Apparently Diamonds Aren’t Always the 'Best Friend'

Marifran Mattson and Patrice Buzzanell’s 1999 article, “Traditional and feminist organization communication ethical analyses of messages and issues surrounding an actual job loss case” proved to be a surprisingly interesting read. I usually consciously steer myself away from such material, for no other reason than it honestly does not interest me. But being an assigned reading, in this particular case I had no choice. In the article, Mattson and Buzzanell present an actual, real-life job loss case, which they analyze from both a traditional organization ethics viewpoint, as well as a view rooted in feminist organizational communication. According to the abstract, “by contrasting these two ethical systems, we [Mattson and Buzzanell] offer a more coherent and illuminating framework for problematic issues and further courses of action” (1999). From what I can gather, solely from skimming through the abstract, their goal for this article appears to be along the lines of using these two differing viewpoints in order to create a more well-rounded analysis for not only this case, but for future cases much like it. Their choice of title for the case study in question was whimsical, or so I felt, being called “Diamond in the Rough” after the ‘main character’, of sorts. The only other time I’ve heard ‘diamond in the rough’ used in any kind of conversation—be it casual or business—was in Aladdin. That movie brought me great joy as a child, and so I won’t lie, I was interested in the case study solely based on a title that reminded me of a fond childhood memory. 

The actual case study, however, was not nearly as charming as the fairytale adaption which used the same phrasing. It was, however, interesting to read how quickly things spiraled downwards following the death of the original president of WGEM. Diamond was basically stabbed in the back by his new superiors, and I will admit, I felt offended that a group of adults would stoop so low. At first, it seemed like the changes being made to WGEM’s power structure were perfectly reasonable, but as the article went on, it just grew more and more out of control. It really seemed as those Peridot, Topaz and Onyx were insecure about their own positions enough that they felt they needed to eliminate employees who’d served under the previous president. It was almost as if they were worried they were being compared to the previous hierarchy, and couldn’t handle that possibility. I know the real world is cruel and all, but this seems like something that could only happen in horror stories, rather than real life. In any event, the article goes on to analysis this horror story with the aforementioned methods of organizational ethics. And along with making some interesting points, the article also expands on several different unethical messages as classified by Redding in his/her 1996 article. I found these to be the most interesting part of the article, and even found myself thinking back to times where each of these unethical messages have been used against me or by me in my own life. All in all, it was interesting to read about how they concluded that between the two methods used, the feminist organization method (FOCES, or so I’ve decided to abbreviate it) is the most effective for remedying these kinds of disagreements and deficiencies. Usually, in today’s culture, you only ever hear about how feminism is a negative influence and feminism is bad, and it was refreshing and enjoyable to read an article that ended up stating the exact opposite of those views, contrary to what I was expecting to find in the conclusion of this article.