Designing Discourse

Abstract

This article provides a critical ethnographic account of how the members of a small design company experienced a work environment riddled with ambiguous communication. I present the organization's official philosophies as well as the discourse of the members to illustrate how ambiguous communication was strategically applied and how members responded and made sense of it. Although management's goal in providing vague goals and objectives was intended to spark freedom and creativity, the employees experienced this work environment as paradoxical and constraining. I contend that the members' responses to this system demonstrate how the interplay of ambiguous discourse and organizational power can construct complex structures of control. Even when organizational members were aware of contradictory and ambiguous communication practices by management, they were largely unaware of the extent to which their responses to this situation naturalized, reproduced, and strengthened a painfully experienced organizational system of control.