Marketing communication: principles and practice

A C O M M U N I C A T I O N C O N C E P T
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for interaction which anchor the developing conversation. The old theory of
communication treats knowledge as an object (i.e. as a body of information
or as independent facts to be processed) existing independently of the
participants that can be carried through channels and possessed by a receiver
when communication is successful.
The new, alternative conception of communication is of a common
construction of meanings. Information is not moved from one place to
another but is always a means to an end, produced and used by social actors
to attain their goals in daily life. Meaning is a mutual aspect of knowledge –
it is a joint production manifested in and through discursive practices.
Meaning and message are often assumed to be synonymous. But human
communication is not merely information processing.
The politics of communication models
Why do so many of us retain this outmoded way of thinking of communi-
cation? The conduit metaphor of communication, shows Deetz (1992), is
thoroughly taken for granted in institutional structures and everyday thinking,
aligning well with dominant power structures and liberal notions of
democracy. It supports the dominant group (i.e. the corporation is the
management group) in accomplishing control over those they choose to
subordinate. We retain a conception of the communicative process that gives
liberal guidance to communicative practice – in the face of corporations as
communication systems of control. In this way we misconceive how human
perception and expression work. Yet the denial of democracy is an everyday
occurrence not necessarily done for the purpose of control. A web of strategic
moves of asymmetrical power-based relationships is enacted through
discursive practices; managed (corporate) communication is needed to avoid
managerialistic (the traditional ‘corporate’) communication. In systematically
distorted communication systems, managers become locked into praising
each other, discussing the difficulties of the job, making endless agenda lists,
inventing elaborate strategies, and trying to decide what to do, and yet they
communicate in ways that inhibit resolution of problems and rarely say what
they mean – thus they cannot really manage!
The contemporary everyday conception of interacting with others through
effective communication is conceptually flawed as the basis for participatory
democracy. Identity is fixed in distorted communication systems, and actors
are denied the possibility of regaining (constructive) conflict and self-
formation. Counter to the common-sense view, communication is not for
self-expression but for ‘self-destruction’ – a social act to overcome one’s fixed
subjectivity, one’s conceptions, one’s strategies. Identity, meaning, and
knowledge are opened to the indeterminacy of people and the external
environment.
Our everyday work experience includes the self-deception that individuals
are engaging in communication action in pursuit of mutual understanding.
In fact they are engaged in concealed strategic action (even concealed from
themselves), which result from confusing the pursuit of mutual understanding