The Deep Structure of the Field

Abstract

Critical theory examines how ideology frames and limits discourse for all organizational members and a critical theory perspective explores the meanings of symbolic aspects of communication with respect to those frames and limits. Critical theory focuses on the structure of meaning that embodies and reinforces domination and how that communication is systematically distorted so as to maintain and enhance power relations that privilege one social reality over others and that favor some interest groups at the expense of other groups. To explore the meaning of symbols in this context is to seek to discover the deep structure of the relationship of power to social reality.

Applying a critical theory perspective to the workforce's culture, language, and symbols, provides us insight into a pattern of power agendas in the deep structural meaning that determines which issues and which questions will be legitimately open for debate while other privileges are defined as the way things are, not susceptible to change, as if defined by natural law, and that makes discussion pointless. Our ability to understand, and to teach our students to understand, the distortion of communication to impose power, and to respond to its seemingly arbitrary exercise, gives us a particular responsibility to attend to the issue of diversity in the workplace.