In the classic children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie, an impoverished youngster, wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, run by the highly unusual candy maker Willy Wonka (originally portrayed in films by Gene Wilder and later by Johnny Depp). As Charlie tours the factory with a small group of other children, he sees an army of small men called Oompa Loompas. Each Oompa Loompa is charged with performing a specific task: some do nothing but pour mysterious ingredients into giant, clanking candy-making machines; others focus on guiding the tour boats that ferry the children along rivers of sweet liquid. Still others work only on packing finished candies into boxes as the candies come off the assembly lines. You could almost compare the chocolate factory to a car and each worker to a specific part with a specific job—seat belt, brakes, steering wheel, and so on.

To Charlie, the factory might be a novelty or a curiosity, but to organizational communication scholars, it’s a pretty clear example of the classical management approach—an approach that likens organizations to machines with a focus on maximizing efficiency. Not surprisingly, classical management reached its peak during the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century—a time when factories and machinery were proliferating rapidly in various parts of the world, particularly Europe, North America, and Japan.

Classical management depends on two central ideas, both of which have strong implications for communication. The first is a division of labor, or the assumption that each part of an organization (and each person involved) must carry out a specialized task in order for the organization to run smoothly. This is exactly what you see in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: each worker has a very specific job, and there is little reason for individual workers—or groups of workers on different tasks—to communicate with one another. Classical management approaches also favor hierarchy, which refers to the layers of power and authority in an organization. To illustrate, in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Willy has the most power to control the working conditions, rewards, and other aspects of life for all the creatures who work in the factory. His team of lower-level “managers” (such as the head of the Oompa Loompas) has somewhat less power. And the assembly-line workers themselves have almost no power at all. As illustrated, communication in such situations usually flows from the top (management) down to the bottom (the lowest-level workers). It’s unlikely that a worker pouring chocolate would contact Willie Wonka to make suggestions for improving the factory.