Organizational Communication: Theories, Systems, and Culture

Organization

A structured social collective of interdependent people who coordinate activities toward shared goals within an environment, and from a communicative/CCO perspective, it is continually created and transformed through communication.

Organizational Communication

The ongoing process through which organizational stakeholders exchange and create meaning, coordinate activities, develop relationships and structures, and ultimately create, maintain, transform, or dissolve organizations.

Organizing

- Determine Activities (process of determining the activities to be performed) - Arrange units (arranging these activities to administrative units) - Assign authority (assigning managerial authority and responsibilities to people employed in the organization)

Organizational Structure

Defines and includes communication routes, roles & titles, authority & power, and accountability & oversight.

Input

Resources that an organization brings in from the external environment in order for the organization to accomplish its goals (e.g. physical materials, people, and information).

External Environment

Consists of all vendors, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders who can have an impact on the organization itself but exist outside the boundaries of the organization.

Open boundaries

Allows for the free flow of information to the organization and is more likely able to adapt to changes that occur within the environment.

Closed boundaries

Occur when an organization tries to insulate itself from what is occurring within its environment.

Information

Refers to any data that is necessary for an organization to possess in an effort to create knowledge.

Proactive scanning

Occurs when an organization actively looks for data or existing information that could be transformed into usable knowledge.

Reactive scanning

Occurs when an organization faces a specific problem or crisis and then either makes sense of data/information it poses or searches the external environment for data or information that could be useful.

Throughput

Ultimately what an organization does with inputs within the confines of the organization itself; ranges from the use of physical materials, people, and information to how organizations structure themselves internally to create goal oriented throughputs.

Hierarchy

A categorization system where individuals/departments are ranked over other individuals/departments based on skills, centrality, and status.

Tall hierarchies

Represent many hierarchical layers between those at the bottom of the hierarchy and those at the top of the hierarchy.

Flat hierarchies

There are only a couple of hierarchical layers between those at the bottom and those at the top of the hierarchy.

Output

The ultimate product or service that an organization disseminates back to the external environment.

Interdependency

- Mutual dependence or depending on one another. - The notion that people within an organization are dependent upon one another to achieve the organization's goals.

Control

The systems of rules, regulations, and mechanisms that align individual actions with shared objectives.

Leadership

The guidance and influence that direct, motivate, and empower individuals toward organizational goals.

Interaction

- Help define and create what is an organization. - The continuous communication, social relationships, and exchange of ideas between members.

Organizational Goals

Output (organizational goals that are reflected, immediately or in the future, in some product, service, skill or orientation which will affect that society), adaptation (goals that an organization has in terms of adapting to the external environment), management (goals that involve effectively deciding who will manage or run an organization, how to handle conflict management, and output goal prioritization), motivation (goals set out to ensure that all employees are satisfied and remain loyal to the organization), positional (goals that attempt to position an organization within the environment in comparison to other organizations within the same market).

Machine Metaphor

Organizations are viewed as predictable, efficient machines. Emphasizes specialization, standardization, hierarchy, rules, and control.

Systems Metaphor

Organizations are viewed as living, interconnected systems. Emphasizes interdependence, adaptability, subsystems, and relationships with the environment.

Cultural Metaphor

Organizations are viewed as cultures consisting of shared values, beliefs, rituals, stories, symbols, and practices. Culture can be viewed as something an organization has or something an organization is.

Human Relations

Satisfying employees' social and emotional needs can improve satisfaction and productivity. Uses the family metaphor, emphasizing relationships, belonging, support, and managerial care.

Human Resources

Treats workers as knowledgeable contributors whose ideas and talents can improve the organization. Participation allows organizations to use employees' knowledge, creativity, ideas, and problem-solving abilities.

Taylorism

Focused on improving worker efficiency and eliminating unnecessary effort. Promoted finding the 'one best way' to perform each task. Emphasized scientific worker selection and training. Separated management's role in thinking/planning from workers' physical labor. Used performance-based/piece-rate compensation.

Fayolism

Focused on how managers should run organizations. Five management functions: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling.

Emphasized hierarchy

Division of labor, unity of command, centralization, discipline, fair rewards, and organizational harmony.

Weberian

Emphasized hierarchy, specialization, formal rules, and rational-legal authority.

Authority in Weberian theory

Comes from established rules and expertise rather than personal relationships.

Rationalization by Weber

The historical shift in modern society from traditional, emotional, and religious ways of thinking to a focus on efficiency, calculability, and formal rules.

Disenchantment

Science and logic strip mystery, magic, and sacred meaning from life.

Iron Cage

Individuals become trapped inside strict, rule-bound bureaucratic structures that limit personal freedom and creativity.

Rational-Legal Authority

Power based on the rational application of rules developed through expertise, information, and normative systems.

Hawthorne Studies

Found that social relationships, group norms, employee attitudes, and managerial attention could influence workplace behavior.

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Human needs progress from physiological, Safety, Affiliation, Esteem, and Self-actualization; Higher-level needs become more important as lower-level needs are sufficiently satisfied.

McGregor's Theory of X and Y

Two contrasting models of worker motivation and management style where Theory X assumes workers dislike work and require control, while Theory Y views workers as self-motivated and responsible.

Rensis Likert System

Defines four organizational leadership styles based on how managers and subordinates interact, with System IV emphasizing decentralized decision-making and employee participation.

Equivocality

The inherent unpredictability, ambiguity, and multiple possible interpretations present in the information environment.

Open Systems

Actively exchanges information, feedback, and signals with its external environment and internal departments.

Closed Systems

Restricts or blocks information flow, relying on rigid, internal-only channels with little to no external feedback.

Subjective Reality

Your private, internal mental experience, shaped by your thoughts, feelings, memories, and personal perceptions.

Actor Network Theory

Used to understand how things—both human and non-human—come together to form the systems, processes, and organizations we observe.

Sensemaking

The process by which people take something confusing and turn it into something they can put into words and act on.

Weick's Theory of Organizing

Organizing is the process of reducing ambiguity in an enacted environment through communication and coordinated actions.

Social World Model

Shows that social life is shaped by continuous interaction between people, organizations, structures, and both human and nonhuman elements.

Schein's Cultural Perspective

Culture can be understood through different levels, identifying artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying assumptions.

Organizational Culture by Edgar Schein

A pattern of basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration.

Actors

Anything that has the capacity to affect or be affected in a network—people, machines, texts, protocols, even spaces.

Networks

A web of relationships where all actors interact and co-produce outcomes.

Translation

The process of aligning diverse actors so they work together, including persuasion, negotiation, and adaptation.

Material-Semiotic

Meaning (semiotic) and physical structure (material) are inseparable; technologies, tools, and texts both mean and do things.

Assemblage

A temporary coming-together of heterogeneous elements to function as a whole.

Cybernetic

A science of control in a communication system through feedback, explaining how systems fail and the nature of information.