Marketing communication: principles and practice

P R O F E S S I O N A L I S M
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To improve the quality of working life, there is a need of a more democratic
and ‘moral communicative practice’ fundamentally rooted in corporate
citizenship. Freed from the domination of arbitrary privileged considerations,
it should enable equal participation in the construction of meaning and
identity, and in the definition of the good and the right. This implies the open
presentation of the values and criteria used in decision-making, and the
recovery of conflicts that have been suppressed through systematic distortion
of communication (see Deetz, 1992) so as not to have to confront hard
questions and diversity.
Jacobs (1992) has observed that there are often two contradicting cultures
operating in a social group: government (usually an elected representation
in bureaucratic administration – of course, managers are not elected by their
constituency!), and management (the use of contrivance to effect some
purpose. These ‘cultures’ are incommensurate, but both are necessary,
reflecting the two basic ways of living a life:
1
taking
: territorial responsibility (guardianship)
2
trading
: commerce (exchange)
The guardian moral syndrome is concerned with, and characterized by:
• the work of protecting, acquiring, exploiting, administering, or controlling
territories
• precepts: exert prowess; obedience and discipline; tradition; hierarchy;
loyalty; ostentation; largesse; exclusion; fortitude; fatalism; honour – and
shuns trading
The commercial moral syndrome is concerned with, and characterized by:
• commerce and the production of goods and services for commerce, and
most scientific work
• precepts: voluntary agreements; honesty; easy collaboration; competition;
contract; initiative and enterprise; open to novelty; efficiency; thrift;
investment for productive purposes, optimism
The problem is not one of how to replace one with the other, but how to
operate the two cultures together in supportive harmony. This requires of
the manager a moral flexibility, in which managers:
• abandon ‘scientific management’, away from cynical management
(exploitative, oppositional, obstructive, bureaucracy)
• work towards social technocracy for order, but not through mere control
• recognize managing as social and political activity 
⇒
stewardship, rather
than ownership: balance guardian and commercial ‘mindsets’ to avoid
‘rancid hybrids’ (Jacobs, 1992). 
Managers also have to resist: cynical management that is unreflective,
unresponsive, self-referential, managerialistic – the fatal conceit of knowing