Organizational Communication: A Critical Perspective introduces students to the field of organizational communication--historically, conceptually, and pragmatically--from a perspective grounded in critical theory and research. Author Dennis K. Mumby explores how the history of organizational communication theory and research is one that embodies and attempts to resolve the fundamental tensions and contradictions between the individual and the organization.

By taking a critical perspective to the history, theories, and research of organizational communication, this text seeks to address the following: how do we provide ourselves with the analytic and practical tools that will enable us to be more informed and critical consumers of, and participants in, organizational processes? Put more broadly, how do we learn to be better informed citizens who can participate effectively in, and be advocates of, organizational democracy? This textbook squarely addresses this problem.

In keeping with this theme, this text goes at great pains to explore the link between theory and practice. Mumby shows how management theory and research is of vital importance to our understanding of daily struggles for control over work and organizing processes. The critical perspective throughout helps students understand how, over the course of the last 100 years, corporations have sought more and more sophisticated methods of constructing our identities in ways that are commensurate with organizational world-views and goals.

Features unique to this text include the combination of the following issues:

* A thematic critical perspective on organizational communication, with analysis of traditional and contemporary approaches to organizational communication.

* Integrated discussion of ethics and technology.

* A full chapter on gender and organizational communication.

* A full chapter devoted to issues of organizational democracy.