The new communication order: Management, language, and morality in a multinational corporation

Abstract

ABSTRACT “Communication” is central to participative management strategies associated with post‐Fordist capitalism. Although exhortations to manage via “communication” instrumentalize managerial linguistic practices, they also moralize them in reference to a larger therapeutic moral order. By drawing from fieldwork conducted in the office of a Russian factory affiliated with a U.S. multinational corporation and by attending to metadiscourses in training manuals, managerial meetings, and conversations with company staff, I examine how “communication” can serve as a touchstone for managers and professionals endeavoring to exemplify moral personhood and create moral workplaces, even as it leaves fundamental inequalities of global capitalism intact. I also highlight the substantial transformations that “communication” can undergo in its global circulation and the particular tensions between morality and instrumentality that arise in post‐Fordist overseas manufacturing. [capitalism, morality, language and political economy, language ideology, management, globalization, postsocialism]

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