English Final

The Importance of Organizational Communication

11.1 Explain the importance of understanding communication in organizations.

Because you participate in organizations regularly, you will benefit from understanding how to communicate more effectively with and within them. Doing so will enhance your professional success, allow you to ask more informed questions about everyday organizational practices, and help you decide what organizations you wish to frequent and support.

Much of your success within organizations is connected to your communication abilities. For example, if you want an organization to hire you, you must first display good interviewing skills. If you want a promotion, it may be essential to understand your boss's goals and beliefs but also to effectively engage in what some business experts call "a series of continuing conversations" with your boss (Knight, 2018). And if you seek public or civic office, you must have strong public-speaking and social-influence skills to gain support from your political party and endorsements from influential organizations.

In addition to enhancing your professional success, understanding organizational communication will help you ask more informed questions about everyday organizational practices, such as how the corporation you work for determines pay raises, how a nonprofit charity you support can become a United Way organization, or how you can influence legislation in your community. Knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them will improve your ability to accomplish your goals. Finally, given that a wide variety of religious, corporate, and community organizations exist, there is a limit to how many you can support. Understanding how to question organizations and how to interpret their responses and policies can help you make informed choices regarding which ones to embrace. For example, you might decide not to purchase products or services from for-profit organizations that force their employees to work mandatory overtime at the expense of their home lives. Or you might decide that you are better off working for an organization whose goals and beliefs you support strongly because your agreement with those goals likely will influence your career success.

Defining Organizational Communication

11.2 Define organizations and explain their communication functions and structures.

Next, we define what we mean when we say organization, and we explain the role communication plays in it. As part of this definition, we focus on two aspects common to all organizing efforts: communication functions and structures. We then conclude this section by examining the role of communication in establishing organizational cultures.

Organizational Communication and the Individual

11.3 Understand the types of communication that occur among coworkers and explain their functions.

If you wish to influence the organizations you interact with, you need to understand some of the basic types of communication that help create organizations and organizational life. It is important to be familiar with guidelines for how you might perform these types of communication most successfully. Although all the communication skills and abilities we examine in this book will definitely make you a better communicator in organizational contexts, here we focus on three types of communication that are integral to organizations: assimilation, supervisor-subordinate communication, and coworker communication. We also explore three types of organizational dilemmas or tensions that employees must manage.

The Individual, Organizational Communication, and Society

11.4 Discuss current social influences on organizations and organizational communication.

In this section, we explore how organizations and the societies in which they are located exert influence on each other and the individuals within them. First, we examine two of the most significant societal forces that impact organizational communication —history and globalization. Next, we discuss three important recent organizational practices that influence individuals and society, including the development of a new social contract between organizations and employees, the rise of urgent organizations, and the blurring of boundaries between home and work. Finally, we examine power relations within organizations and their impact on employees. We address these topics to explicate how each has influenced beliefs about organizational communication and its performance.

Ethics and Organizational Communication

11.5 Distinguish between individual and communal perspectives on organizational ethics.

As a result of organizational behavior such as providing bonuses to CEOs who lead failing financial companies and the Boeing 737 MAX jet crashes, U.S. Americans are paying more attention to business ethics than perhaps ever before (Holt, 2020; Matthews & Gandel, 2015), and organizations are being advised to solicit and listen to employee complaints regarding ethics breaches (Bisel & Adame, 2018). However, observers don't agree on where responsibility for ethical behavior and communication rests within the organization. For example, who should be held accountable for the engineering design flaws and lack of transparency at Boeing and the FAA's failure to adequately oversee the jet's design? Should only the engineers who designed the systems be prosecuted? Should the managers of the company be accountable? How about former Boeing CEO Matthias Muller? Is he responsible for the ethical standards within his company? When attempting to determine the ethical choices and decisions organizations should make, people usually view the process either from the individual perspective or the communal perspective (Brown, 1989).

Many U.S. Americans take an individualistic perspective, viewing ethical failures as resting on the shoulders of specific individuals within the organization. From this outlook, each person in the corporation is responsible for their own behavior. In the case of Boeing, then, only the managers themselves who ignored complaints and concerns raised by engineers about decisions that were being made are accountable. In the communal view, however, individuals are considered to be members of a community and are all partially responsible for the behavior of its members. The assumption here is that the ethical standards within an organization are created by and should be monitored and reinforced by all of its members. From this perspective, everyone within the Boeing organization, especially the managers and CEO, is responsible, because they had a duty to create and maintain high ethical standards within the company.

When ethics is discussed in organizational contexts, the focus typically is on the rights of the individual —such as the rights to free speech or privacy —and policies and behaviors that infringe on these rights are seen as unethical. However, a communal approach focuses on the "common good," or what is in the best interests of the entire community, and recent organization scholars emphasize the importance of an organizational climate that fosters ethical communication and behaviors (Teresi et al., 2019). Thus, the morality of an action is assessed based on its consequences for the group. In an individualistic approach, the responsibility for the Boeing 737 MAX's design flaws lies with the engineers who directly created the design. From a communal approach, the consequences of this design error are harmful to the organization as well as society, and the people responsible for that harm are the members of the organization collectively, that is, the organization itself.

Problems exist with both approaches. When we view individuals alone as responsible, they alone are punished, whereas the organization is left essentially unchanged. Yet, when we view corporations in a completely communal way and hold them responsible for their unethical practices, no individual may be held accountable or liable. Consequently, those responsible for the decision to engage in unethical and often illegal practices may not suffer any consequences —and may be free to continue these practices.

How should we balance these two approaches? Most likely, we need to hold both the organization and the individuals who lead them responsible for their practices —just as political leaders are tried in war courts for crimes against humanity, even though their subordinates performed the atrocities. At the same time, corporate leaders need to consider the impacts of their decisions on both individuals and society. To read about one student's experience with organizational ethics, see It Happened to Me: Nichole.

You Are a Manager

Making ethical decisions in the workplace is difficult, and no one knows that better than managers. Employees in authoritative positions often toe ethical lines each week, determining how much information to share with their team members, how to handle conflict, and which decisions will bring about the most reasonable consequences.

You have worked at a firm for three years and recently got promoted to manager. You are in charge of a team of eight people: five you consider to be friends, two you consider to be good friends, and one recently transferred to your team and knows you only as manager.

Review the following scenarios and determine how you would react if you were a manager.

Scenario 1

You went up for a promotion at the same time as one of your friends. He has been at the company a few months longer than you, but ultimately you received the promotion over him. You are now his manager, which you find awkward, because he initially trained you when you joined the company. Your new dynamic is not working. You've been the team manager for three weeks, but your co-worker tries to undermine you at every turn.

He fights your decisions at meetings, he doesn't do his work according to your standards, and you recently found out he's been purposefully instructing other team members to follow his working guidelines, not yours.

This behavior is unacceptable, and you need to put a stop to it. If this behavior continues, the team will view him as the leader, not you. At the same time, your co-worker is a respected member of the team and has retained strong friendships with other members. You fear if you publicly admonish him, your team will turn on you and further slip from your control.

What do you do?

Pick from one of the options below:

• Call your co-worker out in a team meeting.

• Set aside a private meeting with your co-worker.

• You go straight to your boss and express your dissatisfaction with your co-worker.

Call your co-worker out in a team meeting.

You're tired of being steamrolled. At your next team meeting, you set the record straight. You lead by saying it's imperative your team listens to you and follows the rules you are setting forward. You know some of them are receiving conflicting instructions from other members of the team, but that behavior needs to stop immediately.

This method is not as effective as you would have liked. Your team is now confused. Some of them know what you are referring to, but others are completely in the dark and begin questioning their work on every project. You are now flooded with simple questions, and your team's productivity has started to stall. Your relationship with your co-worker is now more strained than ever. You are sensing a deep divide among your team - those who side with him, and those who are confused.

Set aside a private meeting with your co-worker.

You start the meeting by acknowledging that this conversation will be awkward for you both, but you want to have a frank discussion about your co-worker's behavior over the past three weeks. You call out instances where he has undermined your authority, and you ask him to respect your decisions and your new position - especially in front of others. You conclude the meeting by stressing his importance to the team and explain that you'd like to find a way to work together peacefully.

Your co-worker admits his wrongdoing and apologizes. He expresses that - as much as he hates to admit it - he is jealous. He acknowledges that he has not been very supportive of you or your new position, and says he will make an effort to be a better team player in the future.

You go straight to your boss and express your dissatisfaction with your co-worker.

You conclude that even if you call out your co-worker, nothing concrete will come of it. The only solution, then, is to go to your boss and have her mediate the situation. You schedule a meeting, explain the situation, and leave it in her hands.

Your boss is disappointed in you. She indicates that they chose for this position because they believed you had a better managerial instinct and that they wouldn't have to hold your hand through difficult conversations. Being a manager means being the bad guy sometimes, even to your friends. She tells you to go back to your office, rethink your approach, then meet with her next week to let her know how it was resolved.

Scenario 2

You have been managing your team for a full two months. You have a great rapport with your team members, and you remain friendly with most of them: you go to after work social events with them, you re all friends on Facebook, and you consider a few of them to be your best friends.

Your boss calls you into a meeting and explains that the company is not doing well. It will need to lay off 15 percent of its workforce. Two of your team members are affected. She explains that layoffs will happen next week, and you are not to breathe a word of this to your team. She fears if word gets out about layoffs, the team's productivity will go down. You are conflicted. As the team manager, you agree with your boss.

People would panic if they knew about layoffs, and they would not be focused on their tasks. As their friend, however, you feel it is your duty to warn the two members of the impending layoffs. If you give them a heads up now, they may be able to get a leg up on job hunting.

What do you do?

Pick from one of the options below:

• You tell the team layoffs are coming.

• You tell the affected members that they will be laid off.

• You tell the team nothing.

You tell the team layoffs are coming. It's unreasonable for your boss to expect you to remain tight-lipped, you decide. You hold a team meeting and explain to your staff that the company will need to perform layoffs next week. You explain that only two people from your team will be laid off and that layoffs are common among most businesses. You end the meeting by explaining that no one should panic, and it's imperative they don't breathe a word of this to anyone else - you were instructed not to tell them, but you thought it was only fair they knew. Your team is outraged. And afraid. They ask you many questions during the meeting, most of which you don't know how to answer.

Over the next week, three of your team members quit, two tell you they are job hunting, and productivity dips significantly. One of the members who quit told your boss that she should be ashamed of herself for trying to keep the information about layoffs quiet.

Your friendships stay intact but your boss is not happy. She has booked a meeting with you...for next week.

You tell the affected members that they will be laid off.

You fear the mass panic that may occur as a result of telling the entire team, so you pull the two affected employees aside and explain the situation. You stress that you are happy to be a job reference for them both, and that this decision was not yours, but the company's. You end the meeting by asking them both to keep this information to themselves - your boss told you not to say anything, and you want to make sure the team doesn't panic.

Much in the same way that you disobeyed your boss, your team members felt it was their ethical duty to do the same. By lunch, your entire team knows about the layoffs. You have members running up to you throughout the day asking if they need to be worried. By the end of the week, two additional team members put in their resignations, telling your boss that they fear for the future of the company.

Your friends don't understand why you tried to keep this from them.They lose trust in you as both a boss and a friend. Additionally, your boss is not happy. She has booked a meeting with you...for next week.

You tell the team nothing.

As much as you'd love to warn your friends, you decide it is not your place to spread this news. You do as your boss instructs and maintain the status quo.

When layoffs occur, your team feels blindsided. They are upset they lost two of their good friends, and they fear for the future of their jobs. They respect you as a manager, but your friendships are now strained.

Logically, they understand why you couldn't warn them, but emotionally, they can't seem to grasp it.

Your friendships are strained, but your boss is pleased with you.

Scenario 3

You have developed quite the crush on one of your team members. Your company has a very strict policy forbidding managers and team members from dating, but you think this person could be the real deal - and you're pretty confident the feeling is mutual. After weeks of flirting, you decide you cannot continue working like this.

You set a private meeting with your team member. You express your feelings and indicate that it has started to affect your work performance. Much to your excitement - and dismay - you learn the feelings are reciprocated. Your team member indicates that they would love to pursue a relationship, but if you're concerned about your professional career, they would respect the boundaries you set in stone.

You are at quite a serious crossroads. You need to come to a decision now — do you date your team member, or do you keep it professional?

Pick from one of the options below:

• You go for the relationship, and you report your relationship to the HR department.

• You go for the relationship, and you keep it secret.

• You do not go for the relationship.

You go for the relationship, and you report your relationship to the HR department. You know you will never truly be happy as co-workers only, so you tell your team member that you want to go for it. However, it's important to you that you report the relationship. You don't want other people finding out and reporting you, and you'd prefer not to sneak around the office. You are confident you can keep your head and your heart separated at work.

Your boss - and your HR department - disagree. You are required to fill out an awkward questionnaire about your relationship, including questions like "What will you do if you breakup?" "How will you respond when people accuse you of favoritism?" and "Is this the first office relationship you've had?" Further, your boss explains that you cannot remain on the same team while you date - you need to move or your team member needs to move. She needs a decision by end-of-day.

Guess it's time for another awkward conversation between you two.

You go for the relationship, and you keep it secret.

You know you will never truly be happy as co-workers only, so you tell your team member that you want to go for it. You do not want this getting out, so you explain that it has to remain completely secret - you can't post about it on social media, you can't tell work friends, and you can't hang out in public spots where you may be spotted together. This is a tough way to start a new relationship, but you're confident that if you can make it through these trials, you'll be a stronger couple for it.

You find the privacy to be draining. You are constantly worried that someone is reading your work chats, you keep your phone on your body at all times, and you stagger the times you enter and leave the office. The pressure is too intense and you're not quite sure how much longer you can handle it.

Guess it's time for another awkward conversation between you two.

You do not go for the relationship.

As much as you really like your team member, you know the rules and you know yourself - you don't think the HR department would react well and you know privacy is not your thing. You explain that you will need to remain professional, and that a relationship is not on the horizon while you both remain on the same team.

Your co-worker is crushed, but they understand. You find the next few weeks to be surprisingly difficult. You two have set new boundaries - you disconnected on social media, you don't text after work, and you limit your work chats to work-related items only. You feel like you' ve lost a best friend, and you are devastated when you discover they are seeing someone new.

Conclusion

There are no black-and-white answers to ethical dilemmas in the workplace. What may seem like the right call to you may not be the right call to someone else. Making ethical decisions as a manager requires you to weigh all your options prior to picking a path - and even then, unforeseen roadblocks could further alter your decisions.

Ask a close relative with managerial experience about a tough call they had to make. Did they weight their options beforehand? Why did they choose the option they did? Are they satisfied, or would they go back and change it if they could?

How is communication a factor in organizational ethics? Communication figures in organizational ethics in two ways (Cheney et al., 2004). First, many of the ethical issues in organizations revolve around communication. For example, organizations have to decide when to tell employees of impending layoffs, they develop advertising campaigns that communicate the identity of their corporation and its products to consumers, and they must decide how to communicate information regarding their profits and losses to shareholders and Wall Street. Second, the ways in which an organization defines, communicates about, and responds to ethical and unethical behavior shape how individuals within the organization behave. If corporate policy and organizational leaders are vague on the issue of ethics, or worse yet, fail to address it, employees may believe that ethics are not a central concern of the organization and may behave accordingly. For example, in 2020, the New York Times published an article about the ethical decisions being made over who would get COVID-19 treatment if hospitals were overwhelmed with patients. Hospitals are organizations, but they don't operate in a vacuum. They know that the ethical decisions they make impact their employees and their public image (Teresi et al., 2019). The choices made by hospitals and public health officials in the states varied widely. Alabama put "persons with severe mental retardation" low on the list for treatment as well as those with AIDS. However, Alabama officials said they have replaced the plan with a different set of guidelines. Louisiana excluded people with severe dementia, and Maryland gave "lowest priority" to people over 85 years old. As hospitals grappled with these state ethical guidelines for treatment priority, they considered many issues, including the patient's age, pregnancy (Utah considers how far along the pregnancy is), dementia, and Alzheimer's (Baker & Fink, 2020).

The chapter on organizational communication helped me better understand a problem I encountered with Residential Life at my college. It wasn't about drinking or drugs or letting in strangers or any of the usual problems that students have with the dorm; it was about my resident assistant (RA), who now is my boyfriend.

Just to clarify, there were no rules stated that I could not date my RA, and he was never told he couldn't date his residents. Plus, there is actual love involved, not just random friends-with-benefits hookups, and we really feel as though we have met the right person. But Residential Life has a huge problem with our relationship, and they called us into a meeting. We both felt as though it was a violation of our privacy. We had the meeting, he quit his job, and we are still dating, 10 months strong!

Now, though, when I look at the relationship through the eyes of the school, I can see their problems with it. What would have happened if an employee of the college got me pregnant? Also, he lived in my hall, and his duty was to keep us in line, but there was huge preferential treatment going on. I mean, would my boyfriend really write me up for anything? So now I see that they had a point. But I don't understand why nothing was ever said about this practice being against the rules.

Improving Your Organizational Communication Skills

11.6 Identify four steps involved in a strategic approach to conflict management.

Much of the time, if not most, people are only willing to engage in conflict when they are angry or emotional. How often have you been involved with, or observed others engaging in, highly emotional conflict at work? As you probably have noted, this style of conflict engagement typically doesn't resolve anything and may cause long-lasting damage to one's relationships with others.

A better way to manage conflict with coworkers is to use a strategic approach to conflict management. People who use a strategic approach prepare for their conflicts and engage in strategy control (Canary & Lakey, 2012). When behaving strategically, one assesses the available information and options, which increases one's understanding of the conflict and the other party. In turn, these behaviors help people choose conflict behaviors that are responsive to the partner's as well as their own needs and increase the possibility for cooperation, collaboration, and compromise.

When using a strategic approach, before you even initiate a discussion over an issue in conflict, you should know what you want to occur as a result of the interaction. If you wish to confront your coworker about not doing his fair share of a joint project, you should first decide what your goal is. Do you want your colleague to apologize? To stay late until the report is finished? To complete the project by himself? To take the lead on the next joint project? Or do you desire some combination of these outcomes? You will be far more successful and satisfied with your conflict interactions if you go into them knowing what you want.

Second, decide if the issue is worth confronting —or worth confronting now. You may know what you want, but do you have a reasonable chance of accomplishing your goals? That is, how likely is your coworker to apologize or to successfully take the lead on your next joint project? If the answer truly is "highly unlikely," you may choose not to engage in the conflict or to seek other solutions. For example, you might decide to ask your supervisor to assign someone else to work with you. Alternatively, you may decide you do want to have the conversation, but perhaps not right now, because both of you are hungry and tired.

If you decide that the conflict is worth confronting, you next want to try to understand the other party's goals, that is, what they want. What, for example, do you think your coworker's goal is? Does he want to receive credit for the work without having to do it? Does he want assistance with parts of the project he doesn't feel competent to complete? Is he busy with other projects and wants more time to finish the project? Depending on your understanding of his goals and interests, you will likely suggest different solutions. Please remember, however, the tendency for each of us to attribute negative motivations to others' behavior. If you are upset, you will be particularly likely to believe your colleague's goal is to avoid work but receive the rewards of it. Recognize that your attributions may be incorrect and that you probably will need to talk with your coworker to determine what his motivations really are.

You have one more step to complete before you are ready to talk with your colleague; you need to plan the interaction. More specifically, you should think about when and where the conversation should take place and what tactics you believe will be most effective. Typically, you will want to choose a time when neither you nor your coworker is angry, rushed, or stressed. In addition, you should probably have the conversation in private. If others are around, one or both of you may behave more competitively or avoid the interaction entirely because you are embarrassed to be observed by others. Finally, you should think through how you will explain your dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs neutrally and how you will frame your suggested solutions. Once you have done all of this, you are ready to talk with your colleague and discuss calmly what the two of you can do to reduce your feeling that you alone are working on the project. What are your options if you feel that another employee or a supervisor has committed an extremely serious infraction against you, perhaps betraying a serious confidence and spreading harmful misinformation about you? Perhaps attempts to discuss the issue have only resulted in worsening the relationship.

Communication scholars have recently discussed the important role of compassion and forgiveness in the workplace. For example, Sarah Tracy and colleagues (2017) describe the need for compassionate communication strategies in problematic work situations -supportive listening, positive language, and optimistic framing. Scholars Paul and Putnam (2017) identify four potential workplace forgiveness responses, acknowledging that a particular response may

vary depending on the closeness of the personal relationship, the task involved, and one's own individual communication style: (1) moving on, a passive approach that is primarily task focused; (2) not taking it personally, associated with task focus and closer relationships; (3) letting go, reflecting a higher degree of collaboration, intertwining relationships and task; and (4) conciliatory forgiving, less concern with task and reflective of close relationships and working through the conflict. Paul and Putnam also emphasize that while forgiveness is seen as an individual action, the organizational values and norms can play a role and influence whether (and how) any act of forgiveness may be enacted in the workplace context.