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- Serie: ISTE Consignment
- Sprache: Englisch
This book explores the various forms of knowledge selection and mediation concerning communication in organizations, particularly focusing on professional communication training courses. The work is based on a corpus study of training catalogues, an interview survey of trainers, as well as ethnographic observations of professional communication training courses.
Mediation and Hierarchy of Knowledge on Communication analyzes how the pursuit of certainty contributes to favoring certain types of 'learned' knowledge over others. This analysis reveals that the theoretical frameworks employed in vocational training for communicators predominantly rely on experimental reasoning and explanatory models, drawing upon insights from psychosocial experiments, neuroscience and management science.
This quest for certainty has positioned the life sciences as the benchmark for scientific validity, resulting in a form of biologization of communication that this book aims to deconstruct.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Dedication Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The Promises of Communication Training Programs
1.1. Diversity of structures, diversity of authoritative discourses
1.2. Segmentation of communication fields
1.3. Mediation and the performative ideal: the promises of guaranteed learning
1.4. Instrumented mediation: the digital seen as an educational panacea
1.5. The explicit request for communication “tools” and “techniques”
2 Mastery Over Communication: Professionalization and the Injunction to Efficacy
2.1. The figures of facilitators and the legitimization of communication expertise
2.2. “Mastering” communication to gain professional efficacy
2.3. Reinforcing the professionalism of communicators
2.4. The argument of the paradigm shift and communication conceptions
3 Procedures and Standards for “Communicating Properly”
3.1. Toolboxes and communicational claims
3.2. Prescription and planning to “master” communication
3.3. “Best practices” and the circulation of standards
3.4. Prescribing and standardizing “creativity”?
3.5. Debates on standards and the reflexivity of social actors
4 Exemplification, Modeling and Memorization of Instrumented Bodies of Knowledge in Communication
4.1. Casuist mediation: the presumed efficacy of practical wisdom
4.2. The order of “scholarly” discourses in professional training
4.3. The quest for certainty and the scientistic relationship with knowledge
4.4. The neuroscience, experimental psychology and management science triptych
4.5. Theory and memorization: understanding versus mastering?
5 Communication in the Face of Evaluation: Efficacy and Extension of the Managerial Model
5.1. Evaluation and institutionalization of values
5.2. Evaluation and (willing) (temporary) suspension of reflexivity
5.3. Metrics and quantitativist reduction
5.4. Knowledge about communication and managerial regime
Conclusion Elements for a Sociopolitics of Bodies of Knowledge in Communication
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1. Slogans from large training organizations
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. “Swiss army knife of public speaking” presented during the “public ...
Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Action-measure sheet (inspired by the teachings aids from the multi...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Example of a tailor-made offer (inspired by the organization’s pro...
Figure 1.2. “4 REAL” training engineering method (figure inspired by the prosp...
Figure 1.3. Transposition diagram (figure inspired by the prospectus from the ...
Figure 1.4. “Bristol smart card” (inspired by a training teaching aids from th...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Communications triangle tool (inspired by the teaching aids from g...
Figure 2.2. “Communication diagrams” before and after the Internet (inspired b...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Scheduling of actions (diagram inspired by the teaching aids from ...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Grid of the HBDI model (inspired by the teaching aids used at the ...
Figure 4.2. Kapferer prism (inspired by the teaching aids of grande école A)
Figure 4.3. Diagram inspired by the facilitator’s drawing made during the trai...
Figure 4.4. OARIS method (inspired by the teaching aids from the specialized o...
Figure 4.5. “The magic lantern” tool (diagram inspired by the teaching aids fr...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Showcasing the quality system (inspired by the prospectus from a m...
Figure 5.2. PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle (diagram inspired by the teaching a...
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion Elements for a Sociopolitics of Bodies of Knowledge in Communication
References
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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To Yves Jeanneret, who wove Ariadne’s thread through my research
SCIENCES
Scientific Knowledge Management,Field Director – Renaud Fabre
Knowledge Exploration and Analysis,Subject Head – Daniel Egret
Mediation and Hierarchy of Knowledge on Communication
The Case of Professional Training
Aude Seurrat
First published 2025 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USAwww.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2025The rights of Aude Seurrat to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024950063
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78945-211-2
ERC code:SH3 The Social World and Its Interactions SH3_9 Social aspects of teaching and learning, curriculum studies, education and educational policies SH3_10 Communication and information, networks, media
Foreword
Pierre MŒGLIN
LabSic, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
How does communication reach those who practice it in firms and organizations in general? This is the question which sparked the idea for this book.
The question is twofold: on the one hand, it concerns what knowledge in communication does to communicators who follow short-term internships; on the other hand, it focuses on what this same knowledge does to occasional communicators in the context of general public internships, where it is introduced as a transversal skill. Those internships provide training in speaking, media training and the fundamentals of communication, among other topics.
Aude Seurrat is better placed than anyone to address this question. In fact, she can tackle it from three different perspectives.
A university professor in Information and Communication Sciences, she co-directs a renowned research unit, CEDITEC (Centre d’étude des discours, images, textes, écrits, communication). Mastering the most rigorous scientific methods, not only does she have privileged access to cutting-edge research concepts in the human and social sciences, but she also maintains the essential distance for understanding the organizational strategies and logics which underlie the environments she studies.
A recognized expert and specialist in the management of bodies of knowledge, she is well aware of the ideals and practices of corporate communicators. In particular, she knows the fears and obsessions of a corporation whose legitimacy is regularly called into question by occupations relying on other bodies of knowledge, such as management, marketing and advertising. These competing occupations have seniority on their side, as well as certain toolboxes whose usefulness is no longer discussed. This could be one of the reasons why, as a countermeasure, communication facilitators place so much emphasis on performance and profitability imperatives, including “personal development” and “personal efficacy” training programs, destined for nonprofessional communication practitioners.
Fully up to date on training practices and a seasoned teacher herself, Seurrat knows the educational offer in communication better than anyone; she is no less aware of the pedagogic challenges raised by the logic of educational industrialization. A logic which – as seen in other fields, but even more blatantly – subjects facilitators and trainees to the imperative of instrumental rationality. Here, it is essentially the private educational offer that is in question, despite the boundaries between the public and private spheres being porous. What happens in professional training is of great interest to university training programs and vice versa.
The project involves studying short (one-day or several days) communication training programs. The hypothesis is that in the “best practices” and “cases” presented therein, lies the precious concentrate of all the normative ideologies of corporate communication and communication in general. More than others, those training programs give the profession the opportunity to assert and strengthen its professionality.
In retrospect, the hypothesis turns out to be particularly fruitful. And this to such an extent that we were surprised to discover that other researchers – including those who have studied training manuals, the discourse of professionals and long-term training – have not made this point before.
Still, what was needed was a method. The method used by Seurrat is based on three pillars: the study of the prospectuses of provider organizations and their teaching aids, the analysis of in-depth interviews with facilitators, and participant and ethnographic surveys. Whenever necessary, she also had recourse to scientific literature and the writings of experts.
In that sense, it was crucial to avoid two fatal errors: the superficial approach and the overhanging viewpoint.
The first one would have led Seurrat to stick to cookie-cutter appraisals, derived from the examination of a few promotional brochures and supplemented by the analysis of a small number of testimonies taken at random. The second one would have led her to give in to the temptation of value judgment. Temptation would have been all the stronger in this case, because, when they showcase their expertise (in a highly competitive market), facilitators do not hesitate to invoke the “best authors”, scholars included.
Seurrat made the right choice to avoid those two errors. She took the prospectuses seriously, she studied the arguments and the content presentation, she worked in the field and followed training programs in person, whenever authorized to do so. For a long time, she patiently held meetings with facilitators and interrogated them. Most importantly, she left aside all prejudice, without ever losing her critical spirit.
The result is up to par. While she stresses the unrealism of promises and the irrationality of injunctions, she also reveals that instructions often give in to evaluative quantophrenia, to the tyranny of return on investment (ROI) and the imposition of performance standards. On the other hand, she emphasizes that facilitators themselves do not all believe in the usefulness of instrumentalized communication. She even points out that, for some of them, “knowledge is not a control instrument, but on the contrary, the place of humility where we experience the complexity of the world”.
One of the great qualities of her book is that it raises awareness about the existing gap between the concern for immediate operationality and the need for reflexivity, a sine qua non condition to avoid reproducing obsolete professional practices. Another quality is that she considers and accounts for a diversity of situations and the complexity of contexts. Despite being only a few in number, the training organizations studied by the author cover a wide spectrum, ranging from powerful agencies and large research and consulting firms to tiny and artisanal structures, as well as two grandes écoles.
Seurrat is no less attentive to the heterogeneity of facilitators. These differ even more from one another considering that not all of them are professional facilitators. Actually, only a certain number of them are professionals who provide training. According to the author, each has their own rhetoric, tricks, promises of results and success indicators. Each also displays their own legitimating arguments, which vary from person to person, and from structure to structure. Nevertheless, all face the same problem: making sure that relevant goals are achieved despite the short time allocated for training.
In this regard, the pages devoted to the use of the reference to the “paradigm change” are particularly enlightening. Aware of the fact that it is not possible to acquire new skills within a short time frame, facilitators choose to prioritize the conversion of the ways of thinking. Two themes, supposed to act as electroshocks for trainees, are brought to the fore: the theme of the transition from the information society to the communication society, and the “digital revolution”.
It is nonetheless impossible to ignore the dubious and reductive character of the opposition between information and communication. This scheme artificially presents information as the keystone of a top-down, mechanical and impoverished transmission regime. In contrast, communication gives the impression of being the collaborative vector of symmetrical and participatory exchanges. In reality, neither information nor communication corresponds to what this scheme claims. A fortiori, there is something artificial in the staging of their confrontation.
No less questionable is the use of the theme of the “digital revolution”. In no way should we underestimate the importance of social networks and the weight of influencers. But, as Seurrat clearly states, what is at stake is the primacy granted (in the name of digital technology) to the idealization of relationships and to a “conversational model” which overlooks the political and economic dimensions of communication mediations.
The concluding pages, “Elements for a Sociopolitics of the Bodies of Knowledge on Communication”, should be read as a tribute to Yves Jeanneret. Following in the footsteps of her master, Seurrat opposes the imperative of effective action and world domination with the goal of understanding the frameworks of action. Therefore, each practitioner is free to enter into these frameworks, become more or less detached from them, or help them to evolve. The teaching of business communication does not involve training professional protesters, it is true. Even less does it have to plant “time bombs”, as one trainer stated. On the other hand, it must avoid the short-term vision of instrumentalized communication subject to technocratism and the productivism of managerial normativity.
This is the challenge that the book we are about to read addresses: neither does it give in to the triumphalism of omniscient gurus, nor to the dismay of practitioners destabilized by the rapid changes companies are now subject to. On the contrary, it cleverly shows that the requirement for the professionalization of training programs does not dispense with the critical analysis of the mechanisms of social production of the bodies of knowledge and power. This concerns the efficacy of training programs as much as the facilitators’ honor.
Acknowledgements
This work, which is largely the result of my HDR accreditation to supervise research, was nourished by exchanges with various colleagues and friends whom I would like to thank here.
Yves Jeanneret, my late thesis director, will always be a source of inspiration and someone who I deeply cherish.
I express my sincere appreciation towards Pierre Mœglin, who kindly agreed to write the foreword of this book and has played a prominent role in my career path as a researcher, as well as Karine Berthelot-Guiet who accompanied this accreditation work.
I would also like to express my esteem and friendship to Sarah Labelle, Joëlle Le Marec, Emmanuël Souchier, Claire Oger, Laurent Petit, Karine Grandpierre, Judith Mayer, Thomas Grignon, Sabine Bosler, Marlène Loicq, Julie Bouchard, Vincent Bullich and Lucie Alexis.
I thank my laboratory for its support throughout the editing process, my colleagues at CEDITEC, with whom I have stimulating and friendly discussions, and Françoise Dufour for her attentive proofreading.
This editing process was initiated after a meeting with Renaud Fabre, who gave me the opportunity to rework and publish this text, and with whom I have had fascinating exchanges ever since.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Fabrice, who for almost 20 years has consistently shown interest in my work, and my daughters, Alice and Inès, who fill my every day with unparalled joy.
Introduction
The aim of this book is to analyze the forms of knowledge selection, hierarchization and mediation of bodies of knowledge in “communication” during professional training. A body of knowledge (BOK or BoK) refers to the comprehensive set of concepts, terms and activities that define a particular professional domain. It serves as a framework for guiding practitioners within that field, encapsulating the essential knowledge and practices necessary for effective performance. For this, we will investigate the link between two types of ideologies: the performative efficacy promised by training programs, and communication seen as a logistic to be managed and optimized to achieve mastery. The choice of professional training in communication is related to the hypothesis that training is a place where communication ideologies and standards crystallize. Starting with professional training will allow us to question the functions attributed to the BOK in communication within organizations, because professional training corresponds to an adaptation logic to the demands of such organizations. The question that will pervade this book is: How does the efficacy imperative affect the mediation of BOK in communication in ongoing professional training? The question is to determine to what extent the promise of efficacy is linked to behaviorist, logistical, instrumental and managerial conceptions of communication, as well as scientistic expectations1 (Jurdant 2009, p. 5) towards said bodies of knowledge. This problem makes it possible to understand contemporary forms of communication engineering, “the way in which various social actors take over all of these processes to produce power and value” (Jeanneret 2014, p. 32).
This book aims to bring to light the construction of communication conceptions in the field of professional communication training. It will therefore be marked by a reflection on this discipline, its challenges, its modes of social visibility and its relations with the socio-economic world. Working on the elaboration of professional BOK in communication leads to questions on the relations between academic knowledge and knowledge deemed relevant and efficient for professional practice. The concept of knowledge (savoir) can designate bodies of knowledge with highly varying statuses. Depending on the approaches, some will produce certain categorizations: theoretical, procedural, experiential, informal bodies of knowledge, etc. The goal is not to discuss these forms of categorization, nor to produce any new ones, but to see what, within professional training, constitutes action-related bodies of knowledge (Barbier 1996, p. 16). As Foucault has pointed out, “knowledge is that of which one can speak in a discursive practice, and which is specified by that fact” (Foucault 1969, p. 182). This means that “there are bodies of knowledge that are independent of the sciences (which are neither their historical prototypes, nor their practical by-products), but there is no knowledge without a particular discursive practice; and any discursive practice may be defined by the knowledge that it forms” (Foucault 1969, p. 183).
What types of knowledge are considered “useful”, “practical”, “operational” in professional communication training? These questions are related to the modes of instrumentalization of BOK in professional training and, more generally, to the quest for certainty (Dewey 1929) in the knowledge transmitted. On the other hand, short professional training programs – and not only those devoted to communication – place particular emphasis on the development and sharing of “best practices” drawn from the concrete experience of facilitators or trainees. This helps us understand casuistry (Passeron and Revel 2005) as a knowledge mediation communication process derived from concrete experience and compiled as exemplary cases. While professional training is not the only framework in which the development of cases actively participates in the circulation of communication standards, it is a privileged field of practice for investigating this question.
This book is at the crossroads of research on organizational communication, knowledge mediation and the industrialization of training. However, as Bonnet (2015) has emphasized, the mediation field of organizational knowledge is still a relatively underexplored area of research.
Knowledge mediation is a process which is not naturally associated with the objects of research inherent in the field of organizational communication. Closer to (or even interdisciplinary with) Educational Sciences, it is nonetheless at the heart of the info-communicational challenges of collective entrepreneurial, associative or administrative action (Bonnet and Galibert 2016, p. 5).
For Bonnet and Galibert, this perspective should “go beyond a functionalist vision of information management, knowledge management or organizational learning” (Bonnet and Galibert 2016, p. 5), as done by management sciences to understand the forms and challenges of the processes underlying organizational knowledge mediation. This project aims to contribute to structuring this area of research and highlighting the interest of this type of approach applied to the field of organizations. For Jeanneret, “this approach to communication based on the claims it substantiates proves particularly crucial for those seeking to conduct a constructed reading of the way in which the procedures, skills and occupations that make communication a professional reality, are established and transformed” (Jeanneret 2014, p. 249).
As shown in Lépine and David (2014)2, the relations between professional practices and communication training show to what extent it is complex to desire to establish a foundation of common skills for communication occupations, which are highly diverse and ever-evolving
Far from being superimposed on epistemology, the communicational approach becomes the center of the interrogation on the production, recognition, and publicization of bodies of knowledge and, conversely, their repression. It is not surprising that in such theoretical frameworks, the reflection focuses more on the sciences than on science: it now opens a new investigation into what can be called an anthropology of the bodies of knowledge, raising the question of the legitimization of knowledge with a broader scope than the sole category of scientificity (Jeanneret 2004, p. 21).
Research begins with a first choice: to focus on training organizations, and this is for several reasons. The first is that in France, as in most countries in Europe and North America, professional training is mainly provided by organizations offering training internships. It is relevant to question the ways in which these organizations position themselves, establish their expertise, divide communication into “products”, promote their offer and claim mastery over communication processes. The second is that training organizations themselves have been the subject of little research, despite being key actors in lifelong professional training. According to Delamotte, “if we agree to recognize an industrial type of mutation in the social representations underpinning the practice and development of the field of training, it is also appropriate to construct an observation around the main actor in industrialization, namely the training organization” (Delamotte 1993).
When studying the training programs proposed in France, these share similar content with other training organizations in various countries. To begin with, part of the training organizations studied deploy their offer at an international scale. We were able to show that the contents of these training programs are quite similar from one organization to another, and based on the same models (such as SWOT or the Deming wheel), designed in the United States and promoted by numerous agencies or communications consulting firms around the world.
Professional training in communication involves diverse structures (general organizations, specialized organizations, grandes écoles, associations, independent units) and the offer is quite heterogeneous. From this observation arises a bias in research: not delimiting the field of research a priori (based on a certain definition of “communication”), but taking into account what training organizations designate as “communication” training programs. By analyzing the segmentation and construction of short professional educational offers in communication, we will see that communication has close relations to marketing, management and personal development. However, this question of the permeability of boundaries seems particularly interesting to understand the conceptions of communication at work and the standards referring to them.
This work is the result of a triple methodological approach: an analysis of corpora of catalogs from training organizations and their teaching aids, an interview survey and an ethnographic survey3. In order to analyze the rhetoric of training organizations, their educational offers in communication, their segmentation and positioning, I studied a corpus of 2017–2018 catalogs from eight educational structures and updated the analysis by establishing a comparison with 2023–2024 offers. The analysis of these catalogs accounts for the plurality of arguments for legitimizing educational structures and the construction of promises relating to offers where communication is considered as a transversal skill and in those dedicated to communication professionals. The understanding of the positioning of training program providers, their methods for elaborating offers, as well as the specificities of communication training programs, are also analyzed based on interviews conducted with professional training program actors4. Finally, the ethnography of professional communication training practices is at the heart of this research work. It aims to observe the way in which BOK in “communication” are hierarchized, legitimized, transmitted and put into practice within different communication training program courses. As Petit (2013) did in his publication to obtain his accreditation to supervise research (HDR), I will argue that the “cases” studied for this book are research constructs which shed light on different questions.
For the ethnographic survey, given their extent and variety, I chose to observe two main types of educational offers: training programs in strategic communication and planning, and training programs in public speaking. Apart from the fact that these two types of offers have the highest demand (qualified as “Best” by training organizations), they make it possible to understand two frameworks for deploying the mediation of BOK in communication: the one intended for communication professionals (where BOK in communication are associated with “professional” skills), and the one targeting a far wider audience (where BOK in communication are associated with “transversal” skills5). I will argue that there are remarkable differences between the economy of BOK in “communication” during the communicators’6 training phase and BOK in communication during training in “communication techniques”7. Furthermore, the real challenge is to analyze them jointly, to identify the common conceptions of communication and associated standards which are engaged.
My position was that of an observing participant (Flamant 2005, pp. 137–152), a researcher who does not attempt to erase her role in communication situations, but on the contrary, wishes to think of it as having a structuring character in how the bodies of knowledge explored by research are elaborated. For Soulé, this expression stresses “the primacy of interactional and intersubjective involvement over the claim to objective observation” (Soulé 2007, p. 131) and evidences the transition from the observation of the “other” to the observation of human relations – I would say, communication situations the researcher helps to configure. This research posture, which assumes its subjectivity, goes against certain idealized conceptions of the researcher as blurred behind the research object. Among other things, this makes me think of the “shadowing” method. Introduced by McDonald, professor of psycho-sociology at Aberdeen, the research modality known as “shadowing” involves following a person “like their shadow”, and postulates that, over time, the person will forget about us, producing “a detached distance from the informants, thereby reducing the influence of our presence” (McDonald 2005, p. 32). On the contrary, I believe that this method contributes to avoiding the mediations through which the survey is tackled and deprives the researcher of the knowledge which is precisely the fruit of this reflection. Far from being in the background and even less, “a shadow”, I became involved in the debates within the training programs and triggered some of them. Combined with the participant observation of training programs, I created a corpus of teaching aids (sheets, slideshows, booklets, downloadable documents, quizzes, etc.). The method for compiling the corpus focuses on communication situations relating to the ethnographic survey. It allows us to think about the role (or the absence) of educational tools and media (Mœglin 2005) in short communication training programs, and to see how they materialize certain conceptions of “useful” bodies of knowledge in “communication”.
This research allows us to question the modalities and challenges of projects for mastering communication, the construction of standards and action guides on “effective communication”, and the related – logistical and managerial – conceptions of communication. In concrete terms, this is a problem relating to the industrialization of training.
The notion of industrialization is complex, and the goal of the book is not to provide a unique definition, but to identify and analyze its components and its main themes. The collective book directed by Mœglin (2016) distinguishes three interdependent markers of the industrialization of training: technologization, rationalization and ideologization. Technologization differs from technicization in that the devices “add the dimension of the uses they prescribe and the practices they model to the material dimension of the tools and media which is intrinsic to them” (Mœglin 2016, p. 55). “In fact, a framing or formatting effect (in the sense of shaping information) is present in technologization, which obviously does not prevent this framing from remaining relatively open, depending on the richness of the “product uses” prescribed by these devices” (Mœglin 2016, p. 57). We can differentiate two levels of technologization: the promotion and access to training offers (via search engines on their website and the implementation of “interactive” catalogs), and the training offers themselves. Over the past 15 years, there has been a development in e-learning and blended learning training programs, and the implementation of virtual classes. It is nonetheless necessary to draw a distinction between additive educational technologization and substitutive technologization (Mœglin 2016, p. 22). As I will point out in the book, in professional communication training, it is mostly the blended learning offers that are multiplying, that is, forms of additive technologization (even if distance learning offers have developed, especially since the Covid 19 pandemic).
The second marker is rationalization. The notion of rationalization is used in the sense that Weber (1959) stated in The Vocation Lectures, a book which contains two lectures given in 1919, one called “Science as a Vocation” and the other, “Politics as a Vocation”. For Combès
The last argument which confirms rationalization, and which goes in the direction of industrialization, concerns the penetration of a managerial logic into the educational environment. Knowledge in its generality gradually becomes the object of production regulated on the basis of the performative model of instrumental action (specialization and sectorization of training programs, differentiation in the structuring of content depending on targeted audiences, implementation of standardization mechanisms and new forms of knowledge production) (Combès 1993, p. 42).
This question will be central in the last part of the book, where the extension of the managerial regime will be discussed. For Tremblay, “rationalization, here understood in the Weberian and Habermasian sense, as a constant pursuit of efficacy, yield, productivity, adjustment of means to an end” (Tremblay 1998, p. 45). In this respect, Gadrey (1994), in his work on the characterization of contemporary transformations or the “modernization” of service activities and organizations, distinguishes the professional rationalization of services from industrial rationalization. For this author, the training sector, like other service sectors, is subject to an efficiency logic, the adjustment of means to an end, inspired in a cost/efficacy economic calculation. But, according to him, cognitive and organizational obstacles oppose industrial rationalization (which aims for the massive and standardized production of goods, and is based on a highly Taylorized organization of work).
The professional rationalization strategy aims […] to make the typification of cases more precise and more systematic, by formalizing the corresponding methods and breaking them into “routines”, in order to foster the efficacy of professional working procedures (both in the sense of profit time and quality of response). But it does not associate a range of cases with a range of mechanically prescribed operating instructions […]. In terms of performance assessment, it privileges the evaluation of the effects or impact of services on users, rather than the measurement of direct productivity gains (Gadrey 1994, p. 186).
As I will show throughout the case studies chosen, even if we observe certain standardization trends in training offers, the rationalization at work concerns, above all, professional rationalization.
Finally, the third marker, ideologization, draws on the work of Habermas (1973), itself inspired by Herbert Marcuse’s theories on the ideology of capitalism. For Mœglin, this notion of ideologization is key to understanding what leads actors towards technologization and rationalization. “The notion of ideologization here designates the process through which […] actors rationalize the rationality of their strategies” (Mœglin 2016, p. 60). Examining ideologization processes clarifies the meaning that actors give to their actions, and the justifications they provide for them. “In other words, they justify the voluntarism of their modernizing strategies and convince themselves of the legitimacy of the priority they give to the optimization of means in relation to ends, to the detriment of any other consideration” (Mœglin 2016, p. 60).
This desire to optimize means to an end is at the core of the question of efficacy which guides this book. This is why it is around this marker – ideologization – that the question will be explored. The term ideologization, rather than ideology, allows us to emphasize processes rather than states considered stabilized. Now, if ideologization is understood as a process for developing the social representations which steer activity and making them visible, it is possible to envision the primacy of the search for efficacy as a form of ideologization.
Efforts to improve and rationalize are at the origin of the industrialization process, which can be defined as a way of encouraging technical and organizational choices to lower the costs per product unit, with a view to generating revenues and profits. Let us remember that, regardless of their connotations, the notions of performance and efficacy are central in economics: “these are the key terms which summarize all economic problems” (De Bandt 1991) (Delamotte 1993, p. 68).
We may perceive to what extent raising the issue of the efficacy imperative leads to industrialization-related questions.
If we look at its etymological aspects, the term efficacy comes from the Latin efficax, which means acting, producing the expected effect. Furthermore, it is essential to differentiate efficacy from performance. While efficacy implies the correct use of means and properly fulfilling the function for which the action, thing, individual or organization was intended, performance involves the idea of something outstanding, and, in the field of sport, designates a remarkable achievement (Erenberg 1994). Performance is a result that is considered superior to previous results. Following the footsteps of Bernard Stiegler as to the etymology of the term “performance”, Aubert notes that “initially, it refers to a process of perfection in the making” (Aubert 2006, p. 340). Efficacy does not seem related to the question of perfection, but rather to optimization. It falls under the idea of praxis and is close to Aristotle’s definition of “cleverness”, as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics: “There is a faculty which is called cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do the things that tend towards the mark we have set before ourselves, and to hit it” (Aristotle 2014, p. 174).
In his Traité de l’efficacité, the philosopher and sinologist Jullien (1996) proposed to understand efficacy from the angle of strategy, politics and philosophy, through the history of the European and Chinese cultural traditions, in order to identify two different modes of thinking. According to him, efficacy can be approached via two logics: the European modeling or the Chinese process. On the one hand, it is thought of as the culmination of a planned action, and on the other, as the maturation of a transformation process based on adaptation to situations and circumstances8. For Jullien, European thought, heir to Greek philosophy, is based on the means-ends framework; efficacy is thought of as the achievement of a goal (telos), modeled and erected into an ideal (eidos), which we can only attempt to achieve through force of will. On the contrary, he states, Chinese thought is based on the conditions–consequences model, and efficacy, or rather efficiency, is thought of as a process, rather than as a result: “in short, instead of imposing one’s plan on the world, relying on the situation’s potential” (Jullien 1996, p. 37).
In that sense, strength and weakness are not intrinsic qualities of a particular person, but depend on the situation. For Jullien, who analyzes this difference between European and Chinese thought through the lens of the texts on the art of war, the Chinese general “does not ask his men to be naturally courageous, as if this were an intrinsic virtue, but, by confronting them with the perilous situation he throws them into, he forces them to behave courageously” (Jullien 1996, p. 41). In its European sense, efficacy implies a desire to master, predict and control in order to “bring means and goals into exact conformity, without doing too much or not enough” (Jullien 1996, p. 67). As Boltanski and Thévenot also point out, “efficacy is part of a regular connection between cause and effect. The proper functioning of beings extends the present into the future, opening the possibility of foresight” (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991, p. 254).
Efficacy would fall within the scope of instrumental or purposeful rationality, which, according to Weber, “arranges the objectives and means the best suited to the goals pursued”, in order to “achieve the goals it has given itself with optimal efficacy” (Weber 1959, p. 29). Weber opposes instrumental rationality to axiological rationality. As for Dewey, this dichotomy deserves to be discussed further, in order to explore “the immanent normativity of action” (Dewey 2011, p. 46). According to Dewey, who embraces an empiricist approach, values can be observed, they are not abstract ideas. Can efficacy be thought of as a value in Dewey’s sense, and how, in this case, can we examine the conditions of its formation? As I will show throughout this book, this may well be crux of the problem: by shifting the focus from ends (thereby ethical questions) to means, does the efficacy imperative not risk hindering us from fairly questioning the ends themselves? In other words, if efficacy is established as a self-sufficient value, how can we ask the question: Why is this so?
In order to analyze what this efficacy imperative produces on the mediation of BOK in communication, the first chapter will analyze how communication is structured into products and sub-products, something which raises the question of the boundaries with other fields of training, such as marketing, management and personal development. By considering the question of professionalization in communication or through communication, the second chapter will bring to light the procedures and standards for “communicating properly”. By delving into the forms of selection, hierarchization and pedagogic modalities of the mediation of BOK in communication, Chapter 3 will show the way in which communication training programs rely upon heteronomous knowledge in the human and social sciences, inspired by an instrumental approach to communication driven by the quest for certainty. Finally, by showing how communication is particularly at odds with evaluation, the last chapter will call into question the preponderance of managerial models for reflecting on communication.
Notes
1.
In
Les problèmes théoriques de la vulgarisation scientifique
, Baudouin Jurdant explains that scientism is a certain type of social relationship towards bodies of knowledge. Scientism is an ideologically constructed attitude which, in response to social demand, involves believing that a certain “knowledge of the truth” is possible.
2.
The articles compiled in this publication were chosen from all the contributions presented at the international symposium
Entre réflexif et prescriptif: Analyse des dispositifs d’apprentissage et de formation des communicateurs
, held as part of the
81st ACFAS Congress – Savoirs sans frontières
in Montreal on May 9 and 10, 2013 under the scientific responsibility of Marc D. David and Valérie Lépine.
3.
In this book, the remarks obtained from interviews and those resulting from observation are differentiated because, in the first case, they are comments elicited by the researcher in an interview situation, whereas in the second case, comments were collected from a real-life scenario, targeting a group of participants within the frame of their training program.
4.
Ten 90-minute semi-structured interviews were conducted with different actors from professional training: structure director, line manager, monitoring director, trainer.
5.
Eight training programs were observed over 18 days. We looked into two media training programs (on an exploratory basis, which will only be engaged occasionally), three public speaking training programs and three training programs on strategic communication and planning.
6.
Training programs in communication planning, press relations, community management or communication audit.
7.
Training programs in media training, public speaking, writing techniques and meeting management.
8.
According to this author, the question of adaptation to situations, come what may, is one of the specificities of Chinese thought (which he develops in another book,
La propension des choses
).
1The Promises of Communication Training Programs
Through the analysis of the organizations’ rhetoric and their educational offers in communication, the first chapter of this book will focus on the ideologization processes at the heart of the efficacy imperative. More specifically, we will examine how the efficacy principle governs the ways in which educational offers in communication are structured, divided, presented and legitimized.
1.1. Diversity of structures, diversity of authoritative discourses
Since the implementation of the Lisbon strategy in 2000, followed by the Europe 2020 strategy adopted in 2010, ongoing staff training is considered a major issue in knowledge-based economy within the European Union. It must contribute to economic growth, greater competitiveness accompanied by a quantitative and qualitative improvement in employment and stronger social cohesion1.
According to the 2020 Céreq survey (Center for Studies and Research on Qualifications), European firms are increasingly resorting to training: in 2020, 73% of firms in the 28 members of the European Union (EU) organized training programs for at least one member of their staff; they barely amounted to 60% in 2005. In 2020, the highest share of training companies were settled in Latvia and Norway (99%), and the lowest in Greece (22%). France is at the top of the range (79% of training companies). According to INSEE2’s 2022 Training-Employment report, the professional training market in France is dominated by private organizations, which represent approximately 80% of the total turnover (estimated at 15.5 billion euros in 2022). The professional training market in France is a fringe oligopoly: not only is it a highly fragmented market, but it is also a market where the largest turnover is recorded by a small number of actors. France is described as a “monotrainer” country, with professional training programs mainly coming down to short training internships (one to five days), most of which do not lead to any diplomas or certifications
Thus, we face the following paradox: while France comes at the top of EU countries for company expenditure on ongoing staff training and the training rate initiated by firms, it falls at the bottom of the list for the training rate initiated by individuals and leading to a recognized diploma. As a monotrainer, France is caught up not only in a network of practices, but also of actors and institutions, which does little to encourage personal and autonomous initiatives (Fournier 2016, p. 83).
According to the Céreq European survey on professional training conducted in 2020:
Despite the health crisis, three quarters of firms with 10 or more employees trained at least one member of their staff. In contrast, training modalities changed: more firms resorted to self-training, on-the-job training and remote learning, and less to courses or internships. While part of these developments resulted from an adaptation to the sanitary situation, others could be more structural. Despite such transformations, the share of staff trained by means of courses or internships (47%) remained close to its former levels3.
While French firms are quite strongly and regularly involved in staff training through the organization of internships, the recourse to other types of training (conferences, seminars, job rotation, on-the-job training) is less significant than in other European countries, although training has been on the increase since 2020.
Professional training takes greatly varied forms. In 2016, the Adult Education Survey4, conducted by Eurostat in 28 EU countries, distinguished six types of training, divided into three categories: formal, informal and nonformal:
Formal
Courses and internships followed inside or outside the firm.
Informal
On-the-job training
Training by job rotation
Training in a learning circle or project
Conferences or seminars
Nonformal
Self-training
The professional training system in France favors the development of executives from the largest companies and a specific type of format: the internship, and more specifically, internships offered by private training organizations.
Contrary to the usage in educational environments, where an internship is considered as a period of ongoing training in a firm, here the term internship designates the periods during which an employee is absent from the workplace to a follow training program within a group (De Lescure 2017, p. 4).
Philippe Carré, professor at the “Apprenticeship and training” laboratory at Paris X University, explains that the canonical internship model still governs an overwhelming majority of the actions currently seen in adult training. According to him, this educational form is inherited from a historically dated school model whose origins can be traced back to “the transmissive conception” of the high school class and the Ferry laws at the end of the 19th century, or even to the Christian schools of J.B. de La Salle a century earlier (Carré 2016).
Among the professional training structures, Precepta Consult, a research and consulting firm belonging to the Xerfi Group, differentiates5:
“Multi–multi” proposals, standing for multispecialist and multimodal. These organizations are defined by multithematic training offers and by the plurality of intervention modes (internal and external training, e-learning/remote learning). According to the study’s authors, “the strategic priority is to reach a critical national, or even international, size to capture the customers of major accounts”. We may also notice that it is these same organizations which are expanding at a global scale. For example, the two multi–multi organizations that we studied are present in 50 and 7 countries, respectively. In 2022, our largest organization reached a consolidated turnover of 233 million euros, equivalent to 14% growth.
“Yield” or multispecialist trainers, such as Orsys, Global Knowledge or Comundi, carry out over 75% of their activity in inter-company training. For the study’s authors, “yield trainers” are the most exposed to the consequences of the economic crisis.
The “certifiers” mostly bring together
grandes écoles
. For the study’s authors, their positioning is built upon “excellence” and on more extensive training courses (often leading to certification or diplomas), without neglecting the existence of a varied short training offer, intra- or inter-company.
“Training consultants”, such as Krauthammer, Mercuri, IFG Langues or StratX, specialize in intra-company missions, through a remarkable degree of integration of production (salaried trainers), and a high level of expertise in their area of specialty.
“E-trainers”, such as Crossknowledge, Auralog, Télélangue, iProgress, Smart Canal or Hyper Office, are e-learning training companies: their business model is different from that of traditional training organizations, notably by the importance of the initial investment and the logic of the economies of scale which governs them.
According to the editors of the 2017 study by the Fédération française de la formation professionnelle (which became Les Acteurs de la Compétence in 2019):
The division of training into modules, in other words, into homogeneous blocks of knowledge and skills, in which training organizations have been engaged for several years, partly explains why training is becoming shorter and shorter. On the other hand, interns are increasingly shifting towards service and personal development specialties, to the detriment of general disciplines, for which longer training is required. Nevertheless, the number of training hours varies significantly, depending on the audiences and the status of the training providers. In 2013, it amounted to 36 hours for employees, whereas it nearly tripled (109 hours) for job seekers and individuals6.
This reduction in internship training time corresponds to a modularization growing trend, breaking down training into small, increasingly targeted blocks of skills. This development is part of a loyalty strategy on the part of training organizations. An offers manager explains this strategy of breaking down knowledge into small modules, something which should make it possible to “enhance customer loyalty”:
INTERVIEW.– “Web project manager, for example, or E-commerce manager or Web marketing manager, these are the most comprehensive training courses, providing an overall image of a function, throughout a period of approximately 10 days. Between 8 and 10 days. And then, we have more specific internships, on “how to create a Facebook page”, for example (professional of course), or natural referencing, or advertising on social networks. This involves breaking down the missions of the communications manager and translating them into precise goals. This is what makes us see customers again. These function as incremental training programs, they are enriched. Customers come for priority training, and then they need additional training on a more specific point. For short training sessions, one has to define precise and reachable goals”.
