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