Stories and Maps: Postmodernism and Professional Communication

As many people are finding out, postmodernism can mean new, exciting ways of working, of breaking down hierarchical structures of authority that tended to stifle rather than reward creative thinking and hard work. Interdisciplinary teams and the relative flattening of hierarchical corporate structures are postmodernist.

At the same time, many other people (sometimes the same people) are finding out that postmodernism can also mean the loss of stability, the denial of supportive communities, and the perpetual increase in expectations that often accompany a shift to decentralized, postmodern workplaces. Postmodernist shifts provide a useful rupture in traditional structures of work, but those same structures often also gave us security.