Ethical implications of the mediatization of organizations
| Published date | 23 November 2012 |
| Pages | 222-239 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211285863 |
| Date | 23 November 2012 |
| Author | Michael Litschka,Matthias Karmasin |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Ethical implications of the
mediatization of organizations
Michael Litschka
University of Applied Sciences St Po
¨lten, St Po
¨lten, Austria, and
Matthias Karmasin
University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Abstract
Purpose – The aim of this paper is to give theoretical and empirical arguments for new forms
of communication and structure of organizations within the media and information society.
Organizations must legitimate their “licence to operate” through social discourses and stakeholder
communication. Possibilities to institutionalize ethics within organizations and possible barriers to
such a programme are analysed.
Design/methodology/approach – First, some theoretical arguments as to why mediatisation
challenges organizations to prove ethical commitment are depicted, using a rights-based and social
contract approach. Second, empirical examples for structural and communicational barriers in
Austrian companies show possible practical constraints.
Findings – Theoretical findings refer to the usefulness of applying business ethical models
(especially rights-based, and social contract models) to reorganize mediatised organizations. Empirical
findings concern the lack of institutionalized ethics management in companies and the corresponding
problem of “PR-style” communication instead of stakeholder discourses.
Research limitations/implications – The research reported in one section of the paper relies on
the qualitative survey of 14 experts in different branches of the Austrian economy. While interviews
can give a picture on how respondents understand the relevant research question and construct the
respective reality, they are far from providing a representative picture of communicative ethical
problems in mediatised organizations.
Practical implications – Practical consequences should be possible, if companies understand
the mediatised and communicative nature of their relationship with society and stakeholders and
therefore react to that challenge by building up reputation through ethics management.
Originality/value – The paper gives new insights to the important relationship b etween
organizations and the public and shows how, e.g. enterprises can legitimate their business models
and secure their long-term existence. New empirical research concerns cases from Austrian companies.
Keywords Mediatization,Organizational communication,Organizational ethics, Ethics management,
Communicationethics, Ethics, Austria
Paper type Research paper
1. Mediatization within society and of organizations
1.1 The mediatization of communicative action
In order to grasp the meaning of the current “Zeitgeist”, many formulations are popular
in the humanities and social sciences. For example, we find “information society”, “media
society”, “network society” (Castells, 2001, 2002, 2005) or “media culture” (Karmasin, 2005).
In thisarticle we donot want to reconstructor discussthe empiricaland metaphoriccontent
of suchconcepts, but we willfollow the includedallusions to the relationshipof society and
organization. In a society characterized by a general augmentation of communication
possibilities, communicative complexity, and communication aggregation, in which living
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
JICES
10,4
222
Received 3 February 2012
Revised 15 May 2012
Accepted 20 July 2012
Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society
Vol. 10 No. 4, 2012
pp. 222-239
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/14779961211285863
environmentsare more and more determinedby media, organizations are also subject to
the process of mediatisation. As Silverstone (2005, p. 190) puts it, mediatization can go very
far, in that“politics, likeexperience, can no longereven be thought outsidea media frame”.
An important societal consequence here is:
In earlier societies, social institutions like family, school and church were the most important
providers of information, tradition and moral orientation for the individual member of
society. Today, these institutions have lost some of their former authority, and the media
have to some extent taken over their role as providers of information and moral orientation, at
the same time as the media have become society’s most important storyteller about society
itself (Hjarvard, 2008, p. 7).
The “mediatization of communication” (Krotz, 2001, p. 19) changes the characteristics
of reflections on society and on itself[1] as “media worlds and living environments
merge” (Bauer, 1996, p. 2). If social life outside a mediatized contex t is hardly imaginable,
this must be valid for the economy, too. What are some implications for economic
organizations?
1.2 The mediatisation of the organization
From an economic perspective the process of mediatisation implies the encroachment of
new kinds of value added based on media-related structures (proceduralization and
storage of knowledge, selection and processing of information, convergence, etc.). Even
if the “information society” does not exist spatially inclusive and comprehensive, and
there are still agrarian methods of production, industrial structures, and services in the
developing world and in developed countries, the empirical finding of Castells (2002)
holds up, as there seems to be a transformation of labor and employment, as well as of
global production and marketing. As media economists (Doyle, 2002; Picard, 2002) tell
us, technologies like the internet, mobile data communication, data base systems or
intelligent interactive analysis tools are used throughout the value-added chain. They
and others in the field claim that these applications can be used to optimize processes
(e-procurement, supply chain management), integrate employees more productively
(workflow management systems), open new channels to clients and partner s (chat
application, e-service, e-commerce), reduce costs (customer relationship management),
and enlarge the knowledge of the organization (e-learning, collaborative development,
field-force-automation). Corporate networks change to social networks; Web 2.0 and
social media applications change the mode of communication between organizations
and stakeholders.
Dealing with communicative processes in organizational contexts has implications
beyond purely instrumentally rational, strategic dimensions. Organizations using such
processes developinto social contractual and interactive organizations (Section2), whose
boundaries and functions are not only determined by the allocation of resources, but
also by communicative processes. The organization therebybecomes the coordinator of
a value-chain network; the “economization” of the public sphere (i.e. commoditization,
marketization of social spheres, economical aspects prevailing in/dominating the social
spheres) corresponds to the publicationof the economy, and the commercialization of the
media corresponds to the mediatisation of commerce.
The mediatised organization is a “publicly exposed” or “quasi-public” organization
determined by the relationship of a recursive constitution of organization and society.
In this communicative sense there are no “private” organizations (as the difference
Mediatization of
organizations
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