The course introduces students to a range of topics, concepts and methods relevant to understanding internal communication within organisations. It explores key concepts in organisational studies from the perspective of language and communication and shows how these shape and constitute workplace processes, practices and decision-making. It takes a practice-oriented approach to familiarising students with a variety of communication channels, processes and formats used in spoken and written interactions between people in a range of organisational roles: between managers and subordinates as well as between co-workers.
The course covers key topics which are central to successful communication in any organisation in today’s business environment, including leadership, recruitment, change management, decision-making and conflict management. While students may be familiar with some of these topics from other courses, the communication focus of the course will illuminate these from a new perspective. Research from business and management is combined with research from linguistics in order to provide a rich account of the communicative processes and strategies that are relevant to each of these topics.