Abstract

SILVA, Sónia; RUAO, Teresa  and  GONCALVES, Gisela. The state of art of Organizational Communication: the trends of the 21st century. OBS* [online]. 2020, vol.14, n.4, pp.98-118.  Epub Feb 28, 2022. ISSN 1646-5954.  https://doi.org/10.15847/obsobs14420201652.

Communication in the context of organizations is constantly being reconfigured. The new forms of information, interaction, sharing and consumption that characterize today's societies bring new challenges to organizations and their communicative structures and this justifies, whenever possible, an incursion into the field of Organizational Communication with the main motivation to understand the current state of the discipline and follow its research trends.

Such is the purpose of this study: to investigate the state of the art of Organizational Communication, going back, for this, to the origins of the discipline and to its foundational concerns, which are fundamental to understand the approaches that describe the field in the 21st century. With this analysis we intend to trace the research trends of the discipline to address the main challenges that characterize the relationship between communication and organization today.

To fulfill this objective, we use a qualitative methodology, through the analysis of several scientific articles and books published in the scope of the studies of Organizational Communication (since the appearance of the discipline), which allowed us to understand and describe the approaches, paradigms, methodologies, themes and trends that led to the creation and advancement of this discipline. It is, therefore, a literature review that privileged the work of renowned scholars and researchers in this scientific area. Its analysis was fundamental to describe the four paradigms that developed in the field of Organizational Communication: the positivist, the interpretive, the critical and the constitutive.

We realize, as a conclusion, that these approaches coexist harmoniously in an attempt to explain the current organizational environment, which seems to have as main challenges the constant evolution of information and communication technologies, which give more power to audiences and emphasize the processes of relational and the importance of ethical and responsible organizational behaviours in an increasingly demanding and informed society. Thus, communication as a strategy has also gained ground in research trends in Organizational Communication, as a type of communication that seeks to support the mission of the organization at the same time that it seeks to establish fruitful relationships between the organization and its audiences.

This is, therefore, a work of systematizing approaches and trends that seeks to identify the current state of the study of Organizational Communication, standing out both for the presentation of the evolution of the field in the 21st century and, mainly, for its presentation in Portuguese, something that is unusual in this discipline.

Keywords : communication; organizations; organizational communication.

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