Organizational communication and cultural studies: A review essay

Recently, we have been struggling to interpret a series of minor yet absurd spectacles that span the industrial and popular-cultural realms. These events have compelled our scholarly interest, but lack a ready-made frame for diagnosing their significance. Consider these examples: In the summer of 1996, vivacious 'TV talk-show cohost Kathie Lee Gifford was criticized by activists who linked her line of Wal-Mart clothing to human-rights abuses and wage violations among factory workers in Honduras and New York City. Tearful and contrite, Gifford quickly adopted a policy of independent monitoring and assigned her husband, celebrity sports-announcer Frank Gifford, to deliver envelopes of compensation for the affected workers. Relatedly, in the fall of 1997, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams—famed for his satire of corporate foibles—disguised himself as a management consultant. With the help of a company official, he conducted an executive retreat in a computer firm that produced a tortured "revision" of its mission statement. Additional examples appear in the flickerings of our TV screens: the lithe, androgynous figures of Intel's technicians, clad in hooded, colorful "clean room" suits, energetically installing computer chips to a soundtrack of 1970s funk; and quasi-documentary images of rolling golf carts, filled with visitors to the Saturn car plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, watching assembly workers at their tasks—and being watched in return