, communication thought of as an operation, then as a representation and finally as an act of conversation. A systems-based analysis of communication shows that communication incorporates an interaction of perspectives (called "world-views"). A semantic analysis is used to determine the origin of these perspectives (called particularistic and instantial), depending on whether the representation accounts for the subject/object relationship. This relationship figures in the semantic model as an embedding of one logical structure within another. The classical rational organization model (including office automation) omits one of these perspectives, namely the subjective. The structure of a conversational episode incorporates the same encounter of perspectives, but in a context of inter subjectivity (hence the ambiguous character of communication). The article concludes that an organization cannot be based on a single-stream logic such as that of standard formal logic.

This article critiques the concept of organizational culture as defined in most North American work on the subject. After having identified the main tendencies of such work, the author concludes the term has been used primarily in a management ocntext, often with an eye to improving work relations and enhancing an organization's productivity. This concept must remain but as a limited metaphoric matrix requiring an original and adequate methodology .

Much of the major theoretical work in organizational communication since the turn of the century has beenfimctionalist. Consequently, such important phenomena as decision-making and problem-solving have been defined as sets ofprescriptives regulating individual cognitive practices. The prolonged dominance of this approach has resulted in the underplaying of the importance of communicaiton by relegating it to a secondary role in the decision-making process. The notion "organizational conversation" is proposed as a descriptor and analytic framework for organizational decision-making. The works of Karl Weick and Carlos Flores provide the starting point for a general model of decision-making that takes into account the three fundamental dimensions of any communicational activity : semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics.

Research has privileged an approach in which power is conceived as a relation controlled by certain social actors who impose their wills upon an organization. Power could also be conceived of as an attribute distributed among an organization's members. In terms of Bateson 's "indication/ order" the sender would display a power that could determine the manner in which the message must be received and understood. If this power is a capacity to satisfy the needs expressed in the message, it itself can be considered a need to be satisfied. In a communicational exchange, there would be an increasing sequence of usages of need satisfaction.

This study considers the problematic of strategic intervention at the level of communication within organizations. It examines the problem of designing information systmes for small and medium-size businesses and seeks to adapt strategies appropriate to larger organizations. A variety of contingent factors are taken into account in order to adapt to the reality os smaller businesses. A case study of eleven medium and small plumbing supply businesses reveals relationships between business size, formalization of tasks, and expectations with respect to computerization. As a result of this study, certain proposals are advanced concerning the utility of various bureaucratic strageties with respect to the process of need specification and decision-making.

One of the current challenges of sociolinguistics is that of making a significant contribution to a theory of work skills and social class. The present ethnomethodological approach, used in the analysis of work conversations recorded in an industrial setting, combines interviews, participant observation and sociolinguistic analysis. As part of a broader study on microelectronics in California, research was conducted in a facility manufacturing integrated circuits, focusing on the skills of workers and engineers in routine activities involving communications. The investigation of conversations in a work team highlights three pursuits : mastering tasks, coordinating work activities, and shaping and expressing social relations. This approach to discourse analysis, emphasizing ethnographic data is appropriate for the study of communications in social organizations in which concerted activities like work take place.