a systems approach to organizational communication looks at how we study organizations (p. 71). The organic or evolutionary nature of the arguments made by RJR in their multi-year advertising campaign exemplify the dynamism within organizational life discovered by organizational theorists. Two key ideas of systems theory
permeability and interdependence are shot through RJR’s adverting. Permeability argues that successful systems are not closed but rather are open to new inputs from outside. Interdependence argues that systems rely open one another for support. RJR exemplifies these ideas when they create an advertisement that incorporates the opinion of the general public and addresses the […]