Communication in post-bureaucratic organizations: confronting diversity and crisis

The purpose of this chapter is to better understand post-bureaucratic organizations and their communication by focusing on and linking two factors in modern complexity: diversity and crisis. After outlining the key role of communication in the context of post-bureaucratic organizations, the chapter discusses literature on diversity, cultural diversity, and multicultural communication, which constitutes the background of this work. The chapter then explores in more detail the special case of crisis communication in multicultural contexts, which exemplifies an area where diversity and crisis meet and where the relevance of communication in facilitating relationships, environmental alignment, and organizational learning clearly emerges. Chapter considerations indicate that adaptation to variety is necessary but insufficient, and that a generative learning perspective in organizations is needed so that both diversity and crisis can be used to continuously question and regenerate core organizational assumptions and overall direction. The chapter concludes with future research avenues.