144 Summer 2009

Summer registration started this past Monday, so I decided I better get my class launched over the weekend. The main website is up, although I may make a few changes between now and the start of the summer term.

With the current global financial crisis--which is really an organizational crisis--there will much for everyone in the class to blog about. No one has been immune from the impact of the economic crunch. Certainly students, faculty, and staff at SJSU are facing the reality of the California budget cuts. What can we learn about organizations from what has happened? That will be the important take away.

~ Professor Cyborg

mindfulness and metaphors

Chapter 11 is sort of a catch all for the topics the authors haven't addressed earlier in the text, a chance to revisit some concepts, and a look to the future of organizational communication. The authors again discuss dialogue, linking it with mindfulness when they note that thinking is the essence of authentic dialogue. Communication research suggests that organization members interact mindlessly most of the time. Mindless communication can be useful because the brain reserves energy for more challenging interactions. But being mindful is nonetheless an important aspect of competent organizational communication, requiring communicators to adapt messages to their listeners.

The most interesting part of this chapter for me is the section on new logics of organizing. While the dominant metaphor is organizations as machines, it's often not the best way to organize. Viewing management as poetry suggests that managerial tasks are motivated by story and metaphor. For example, I've learned a lot about how to chair a department from the stories that others have told. In addition, viewing management as poetry recognizes that organizational behavior is seldom rational; people do the things they do and say the things they say for all sorts of reasons and motivations.

New metaphors for organizing include organizational communication as discourse, which focuses attention on organizations as texts. Organizational communication as voice highlights who is allowed to speak in an organization and who isn't. For example, reflect on how much say CSU students get in fee increases, courses offered, and graduation requirements. Organizational communication as performance suggests that organizational life is best understood as a drama--some aspects are fairly scripted, but others are more like improv.

~ Professor Cyborg

organizing and technology

The most interesting aspects of Chapter 10 for me are those focusing on organizations and new communication technologies. I don't think the authors fully grasp the degree to which the internet, cell phones, the like have impacted organizational communication, organizations, and organizing. For example, internet communication researchers have rejected media richness theory and embraced notion of a communication imperative, which I discuss in the Technology & Teams web lecture.

This imperative is related to Mouritsen and Bjorn-Andersen's argument that one concern in analyzing communication technology is humans are agents, which means that humans are able to work around the prescribed system. Consider the kinds of strategies employees will use to avoid surveillance technology. In identifying concerns in analyzing communication technology, Mouritsen and Bjorn-Andersen argue that technology is politically ambiguous, which means that technology can be used to both promote and constrain dialogue. Another concern in analyzing communication technology according to Mouritsen and Bjorn-Andersen is understanding is partial, which means that organization members' behaviors may lead to unintended consequences.

Eisenberg et al. observe that many social relationships within and between organizations involve mediated interpersonal communication, or the use of email, fax, telephones, and other forms of new communication technologies. I find this terminology rather quaint. What work relationships doesn't involve some sort of mediated communication? The telephone is a mediated form of communication and organization members have used phones to communication for over 100 years. As I discuss in the Technology & Teams web lecture, there's no virtual vs. real world--it's all real. Organization members use whatever forms of communication are available to meet their communicative goals.

~ Professor Cyborg

leading and organizing

Leadership has never been one of my interests as an organizational communication scholar. I've always felt it should be, but I tend to be more interested in the view from the bottom of the hierarchy. Nonetheless, leadership does function at all levels in an organization. Rather than looking to "a" leader, organizations generally work better when leadership and leading are more distributed.

In Chapter 9, the authors of your text discuss various approaches to leadership. The trait approach to leadership provides the insight that physical attractiveness is a key component of effective leadership. An early version of the leadership approach to leadership posited autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leaders. From the situational approach to leadership, leaders’ behaviors can be categorized as delegating, participating, selling, or telling. The transformational approach to leadership stresses the importance of leaders communicating a vision that resonates with followers.

After serving as acting chair of the department for six months last year, I could relate to the section in the chapter on effective leadership habits. Habits of mind essential for effective leaders include sensing, presencing and realizing. Habits of character include accessibility, decisiveness, and valuing individuals. Habits of authentic and compelling communicative performance include creating a vision for the future and developing a credible life story. In leading the department, I found the habits of character to be the most important in securing faculty enthusiasm and productivity. For example, faculty could easily contact me via email, phone, or in person. There are some decisions I made myself, such as setting up a faculty wiki. And I made sure to thank and acknowledge faculty members for their efforts in completing essential departmental tasks.

~ Professor Cyborg

teams and organizations

Chapter 8 focuses on teams and networks. Much of my research has examined teams, with special attention to interdisciplinary health care teams. I've blogged about this research in my graduate seminar in organizational communication (democracy and health care teams, organizational communication patterns, emotions in organizations, organizing and hospice care teams).

Today, though, I'm going to talk about why I'm currently in Long Beach attending the California Web Accessibility Conference (CalWAC4). As the authors of your text note, team-based organizations view all employees as able to decide how to manage their work. A project team in an organization is typically assigned to address a specific issue or problem. A work team in an organization is responsible for an entire work process that delivers a product or service to a customer. A quality improvement team in an organization is typically concerned with work-related issues such as customer satisfaction and reducing costs. I'm currently part of a project team that's been set up to help faculty make all their instructional materials fully accessible to all students. This includes, for example, having all syllabi and handouts in screen-readable digital format, close-captioning for video, and accessible digital slides.

Class websites have to be accessible as well (that's why CSU schools will be using blackboard only through the next academic year--it's not fully accessible). I'm in Long Beach attending the conference to learn more about how to make web instructional materials more accessible. Today, I'm taking three courses: how to test websites for accessibility, how to mentor others in accessibility, and accessibility issues in online learning. A few others on my team are attending as well, but have enrolled in different courses. At my team's first meeting in the spring semester, we'll report back on what we learned. Participating in CalWAC4 provides an example of Senge's notion of team learning as balancing inquiry and advocacy. When we report back to the other team members, we'll be practicing dialogue as the free flow of meaning.

~ Professor Cyborg

identity and organizations

Chapter 7 discusses identity and diversity in organizations with a special focus on gender. The authors note that liberal feminists advocate changes to government and company policies to create greater equity in the workplace for women. In contrast, radical feminists are interested in replacing traditional organizational structures with nonhierarchical ones.

A good portion of the chapter is devoted to discussing Ashcraft's four frames of identity associated with the workplace. The gender differences at work frame proposes that the communication styles of women and men stem from their gendered socialization. The gender identity as organizational performance frame posits that gender is performed, or something individuals do rather than something they are. The gendered organizations frame portrays organizations as agents that produce and are products of gendered discourse. The gender narratives in popular culture frame underscores the notion that how we understand organization stems from the media we consume, such as movies, books, and magazines.

For me the most interesting section in the chapter is on emotion labor, or the idea that organization members must enact certain emotions and refrain from enacting other emotions. Flight attendants, servers, sales clerks, and other service workers are not allowed to have a bad day--they must be upbeat and happy if they want to keep their jobs. This requirement always to be cheerful and positive no matter what can be quite stressful, especially when customers, supervisors, and others don't have to follow the same rules. Maybe that's why my waiting tables career lasted only two weeks.

~ Professor Cyborg

hegemony in organizations

A primary criticism of early work in organizational culture was the lack of attention to power in the organization. That is, while all organization members participate in the creation of organizational culture, some have greater influence in the process than others. In addition, cultural norms typically reinforce the status quo and cultural artifacts, such as stories and practices, convey values in implicit ways that are difficult to critique. As I mentioned in my entry yesterday, much of my work in organizational communication has focused on culture. My early research took an interpretive approach, but later work took a critical approach.

As the authors of your text point out in Chapter 6, he roots of critical theory are in the writings of Karl Marx and the scholars associated with the Frankfurt School. Critical approaches advocate for working people. A social trend in the U.S. that has contributed to increased interest in critical approaches to organizations is more resources being given to larger corporations. A recent example is the banking industry bailout in which billions of dollars were given to financial institutions with essentially no strings attached or oversight, while people directly affected by the collapse of the real estate market and mortgage system were for the most part left to fend for themselves.

Hegemony occurs when organizational rules developed by top management are adopted and enforced by those at lower levels of the hierarchy. Reification occurs when organization members view organizational reality as objective and fixed. Concertive control occurs when employees create and enforce their own rules. For example, SJSU administration requires that faculty give a final examination (of some sort) during finals week. As a learning and assessment tool, finals do a poor job, especially concentrated in just a few days. But SJSU has always had finals week (at least since anyone I know here can remember). It's viewed as something that can't be changed. Faculty have developed their own rules associated with finals week and enforce those rules. Some of us have questioned the rationale beyond finals week, but the questions are ignored.

According to Stan Deetz, a noted critical organizational communication scholar, critical research is a way of life that involves being filled with care, which means trying to understand others on their own terms. He also argues that critical researchers should be filled with thought, which means identifying the political implications of personal stories. Finally, being filled with humor for the critical researcher means accepting uncertainty and recognizing life's ironies.

~ Professor Cyborg