The Origins of Communication and Management at Work

This chapter will provide a brief overview of the origins and the role that communication played since our society has moved away from a feudalist past into the present-day system of industrialism, managerialism, and capitalism. While there are many viewpoints from which the role of communication in this process can be discussed, the analytical concept of critique provides a particularly fruitful angle as the idea of critique has also been at the core of the Enlightenment project. Ever since the idea of Enlightenment took hold when society left the medieval Dark Ages, critique has been a constant companion of modern thinking. It allows not only a reflection on the philosopher Kant’s idea of what is but also directs our attention to Kant’s second idea that might be even more important — the idea of what ought to be. Ever since the Enlightenment thinker Kant the human condition in society and in the world of work has been critically examined using two distinctive viewpoints. The first is a reliance on theories concerned with how things work — what is — and the second a reliance on theories that go beyond a simple what is entering the domain of what ought to be.49 Enlightenment’s task has never only been about how things work but has always carried connotations directed towards what ought to be. Under feudalism God and religion had told us what is and what ought to be. Under Enlightenment, this was no longer possible.