Communication

Depending on how one looks at it, communication is a remarkably simple or a perplexingly complex issue in organization and management studies. Communication, for instance, is frequently seen as one of the many things present in organizations along with structures, decision making, workforce direction, leadership, marketing, and so forth - communication as a management tool. It is also often perceived as a ubiquitous mechanism by which each of these activities occurs - communication as a primary means of management operation. Increasingly, however, communication is recognized as the fundamental process by which organizations exist and as central to the critical analysis of their production and reproduction - communication as constitutive of organizations and organizational life. In the twenty-first century, this latter sense of organizational communication is challenging the centrality of organizational psychology held for much of the twentieth century, providing a new focus for those interested in critical management studies.