empowerment

It's our last week of blogging and the conversation has already started. Roy Hobbs wrote about empowerment and its utility in motivating employees. As Hobbs pointed out, allowing employees to make their own decisions and actively participate in the decision making process gives them a greater sense of responsibility and accomplishment. With true empowerment, the micromanaging Hobbs mentions should not occur.

A few years ago I published a book chapter titled, "Communicating Disability: Metaphors of Oppression, Metaphors of Empowerment," in Communication Yearbook 27. In the chapter I discussed the ways in which language and specific metaphors oppressed and/or empowered persons with disabilities. For example, disability as medical problem largely oppresses persons with disabilities because it suggests that such persons are broken and need to be repaired. In contrast, disability as culture highlights the empowering potential of disability as a cultural identity.

In much the same way, different metaphors of organization can lead to varying levels of oppression and empowerment. Organizations as machines and instruments of domination clearly oppress organization members. Organizations as cultures suggests organization members can exert power in creating organizational values and norms, but cultural artifacts may also serve to reinforce the status quo and oppressive power relationships.

Empowerment is a favorite management term, but it's also a contested term. Is empowerment truly possible in organizations? What if employees don't want to be empowered? Can empowerment result in having to do more work for the same pay? And wouldn't that be a form of oppression? As an optimistic person, facilitating organization member participation in organizational life and decision making seems like a positive move for everyone. But there certainly is a dark side to so-called empowerment initiatives in organizations.

--Professor Cyborg

participation and democracy

One of my brothers is a line supervisor for Ford, working at a plant that produces the Ford F150 (along with several other models). The plant is fairly new both in the line's design and in work design. He went through weeks of training to learn about the new system and new ways to manage the new approach to tasks. His job went from directly supervising about 40 people to directly supervising 3-4 team leaders. Now, although he still interacts with all 40 employees, much of the micro-level managing is left up to the team leaders--empowering more organization members. Along with this switch to team leaders came the idea of job rotation. No longer would someone working the line do the same task for 8-10 hours at a time day after day.

Initially morale was high as workers learned all the jobs in their unit and were able to rotate tasks. But recently, upper management decided that this system made it difficult to hold workers accountable because it wasn't clear who worked at a particular task at a particular time. However, those making the decision failed to ask supervisors (much less those working on the line) how to address this issue. My brother has all his employees keep track of when they're working at a specific station so each task can be linked to a specific person. Encouraging employee participation would have solved this problem in a way that wouldn't hurt morale and would keep productivity up.

In this case, involving employees (at least line supervisors) would have benefited the organization. But as jdmINT points out, participation can be viewed as a burden. Endless meetings, reading memos, doing research--all this in addition to the employee's job. SantaCruz also notes the positives and negatives of team-based organizations. Some tasks simply require a team--one person can't do it alone. Still, coordination can prove difficult and sometimes teams (and team leaders) can work at cross-purposes.

sp1028 blogged about the importance of diversity in teams. Including people on a team who have a variety of experiences and perspectives can be useful for complex problems and decisions. However, the potential for conflict is also greater. Yet if team members can keep focused on the larger objective, the richness of perspectives and bring about creative solutions to the problem.

Although workplace democracy seems ideal, it's not without dialectical tensions as organization members put democratic principles into action. Next week we'll talk about different approaches to democracy and how they might be implemented in organizations.

--Professor Cyborg

emotion, balance, tech

Like MJ and others, I find emotion labor one of the more interesting concepts in organizational communication. In a culture where "the customer is always right," front line organization members (such as flight attendants, servers, and grocery clerks) are expected to be cheerful and happy even when customers are not. The must-be-happy organizational norm can negatively impact the organization member (in the form of stress) and the organization (important information may not make its way up the hierarchy due to the "always happy" mandate). That doesn't mean organization members should emote at will. Self-monitoring and politeness are still critical for effective organizational (and societal) functioning.

NuNu blogged about work/life balance, another topic discussed in this week's readings. For NuNu, it was a work/life/school balance, which finally meant taking a break from the work part (although school is definitely work). I enjoy my work and generally work 7 days/week. But I also try to make sure I get a 1-2 hour walk in with River (our dog) every day. And I try not to work after dinner (not always successful there). But as I mentioned in an earlier post (and others have mentioned as well), new communication technologies have blurred the line between home and work, with work in many respects invading the home.

Fábio mentioned an organization that used the internet for a team's work tasks as well as social networks. Several years ago I met a VP in Motorola who said that his global team conducted all the work with new media (cell, web chat, net meetings, and the like) but would meet twice a year just for socializing. In person time was all about building relationships; online time was (mostly) work (still some interpersonal communication, but primarily task oriented). That is the direction many organizations are going. Global teams coordinate using new media; in person meetings are for tasks that can only be done face-to-face and for the social aspects of teamwork.

I'm working on a small group communication textbook that grew out of my frustration with current texts that treat new media as an add on for groups. So there are chapters such as "Technology and Groups" and "Virtual Groups." Blogging about the web lecture for this week, MPA Student said, "Looking at how technology influences our lives is hard to even see, since it has become such an accepted daily occurrence to use cell phones, email, facebook, myspace, ipods, etc." The use of new media is seamless--just like the landline telephone, organization members don't think twice about IMing, emailing, and net conferencing. MPA does express concern about the lack of nonverbal communication, referring to a professor who mentioned that the majority of communication is nonverbal. Actually, that professor is wrong--no empirical evidence to support that. There is some research suggesting the majority of emotional communication is nonverbal. But verbal communication still dominates our interactions. In addition, we typically "translate" nonverbal messages into verbal ones. For example, when someone smiles, you might think, "She's happy," or "He likes me."

Plenty of concepts and theories to blog about this week--and we're just halfway through!

--Professor Cyborg

new posts for this week

Bejeweled blogged about the pervasive communication environment discussed in this week's web lecture. The idea may seem obvious, but being able to send and receive messages nearly anytime from anyplace with anyone and being able to access information 24/7 have greatly impacted how people communicate and how organizations function. SantaCruz noted several of the downsides to information and communication accessibility. For example, the line between work and home has become blurred (I'm blogging from my home in Santa Cruz at 8p after spending the entire day on campus in meetings and advising). So the cell phone, the internet, fax machines, and other communication technologies have changed work expectations. For most jobs, organization members are expected to be linked to the organization at all times. Athina of Greece brought up the issue of real v. virtual in the web lecture. The conclusion is that it's all real--online communication can have the same influences as offline communication. The more interesting questions are about how people use different ways of communicating to achieve their goals and objectives.

Roy Hobbs notes that workplace democracy doesn't always functions productively. Management strategies such as total quality management tried to foster workplace democracy, but ignored the reality of organizational hierarchy. In organizations, some voices do count more than others because of power associated with particular position. Roy Hobbs also talked about gender issues in organizational communication. Although more of a political communication issue, consider the negative comments made about Hillary Clinton (hair, clothing, showing emotion) versus Barack Obama in the recent presidential primary race. In the U.S. (and most other countries) there are different leadership expectations for women and men.

The blogging is off to a good start this week--blog early and blog often!

--Professor Cyborg

technology & organizations

I mentioned in a previous post that I find organizational culture one of the most interesting areas of organizational communication scholarship. Although that's true, I'm also quite interested in how new communication technologies, especially the internet and cell phones, have so radically changed organizational life.

I do tend to regularly critique SJSU's crushing bureaucracy because there are just so many examples of bureaucracy run amok. And SJSU has been so slow to adopt new organizing tools that sometimes it's difficult to believe it's an institution of higher education. But this class demonstrates that SJSU has the potential to enter the 21st century and leverage new communication technologies to improve ways of organizing. Such changes do seem to be happening on a small scale at the university. For example, in re-envisioning the COMM department's major and graduate programs, the faculty made excellent use of a wiki to share ideas, research, documents, and resources. Without the wiki, we would not be ready to implement the changes in fall 2009.

The San Jose Mercury News today had an article on Twitter, which allows individuals to exchange very short text messages--a micro version of Facebook. One of my colleagues in RTVF uses Twitter to remind students of assignments. That's the kind of innovative thinking that makes teaching (and organizing) interesting, dynamic, and even fun.

--Professor Cyborg

orienting to SJSU

Yesterday I participated in summer orientation, staffing a booth for the College of Social Sciences. Talked with many first-year students and their parents as well as a few transfer students. SJSU can seem overwhelming at first, with so many colleges, schools and departments. Although the campus is fairly compact, the layout can seem confusing for those new to the campus. I didn't attend orientation when I first started my undergraduate degree; yesterday gave me a sense of what I was missing. Students learn important information about how to navigate the complexities of the SJSU bureaucracy as well as what's expected of them as members of the campus community.

Friday is a major blogging day in this class, so there were many posts for me to read through, but one in particular caught my eye because it's something I've really noticed as acting chair for the department. In blogging about Jamba Juice, Bams noted that the counter people at the bottom rung are the most important because they're the contact point with customers. If servers are rude and unpleasant, customers likely won't go back. At SJSU, the staff are a key contact point for students, especially when students first arrive. In the COMM department, our office staff are known for being friendly and efficient, which gives students (and faculty) a more positive view of the department. At orientation yesterday, I noticed how helpful the staff were, answering questions about CoSS and other aspects of the university that I could not have answered. Those brief interactions can have a lasting impact on how students (and parents) view SJSU.

--Professor Cyborg

socialization, culture, metaphor

MJ blogged about the socialization process when entering an organization. Newcomers to an organization highlight cultural practices, values, beliefs, and the like that oldtimers take for granted--and don't even notice. Because SJSU is the older public institution of higher education in California, I've often heard the phrase, "We've always done it that way." With such an "old" culture, SJSU can be slow to change.

NuNu mentioned that the integration approach to culture may not be very pragmatic. Can organization members come together and agree on cultural beliefs and values? Smaller co-cultures likely can do this, but it's less probable with larger groups. ad_pe_144 talked about rituals in a sorority. Rituals provide an important venue for reinforcing cultural values and for socializing organization members. The regular meetings of a sorority and script for the event let members know the kinds of things the organization identifies as important. For example, if everyone has a turn to speak, that suggests the organization values member participation and voice.

JMcAvoy reflected on metaphors in everyday life. Although the original version of Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By was published nearly 30 years ago, their thesis resonates with people today. Examining metaphors brings to the forefront the ways in which language structures how individuals interpret and act on their world. Athina of Greece (who continues to include intriguing images with the blog posts) notes the problem with the conduit metaphor in organization.

Although some organizational scholars consider the cultural approach dated, it helps researchers, students, and organization members examine more closely that which is typically unnoticed.

--Professor Cyborg

more on organizational culture

When I teach COMM 144 in person one activity I have students do is examine different aspects of SJSU culture, such as metaphors, language/jargon, rituals and rites, stories, artifacts, and practices. Students work in small groups and although there's some overlap, there are always differences. Some can be attributed to not noticing the more taken-for-granted aspects of culture. Other differences are due to co-cultures at the university based on role (faculty, student, staff, administrator), major or discipline, membership in student organizations, and similar groups. Analyzing the culture of an organization in which you're deeply embedded can bring to light cultural beliefs, values, and practices that you hadn't really paid attention to before.

Bejeweled alludes to this idea that we're often not aware of cultural norms until we examine them, as evident when reflecting back on a sushi restaurant where Bejeweled used to work in. Power dynamics can also be revealed in a cultural analysis. For example, what does the family metaphor reveal about power in an organization? Do children (employees) have the same power as parents (top management)? sp1028 also blogged about cultural indicators, in this case, applied to Macys. The organization's dress code provided a way to differentiate between who's in the organization and who is not.

Fábio blogged about Schein's approach to organizational culture. I read his book (first edition), Organizational Culture and Leadership, in the organizational culture course I took as a doctoral student (mentioned yesterday). I also read his very early work, Process Consultation: Its Role in Organizational Development, which foreshadows his thinking about organizational culture. Schein's work does suggest that culture can be changed, generally from the top down. As I asked, yesterday, Can management change organizational culture? Fábio says he avoids organizations with a "fabricated culture." Who does the fabricating? How do we know?

Just a few more things to think about this week as you work through Chapters 5, 6, and the web lecture.

--Professor Cyborg

organizational culture

Chapter 5 on organizational culture is one of my favorite in the text. My first introduction to organizational communication was a communication audit course in my doctoral program. Although the course took a process view of organizations, the interviews, focus groups, and survey items didn't directly address culture. Then I took a course in organizational culture and found it provided a very different way of thinking about organizations. At the time, the practical and interpretive views of organizational culture were quite popular. The practical view considers culture a variable that can be manipulated in an organization, as with managers telling stories that will influence employees' values. The interpretive view is concerned with organizational sensemaking. For me, the major contribution of this approach is recognizing that there's more going on in organizations than just getting the work done. Organization members know that, but researchers were slow to examine the more intangible aspects of organizational life.

The critical perspective highlights the ways in which organizations reinforce the status quo and current power relationships, framing organizations as instruments of domination. This approach to organizational culture leads organization members and scholars to question ways of organizing and examine how organizational practices may disenfranchise and exclude individuals and groups. I was watching the PGA U.S. Open Championship with friends over the weekend and one person commented that many of the courses Tiger Woods plays on now he couldn't have played on 30 years ago due to golf course use and country club membership restrictions based on race. That type of institutional structure is an example of organizations as instruments of domination.

The web lecture on metaphors and culture discusses how metaphors influence our thinking about organizations. In spite of the many new metaphors that have been applied to organizations in recent years, most organizations still embody the organizations as machines metaphor--which has negative implications for the people in those organizations.

Plenty of interesting concepts to blog about this week!

--Professor Cyborg

more historical perspectives

Human relations and human resources are appealing perspectives because of their focus on the human aspects of organization. Lloydentoigen blogs, "I work harder, better and faster when I feel respected and feel like my supervisor/boss/professor has earned my respect instead of demanding it." JMcAvoy echoed these sentiments, stressing the importance of managers letting employees know they're doing good work. Ideally, this type of positive, respectful communication climate is what should be cultivated in all organizations. When applied ethically, human resources in particular should create such a respectful workplace. Human relations arose out of the lack of humanity embedded in the classical approaches. Athina of Greece provides us with a clever bureaucracy cartoon underscoring that point. Kcee reminds us that the idea of bureaucracy isn't bad, but how it's implemented and who does the implementing.

Not much more time to blog this week--Week 2 ends at midnight tomorrow, so keep on writing! I'll be busy reading all your blogs--entries and comments-- tomorrow and Sunday, so might not have a chance to blog myself. But I will be online.

--Professor Cyborg

history and organizational communication

One aspect of the textbook for this class that I like is the attention to the historical aspects of organizational. As Considering how scholars and researchers have viewed organizations over time gives insight into current thinking about organizations, organizational communication, and organizing. And as Andres notes, understanding the time in which a perspective emerged gives us insight into why the perspective was adopted and why it might persist--or not--today.

NuNu blogs that history is partisan--written from a particular viewpoint, with others' viewpoints left out. For example, when I was sitting in Spartan Stadium for the graduation ceremony a few weeks ago, I noticed that all the names painted on the upper part of the stadium are male. Women's accomplishments in sports are typically absent from university stories.

Fábio noted that management theories build on or are a reaction to management theories in the past. Although scientific management has been highly criticized, at the time, it did serve to focus on exactly how work is accomplished. Kcee, I emphasize with you losing an entry. What I often do is compose in notepad or word and then paste into my blog. Kcee gives an excellent example of the division of labor in the VA. Aloha123 brought up the notion of resistance to domination. History tells us that people who are oppressed will find a way to fight back. In my research on organizational surveillance, when employees feel the surveillance is unreasonable, they'll figure out ways to subvert the system.

Great comments so far this week! Keep up the blogging!!!

--Professor Cyborg

learning organizations and bureaucracies

Chapter 4 includes a discussion of Senge's notion of learning organizations. I find this approach appealing because it suggests organizations can change--they don't have to keep making the same mistakes. One key aspect of learning organizations is a shared vision. SJSU is trying to do this with Vision 2010. Initially, there was quite a bit of buzz about Vision 2010, especially linked to SJSU's 150th anniversary. But lately, the project seems to have lost steam, as evidenced by the 2-year old update page on the strategic plan associated with the initiative. Still, with a new president coming in, many of us are hopeful that SJSU will change its bureaucratic ways.

Aloha123 talked about one of the advantages of bureaucracies--differentiation. That is, all organization members have specific jobs they're supposed to do to keep the organization going. Then the organization's structure serves to integrate these different tasks into a unified whole. Lotusblossum noted that scientific management is used in the consulting she does, with her company identifying exactly how long it takes to complete a task and the best way to do it. This can be a useful way to make organizations more efficient. But are people machines? What happens when we leave out the human factor? SantaCruz linked scientific management with the division between blue collar and white collar work. Interestingly, scientific management principles are applied to both types. For example, consider the importance of lawyers to have billable hours. ad_pe_comm144 also discussed the division of labor and its positive contributions to organizations, such as dividing tasks within and between teams. Paula discussed the strategies she uses to appear to be working, as with quickly bringing up a work screen on her computer to hide that she'd been IMing. Of course, employees have been trying to appear like they were working long before computers came on the workplace scene. This is the human side that scientific management often ignores.

The blogging continues . . .

--Professor Cyborg

week 2 day 2

I think everyone is up to speed and online. We've got a long blog roll for the class; a few people have already starting blogging about this week's readings. Last week I tried to comment on everyone's introduction. Now that the graded part of blogging has started, I'll generally only comment about student blog entries on my blog.

Roy Hobbs talks about scientific management in his first entry this week, observing that while this approach may seem appealing, it fails to take into account the human elements of organizing. Hobbs says, "I have found that while there is a time and place for managers to be the ultimate decision-makers, communication in an organization is more effective when all employees feel as though they have been made part of the solution." Research supports this view of decision making. When organization members feel they've participated in the decision making process, they're more apt to willingly participate in implementing the final decision, even if they didn't agree with it.

Kim Mai also blogged about scientific management, applying the perspective to emergency operations and services. Although as she points out this would seem like a good fit, the approach doesn't allow for creativity and innovation when encountering crises in the future.

Thanks to Roy and Kim Mai getting us off to a good start this week. As you read through Chapters 3 and 4 you'll likely think of many examples from your own experiences that fit in to classical perspectives and the systems approach to organizational communication.

--Professor Cyborg

SJSU-my favorite bureaucracy

You may have read in the San Jose Mercury News this week that SJSU had decided to withdraw invitations to 1100 admitted students. The next day the Merc reported the university made an about face and canceled the uninvites, citing a "communication breakdown" as the source of the original decision. This case provides an excellent example of a classical approach to organizational communication in which organizations are viewed as machines, organization members are replaceable parts in the machine, and communication is a conduit for thoughts. In the Metaphors & Culture lecture, I discuss the conduit metaphor for communication and its implications for understanding organizational communication.

In the case of SJSU's most-recent PR gaffe, no one takes responsibility for the poor decision-making process applied in the original action to withdraw the invitations. Instead, the problem is framed as a breakdown in communication. Rather than examining the actions, interactions, and perspectives that went into the decision, the problem is glossed over--to be repeated at a later time. SJSU is well known for its classical approach to communication, with an emphasis on top-down communication, rules and regulations, and crushing paperwork. The uninvited students followed part of the rules--indicating their initial acceptance and sending in their money (and SJSU cashed the checks). But they failed to complete the other two steps, registering for orientation and placement tests. This experience should provide an important lesson for these students in navigating the massive bureaucracy that is SJSU.

Can SJSU alter its approach to organizing? Is it possible for the university to adopt a different metaphor for organization? As part of larger bureaucratic systems--the CSU and the State of California--changing the metaphor will prove challenging. Can SJSU survive without changing? Consider this from the first article about the uninvites:

SJSU got a whopping 24,500 applications from high school seniors hoping to enroll this fall. Harris credits this record-breaking popularity to its Silicon Valley location. But unlike most other CSU campuses, SJSU is confined by its urban geography - so it can't grow.

A traditional approach to higher education would suggest that SJSU is bounded by San Fernando, Fourth, Tenth, and San Salvador Streets. But is a university just its physical location. What about online learning? How might SJSU grow in other ways that don't involve constructing new buildings? For example, the School of Library and Information Sciences uses Second Life to teach some classes. Is it possible for a bureaucracy to promote creativity and innovation? How has SLIS managed to do that at SJSU?

Just a few questions to consider near the end of this first week in COMM 144.

--Professor Cyborg

assignments reminder

This afternoon I sent out a reminder message via the class listserv (google groups) about the assignments due this week. The week ends on Saturday at midnight. If you haven't already, you'll want to complete Quiz 1 and the Process Tasks.

Tomorrow I'll read through your introductory blogs and write a bit about SJSU.

--Professor Cyborg

getting started

I've checked the class blackboard (aka blackweb) site and nearly everyone has logged on. If you're having any problems accessing blackboard, please email me. There's more information on how to log on to blackboard on the eCampus website. Fortunately, eCampus recently updated the log in information (which initially left out the part that passwords were not reset this term).

I hope you're all enjoying the first few chapters of the text. They provide the foundation for the remainder of the text so are quite important. One point the authors make in the first chapter is that the study of organizational communication is more about asking questions than providing answers. That doesn't mean you can't search for answers. But it does mean as the environment changes, those answers change as well. What worked for organizations 10 years ago may not work today. That's certainly true of higher education. For example, online learning was in its infancy in 1998 (I took an online class that year in how to teach online and taught my first online class in 1999). Now students can get a bachelor's degree online--and not just from Phoenix U. The U of Louisville offers both a B.A. and B.S. in communication completely online.

So studying organizational communication means learning how to ask good questions. What questions do you have about organizational communication?

--Professor Cyborg

first day of class

Today is the official first day of the summer session. I've been busy answering student email messages, approving listserv subscriptions, and adding student blogs to the class blog roll.

As I mentioned in my blog for the COMM 110 class, managing all the blogs for the class is easier if you add your classmates' blogs to your own blog (go to your blog's Dashboard, then Add a Page Element, then add a links list) and sign up for Google Reader. Google Reader is an RSS feed that automatically tells you when a new post is added to a blog. Reader also compiles all the blogs you've added to your Reader, so you can view the text for the blogs all on a single page. Use the help function for Blogger and Reader to help you set up these useful features.

Blogging isn't required for this week, but it's useful to post a few entries and comment on others' so you get in the habit. Blogging (at least for this class) is more about writing short messages often than writing lengthy messages once in awhile (although in the winter session nearly all students wrote well over the required minimum number of words).

I'll write more about the course content later this week. Meanwhile, complete all your Process Tasks, try out blogging, and take the first quiz. Email the listserv (google groups) or me with any questions you have.

--Professor Cyborg

blackboard available

The class rosters have been uploaded to the blackboard site so students can now access that part of the class. We'll only use blackboard for quizzes and grades. If you've never used the SJSU version of blackboard, you'll want to go through the practice questions on the blackboard site to become familiar with the quiz function.

Class officially begins tomorrow. I'll be on campus as well as online. I'm looking forward to a great summer session!

--Professor Cyborg