The Struggle for meaning production: the power relations in organizational communication

Abstract

This article adopted as theoretical support, the studies of Blumer (1980), Bakhtin (1995), Foucault (1996) and Galbraith (1986) and the contemporary studies in organizational communication focused in the paradigm of meaning production (OLIVEIRA; PAULA, 2008) and systemic organizational management (YANAZE, 2011) in order to identify the power relations and the struggle for meaning production among the parties involved in the social project Comunidade Educativa, sponsored by Bunge Foundation in the São Paulo State School Henrique Dumont Villares, located in São Paulo city. Depth qualitative interviews were conducted with representatives of the Foundation and the school and their narratives were classified by lexical-semantic: Similarity, complementarity, diversity and divergence categories; and later compared to identify divergence in meanings. The results showed that particular interests lead the struggle over meaning and power, which at first was in the sole purview of the Foundation, to later be assessed by teachers, the meaning being constructed between these actors, the hegemony in this interaction.