Organizational Values and Communicative Actions at Post Industrial Organizations in Puebla, Mexico. A Case Study of subjectivities

Abstract

At the end of the twentieth century Charles Perrow (1992) predicted that organizations would surpass economic and salary dependence. At present, companies and institutions position themselves as actors that go beyond the production of goods and services, as organizations that impact on society through their communication and culture (Ávila, 2004). The results of our research "The Axes of Organizational Culture of Corporations and Institutions of the XXI Century" (2011) allowed the validation of what in a previous work Hernandez and Cendejas (2006) named the new corporate values. From a descriptive case study, we found that values such as innovation, organizational learning, knowledge management and social responsibility overlap as the guides that outline the organizational behavior and culture in two Mexican companies. Further discussions on this research directed us to new questions and approaches. They allowed us to think about the power relationships that constitute postmodern organizations from a critical perspective. Luis Reygadas' work «Assembling Cultures» (2002) invited us to reflect about corporate communication beyond its instrumental practice. How are these corporate values restoring -and being restored- the organizational practices? Are there any effects of these corporate values and its communication in the subject itself? Is there any reconfiguration on subjectivity as Reygadas explained? The approach and observations presented in this paper are based on a critical review of our work but also in new bibliography research. We attempt to analyze the post-industrial corporation as «a field of structured and structuring structures» (Bourdieu, 2008) that mediate in the social life and the construction of subjectivities, a space where communication has become a device by which new collective and individual strategies are unfold.