Abstract:

In the last two decades, higher education organizations in Colombia and Latin America have incorporated Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their teaching-learning processes and as innovative resources that strengthen capacities in the management processes of organizations, a matter that has allowed their evolution and positioning as useful tools for the generation and exchange of knowledge. This is due to the demands of the context of the knowledge and information society that have been established as an institutional framework for economic and social dynamics.

Some research has pointed out that the implementation of ICT allows the comprehensive academic improvement of students (Muñoz, Monroy & Rodríguez, 2015) and they are constituted as support tools in the processes of creation, acquisition, and transfer of knowledge in organizations (Lache et al. 2019). However, tensions have been identified in relation to communication between the actors involved in the processes and the adaptation to new virtual learning environments in educational organizations (Rojas, Silva & Correa, 2014; Muñoz Rojas, 2016; De la Herrán & Fortunato, 2017).

These transformations are carried out through communicative practices, because they generate the exchange of ideas, meanings, information, emotions, and symbols by the actors, shaping a way of acting or achieving goals or purposes within the organizations. Organizational practices can be understood as social practices that involve developing a set of knowledge, senses, and materialities for their realization and reproduction in time, in space, and with specific actors (Ariztía, 2017).

Communicative practices mediated by ICTs are a set of actions that allow the adaptation and creation of new ways of management. And in turn, it allows to assume organizational changes through the use of ICT, but from own practices that fit the particular contexts of the organizational units, in this case, faculties or departments of educational organizations. Communicative practices are conceived as a framework of actions that goes beyond the transmission of messages or reflection of ideas, as the way in which communication takes shape and allows actions and interactions between actors. In this case, the communicative practices promoted in organizations are predominantly mediated by ICTs and this condition redefines the organizations under study.

The objective of this research is to analyze the communicative practices that take place in the process of ICT use in an HEI in the city of Medellin, Colombia. For this purpose, an interpretative case study is developed, the actors (students, teachers, and administrative staff) and their communicative practices referred to the appropriation of ICT in the routines of the users as a means to manage the educational processes. In the first point, mention is made of the theoretical approach of Constitutive Communication of Organizations -CCO-. In the second part, the methodological design of the Interpretative Case Study and the characteristics of the organizations under study are presented. The third part presents the results, emphasizing four types of communicative practices: enactment, translation, negotiation, and regulation; finally, the conclusions of the study are presented.

Keywords:

Communicative Constitution of Organizations CCO, communicative practices, ICT, Higher education, Colombia.