Organizational Communication Notes

How Do We Work Together Toward Common Goals? Organizational Communication

What is an Organization?

• An organization exists when people:

  • Can communicate with each other.

  • Are willing to contribute action.

  • Are working to accomplish a common purpose.

Management-Based Theorizing

• Focus: Managing members’ behaviors to produce better products and services.

  • Manage production.

  • Manage internal communication.

  • Managers as controllers of the "machine."

The Hawthorne Studies

• Location: Hawthorne manufacturing plant (1920s, Illinois).

• The "Hawthorne Effect":

  • Increased lighting led to increased productivity.

  • No changes in lighting also led to increased productivity.

  • Reductions in lighting still led to increased productivity.

  • Conclusion: Social attention increased productivity.

Human Relations/Resources Theories

• Focus: Workers’ attitudes toward their work and job satisfaction.

• Emphasis on workers’ "humanness".

• Increased Interest in Interpersonal Communication in Organizational Life

Communication-Based Theorizing

• Organizations are constituted by communication.

• View Organizations as "Cultures".

  • "The cohesive patterns of making sense of the world that characterize a particular group of people in a particular time and place" (Anderson & Ross, p. 199).

Organizational Symbols

• Critical to an organization’s culture.

• Members create, use, and interpret symbols.

• Purpose:

  • To create & sustain a shared sense of organizational reality.

• Symbols (verbal & non-verbal) represent the meanings that are held in common by members of an organization.

• Symbols communicate organizational values.

  • Physical symbols: buildings, logos, décor, objects.

  • Behavioral symbols: rituals, ceremonies, communication patterns.

  • Verbal symbols: jargon, nicknames, stories, jokes.

Actors & Performances

• Organization members are "Actors" who engage in Communicative "Performances".

• "Performance": A metaphor that represents the symbolic process of understanding human behavior in an organization

• Five Types of Performances:

  • Ritual performances

  • Passion performances

  • Sociality performances

  • Political performances

  • Enculturation performances

Ritual Performances

• Communication performances that occur on a regular basis.

• Four Types:

  • Personal rituals: Routine personal behaviors in the workplace.

  • Task rituals: Routine job-related behaviors.

  • Social rituals: Routine verbal & non-verbal interactions with others.

  • Organizational rituals: Routinely occurring organizational events.

Other Cultural “Performances”

• Passion Performances: Organizational stories members enthusiastically share with one another, often repeatedly.

• Sociality Performances: Common extensions of politeness and courtesies in an attempt to gain cooperation among members.

• Political Performances: Members’ communicative attempts to influence one another.

• Enculturation Performances: Ways members obtain necessary info & skills to perform their jobs in the organization.