Discussion question due tonight

CHAPTER 1 Organizational Communication: A Competency-Based Approach

The Changing Nature of Organizations and Work

We are in one of the more turbulent periods in history. This statement is not profound but is real nevertheless. Our twenty-first-century world is more complex, and the knowledge we bring to bear on our problems often adds to confusion and disagreement. We have unprecedented opportunities and unprecedented problems. Most of us seek a firm direction that is outmoded. Uncertainty and change have become the norm. We need new thinking, new criticisms, new knowledge, new approaches, and new understandings. Creativity and innovation are more important than ever.

Nowhere is the current turbulence more evident than in contemporary organizations. Increased economic pressures, globalization, rapidly diversifying employee and customer bases, changing technology, societal needs, an increasing awareness of organizational relationships to society in general, and a host of other factors contribute to new organization types, new relationships between organizations and employees, and a growing acknowledgment of the complexity of all organizational life. The virtual organization, e-commerce, high-performing teams, contract employment, increased contact with a culturally diverse world, and home-based work are but a few of the changes with impacts on interpersonal relationships, group interactions, management and leadership, personal and professional ethics, time management, and nonwork life.

What many have called the old social contract—mutual loyalty and support between employees and their employers—has been replaced by frequent shifts from one employer to another, increased global competition, downsizing in workforces, part-time employment, flatter organizations, and a generally changing relationship between management and workers. Critics of the changing nature of our work lives call for increased workplace democracy, whereas its advocates defend the changes as necessary for survival.

Challenges for Individuals and Organizations

The environments individuals and organizations encounter are complex, fragile, turbulent, and uncertain. The opportunities for innovation and change are enormous. J. F. Rischard (2002) describes the challenges individuals and organizations face as problems of sharing our planet, our humanity, and a global rule book. Rischard identifies global warming, biodiversity, deforestation, poverty, education, the digital divide, e-commerce rules, international labor and migration rules, the global financial architecture, and several other problems as issues so pressing they must be addressed in the next twenty years by individuals and organizations including for-profit, not-for-profit, governmental, and educational institutions. War, terrorism, global warming, and accelerating rates of change add to what appears to be a growing list. Individuals and organizations experience increasingly diverse environments characterized by age, gender, race, social class, and cultural differences. For individuals the requirement to continually learn and build new competencies has never been greater. Individuals continually face challenges between complex organization requirements and personal and family life. Individuals and organizations are asked to engage these challenges and differences to create opportunities, generate innovation, and contribute to productive change.

The Communications Era

Regardless of the position taken about the changing nature of organizations and work, few disagree the communications era surrounds us. We live, work, and play in complex communications environments. Sophisticated communications technologies have changed the way we do everything. The rapid development and use of communications technologies have contributed to individuals, organizations, and the entire world becoming more interconnected than at any previous point in human history.

All of us are experiencing a unique time in history with two unprecedented shifts—globalization and the nature of innovation—driving changes impacting all aspects of our lives. Innovation can occur anywhere, and participation in the creation of new products and processes is no longer limited to superpowers and highly developed countries. The United States of America, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom have all seen white-collar jobs move to countries such as India, China, and Russia. Millions of routine jobs have disappeared, while new and more stimulating jobs requiring communications expertise are created. With more than half of America’s workforce and gross national product in knowledge industries, virtually all agree we are in a postindustrial information society moving to a conceptual age. Daniel Pink (2005), who describes the shift from the information to the conceptual age, suggests, “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys” (p. 1). Thomas Friedman (2006) believes “we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which—if politics and terrorism do not get in the way—could usher in an amazing era of prosperity, innovation, and collaboration, by companies, communities, and individuals” (p. 8).

Information society Environment in which more jobs create, process, or distribute information than directly produce goods. The environment is characterized by mass production of information, which requires the constant learning of new activities and processes.

Conceptual age Environment in which inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities are required for the most fulfilling jobs. Written and oral communication, inquiry, critical and creative thinking, quantitative literacy, cultural knowledge, teamwork, synthesis of learning, and strong personal ethics are highly valued.

As an individual you are likely to spend most of your working life employed in a “knowledge/information” or “conceptual” job. You are more likely to create, process, or distribute information than you are to be directly involved in the production of goods. There is a greater need for salespeople, teachers, lawyers, financial analysts, media producers, bankers, consultants, scientists, engineers, doctors, architects, writers, information managers, editors, and social workers and a decreased need for manufacturing assembly workers, service support workers, miners, toolmakers, machinists, builders, and welders.

One of the most important characteristics of the “communications” era is the rapid change associated with mass production of information, change requiring us all to be constantly involved in the learning of new activities and processes. Most of us have already experienced rapid change brought about by new technologies. For example, although checks can still be written by hand, many of us pay our bills online or with plastic cards and use computer terminals to deposit money in or withdraw money from our bank accounts. We can still go to the movies, or we can bring movies to our homes through disc, satellites, and internet connections.

We can write letters and memos to send through “regular” mail, or we can use sophisticated electronic systems to send and receive all types of correspondence and files rapidly. We use our cellular phones for talking with others but also as our Web connections, cameras (both still and video), instant messaging devices, calculators, clocks, e-mail processors, televisions, and a host of other functions. Social networking of all types increasingly is prevalent in both our personal and organizational environments.

Fiber-optic connections, wireless networks, and global telecommunications and computer networks have literally changed the ways in which we do research, changed those with whom we can stay in constant contact, and altered notions of time and space. We are connected daily with both close friends and strangers. Most students reading this book are in traditional classrooms with “live” instructors. For some students now, and for more in the future, however, “live” means that the instructor is located at a remote site equipped with audio, video, and computer interconnects supported by e-books. Convergence is the term of the day, with computing, wireless technologies, and more traditional media such as television converging into integrated tools for work, school, family, and leisure environments.

We have so much information that, for individuals and organizations, the challenge is how to deal with our information alternatives. This daily increase in information (based on innovations in communications and computer technology) brings with it rapid change in activities, processes, and products.

Workers in the communications era of microelectronics, computers, and telecommunications have an abundance of information for decision making and a growing concern for information overload. Research suggests virtually all knowledge workers use e-mail and voicemail, with use of mobile phones, conference calls, corporate intranets, IM/text messaging, corporate Web sites, information portals, and corporate extranets commonplace. Social media have become a cultural phenomenon in all aspects of our lives. We are connected around the clock as work and personal time merge for many. We can routinely communicate across both geography and organizational levels. It is not unusual, for example, for employees of an organization in Boston to interact with their counterparts in Los Angeles, whom they have never met, while both groups prepare a portion of a single report or recommendation. And for a growing number of individuals, this report can be generated without ever leaving their homes as they “telecommute” from automated home workstations to offices around the globe.

The complexity of all organizational life and the rapid increase in communications technologies place increasing demands on our individual communication abilities. These demands are best met with the perspective that becoming and staying competent is an ongoing process requiring lifelong learning.

Communication: The Key to Organizational Excellence

Organizational excellence Ability of people to work together and utilize technology for the creative solving of increasingly complex problems.

In this complex and information-rich conceptual society, the key to organizational excellence is communication excellence. Communication systems within organizations—both human

and technological—are responsible for solving increasingly complex problems creatively. People using the machines of the communications era must coordinate large volumes of information for the performance of new and dynamic tasks. There is widespread recognition, however, that excellence in organizational problem solving is more than the efficient management of large volumes of facts. Organizational excellence stems from the dedicated commitment of people, people who are motivated to work together and who share similar values and visions about the results of their efforts.

Viewing communications as the key to organizational excellence is not new. As early as 1938, Chester Barnard, in his now-famous work The Functions of the Executive, described as a primary responsibility of executives the development and maintenance of a system of communication. Research since then has linked organizational communication to managerial effectiveness, the integration of work units across organizational levels, characteristics of effective supervision, job and communication satisfaction, innovation, adaptability, creativity, and overall organizational effectiveness and performance. In fact, numerous scholars have gone as far as to suggest that organizations are essentially complex communication processes that create and change events. For both the industrial society of the past and the information and conceptual societies of today and tomorrow, there is broad agreement about the centrality of organizational communication and that organizational communication plays a significant part in contributing to or detracting from organizational excellence.

With this emphasis on the complex, fast-paced information conceptual society and the importance of human communication, questions arise concerning what skills and abilities organizations need from their future employees. How should individuals prepare themselves for the information responsibilities and opportunities that almost inevitably will be a part of the future? What does it take to contribute to organizational communication excellence?

Put simply, organizations of today and tomorrow need competent communicators at all organizational levels. With more complex decisions, rapid change, more information, and less certainty about what the decisions should be, excellence in a conceptual world depends on the abilities, commitment, and creativity of all organizational members. As a result, students, communication teachers and researchers, and active organizational members must work together to understand what contributes to organizational communication competency and how best to develop personal potential. It is our collective expertise which will detract from or contribute to excellence.

Excellence In Communication: Communication Competency

Quintilian, an early Latin rhetorician, is credited with introducing the ideal of the “good man speaking well,” an ideal that is not as far removed from contemporary concepts of organizational communication competency as history might suggest. In fact, Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson (2004) identified a contemporary “good communicator” theme when reviewing research from personnel administrators throughout the United States of America. Today’s organizations need people

who can speak well, listen, write, persuade others, demonstrate interpersonal skills, gather information, and exhibit small-group problem-solving expertise. In other words, organizations in our complex and turbulent world need flexible and creative people who have diverse and well-developed communication abilities. Yet how do we determine if we are competent organizational communicators? Who decides? On what do we base our conclusions?

Communication competency Composed of knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values. Competence arises from interaction of theory, practice, and analysis.

Researchers differ in how they define communication competency. Some believe that a person is competent if he or she knows what is appropriate in a specific situation, whether or not that behavior actually occurs. A student, for example, who realizes that class participation is required for a high grade may choose not to participate, yet the student can be considered competent because of the knowledge or awareness of the appropriate behavior. Other researchers extend the competency concept beyond knowledge of appropriate behaviors to include actual language performance and the achievement of interpersonal goals. The student, from this perspective, must not only recognize appropriate participation behaviors but also participate so as to demonstrate communication competency.

Fred Jablin and Patricia Sias (2001), in their comprehensive discussion of communication competency, suggested that the concept of communication competency is best understood by an ecological model that revolves around four systems:

(1) the microsystem, which contains the developing organizational member and other persons in the immediate work environment (e.g., supervisors, coworkers, and clients); (2) the mesosystem, which represents the interrelations among various microsystems (e.g., what individuals learn in their project teams may affect their competence in the functional work groups in which they are members); (3) the macrosystem, which does not represent the immediate context in which an individual works, but does impinge on him or her (i.e., major divisions of the organization and the organization itself as a whole); and (4) the exosystem, which represents the overarching cultural belief system, forms of knowledge, social, technological, and political ideologies.… In brief, an ecological perspective emphasizes system embeddedness. That is, the actions of one element of the system affect the other elements. (pp. 836–837)

Jablin and Sias specifically described how globalization and technology have changed forever notions of what is a competent communicator. It is fair to conclude they expand previous notions of communication competency to extend to groups and to the organization as a whole within its broad environment. Sherry Morreale (2009) suggests linkage between communication competence and ethics. Specifically, Morreale identifies issues of competence related to pursuing self-interest versus the interest of others, to engaging in information sharing versus manipulation, and to recognizing the long-term effects of communication across time and diverse relationships.

Stephen Littlejohn and David Jabusch (1982) have proposed a particularly useful definition of communication competency for the organizational setting. They suggest that communication competency is “the ability and willingness of an individual to participate responsibly in a transaction in such a way as to maximize the outcomes of shared meanings.” This definition requires not only knowledge of appropriate behaviors but also motivation to engage in communication that results in mutual understanding.

In other words, communication competency involves our personal willingness and ability to communicate so that our meanings are understood and we understand the meanings of others. Finally, this definition can be applied to the group and macro-organizational levels so important in the ecological model proposed by Jablin and Sias. Regardless of differences in perspectives, organizational communication competency relates to message encoding and decoding abilities, the process of communication initiation and consumption.

When we begin to think about our personal communication competency, we quickly realize that we form impressions of our own competency while making evaluations about the competency of others. We try to decide what is appropriate for us as well as for others, and we determine whether that behavior is effective in a particular circumstance. In other words, my impression of my own competency and the competency of others is related to my evaluation of whether we exhibited the “right” behaviors and achieved “desirable” results in a particular situation. Determining what is “right” and “desirable” is not always easy, however. Think for a moment about your personal experiences. Have you ever been in a situation where others thought you did a good job although you were disappointed in yourself? Who was right? Were you competent or incompetent? Can both be correct?

Earlier we said that organizational excellence depends on the communication competencies of all organizational members. Specifically, we described the need for creative problem solving among diverse groups of people who often share little common information. With this emphasis on communication and technology, the real question becomes what individuals should do to prepare themselves to meet their future communication needs. In other words, how do we develop and evaluate our communication competencies?

Our answer begins by returning to the Littlejohn and Jabusch approach to communication competency. Littlejohn and Jabusch (1982) contend competency arises out of four basic components: process understanding, interpersonal sensitivity, communication skills, and ethical responsibility. Process understanding refers to the cognitive ability to understand the dynamics of the communication event. Interpersonal sensitivity is the ability to perceive feelings and meanings. Communication skills are the ability to develop and interpret message strategies in specific situations. The ethical component of competency is the attitudinal set that governs concern for the well-being of all participants in taking responsibility for communication outcomes. Finally, Littlejohn and Jabusch believe that competence comes from the interaction of three primary elements: theory, practice, and analysis. When applied to the organizational setting, the Littlejohn and Jabusch approach can be modified and expanded to include the competency components this book seeks to develop: knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values.

Organizational Communication: A Competency-Based Approach

This book is designed to help you develop communication competencies for effective organizational communication. The goal of the book is to provide theory, practice, and analysis opportunities that contribute to knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values important for organizational excellence.

Knowledge: the ability to understand the organizational communication environment. Knowledge competencies are what we come to know about a particular field. Knowledge is the learning of theory and principles. Knowledge competencies are fundamental to support our sensitivity to organizational life, to guide our skill development, and to assist us in understanding the application of ethical standards and our personal values in a variety of organizational settings. Knowledge competency develops through the exploration of the interactive process nature of human communication. We examine what organizational communication is and the major theoretical approaches for its study. We explore the roles of individuals in organizations and examine communication implications of major organizational theories. Finally, we discuss vital organizational subjects such as conflict, leadership, and strategic communication.

Knowledge competency Ability to understand the organizational communication environment.

Sensitivity: the ability to sense accurately organizational meanings and feelings. It is related to our ability and willingness to understand what others feel and do. Sensitivity competency develops through the examination of our personal “theories-in-use” about communication and organizations. We assess individual preferences for leadership and conflict, as well as the impact of personal differences and similarities within organizational settings. We place emphasis on how we come to understand our complex organizational environments.

Sensitivity competency Ability to sense organizational meanings and feelings accurately.

Skills: the ability to analyze organizational situations accurately and to initiate and consume organizational messages effectively. The skills competency focuses on developing important analytical capabilities as well as the ability to communicate effectively in a variety of settings. Skills competency develops through analysis and practice opportunities. Specifically, analytical skills develop by applying knowledge and sensitivity to case studies and individual experiences. We also present and practice problem-solving and conflict-management skills.

Skills competency Ability to analyze organizational situations accurately and to initiate and consume organizational messages effectively.

Values: the importance of taking personal responsibility for effective communication, thereby contributing to organizational excellence. Values competency develops through discussion of personal responsibility for participation in organizational communication. We examine ethical dilemmas relating to organizational communication and the importance of values to organizational culture. Finally, we use case studies to illustrate ethical and value issues common in organizations.

Values competency Importance of taking responsibility for effective communication, thereby contributing to organizational excellence.

The “What Business Is This of Ours?” Case

The following case describes a problem at Quality Engineering, a medium-sized company located in Denver, Colorado. The case is based on a real situation at Quality, although the name of the supplier in question has been changed. You will

use this case to think about individuals communicating and to begin to understand the concept of organizational communication.

John and Mary were the only two buyers in the purchasing department of Quality Engineering. Both had been with the company for several years and were experienced in handling purchases for the manufacturing, research, finance, and marketing areas of Quality. Mary typically handled purchases for the manufacturing and research areas, and John was the principal buyer for the rest of the organization. At times their individual workloads required they cross departments and help each other. Their boss, Mike Anderson, the accountant for Quality, believed they were the best purchasing team with whom he had ever worked. He was proud of their efforts and willingness to cooperate with each other. He frequently commented to Quality management that John and Mary made money for the company by getting the best possible prices for goods and services.

Mike was surprised and concerned to overhear John and Mary in a heated discussion.

JOHN:

I can’t believe you are still using Anderson Printing as one of our suppliers. I told you last month that their last two orders for my groups were late and part of the printing had to be sent back because of errors. I told them then that I wouldn’t accept any more of their bids on our jobs. It makes me look like a fool when I hear from them that you are still ordering their products for manufacturing and research. How can we enforce good quality from our suppliers if we don’t present a united front?

MARY:

Just a minute. Anderson Printing has been one of our good suppliers for over ten years. I know we have had some problems with them in the past year but I don’t think we should drop them flat. They have pulled us out of a lot of jams when we needed printing in a big hurry. I never agreed to drop them from our supplier list. You just told them they were gone and expected me to support your decision. You should have talked to me about it first. I don’t care if you think you looked like a fool. We are in this together and need to make those types of decisions as a team.

JOHN:

I’ll admit we should have talked about it, but Anderson made me so mad on that last deal that I just told them they were through. I expected you to support me. We both want what is best for Quality. Our reputations are good because we always get the company the best products for the lowest price. I would have supported you.

MARY:

Yes, I suspect you would have, but John, you can’t lose your temper like that. We need to work together on these decisions. You and I can usually work out a solution when we try hard enough. I don’t want to drop any supplier on the spur of the moment, especially when we may have trouble replacing them. John, sometimes I think we have worked together for so long that we take each other for granted. We are friends and I want it to remain that way, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing business with each other as true professionals.

JOHN:

Wait a minute. Are you saying that I don’t act like a professional—?

MARY:

No, see what I mean? You get mad when I even suggest we might improve the way we do things.

JOHN:

Well, I just think friends should support each other. I know I may not have handled the Anderson thing just right, but as my friend I expected more support from you.

MARY:

Oh, John, there you go again!

Understanding Human Communication

Are John and Mary engaged in interpersonal or organizational communication, or both? Does the setting make the difference? Can we distinguish between interpersonal and organizational communication? When we talk about developing our personal communication competencies, is it different for our personal and organizational lives? The answers to these questions lie in understanding human communication and how organizations and human communication relate. In other words, frameworks for understanding organizational communication can be found in descriptions of human communication and organizations.

Although the discussion between John and Mary is typical of human communication exchanges that occur daily in organizations, it also is typical of communication between two people regardless of the setting. In fact, the discussion between John and Mary illustrates some of the important basics necessary for understanding human communication.

Defining Communication

Analyzing the exchange between John and Mary will help us describe human communication. John and Mary transfer information, they elicit responses from each other, and they engage in social interaction. They are literally constituting (or bringing about) their experience of working together and making sense of what it means. Further, it is possible to say that they use symbols (words) to attempt to create shared meaning (mutual understanding). Their disagreement about how to handle problems with Anderson Printing will influence not only what happens to Anderson as a supplier to Quality Engineering but their interpersonal relationship as well. Put another way, their exchange is an example of communication behaviors creating and shaping both relationships and events through a culturally dependent process of assigning meaning to symbols.

John wants Mary to share his reality that Anderson has made serious mistakes that disqualify it from providing goods and services to Quality. Furthermore, he expects Mary to accept another reality: that friends and coworkers should support each other’s decisions, even if decisions are made on the spur of the moment and in anger. Mary has a different set of realities that she wants John to understand. Although she agrees about recent problems with Anderson, part of her reality includes Anderson’s past service to Quality and the possible difficulty of replacing its goods and services with another supplier. She also believes that John should have included her in his decision.

We do not know from this exchange how open or direct John and Mary intend to be with each other. We do not have enough information to determine if other agendas influence their exchange. We do know John and Mary make conscious choices about the realities they exchange. When John and Mary exchange their individual realities, their communication is an attempt to construct shared realities.

Although they may not agree, their communication enables each to share the realities of the other and literally create their present reality.

Human Communication: Messages and Constitutive Processes

When John and Mary construct their shared realities, they engage in what we call the human communication process. Both John and Mary serve as sources and receivers of messages. Both engage in message encoding and decoding and in selecting verbal and nonverbal channels for message transmission. Both are influenced by their individual competence and their perception of the competence of the other. Each brings to the exchange a different set of experiences, and each may view the context of their interaction differently. Thus, all their messages are subject to distortion or noise. The effect, or what happens between John and Mary, is a result of the complex interaction of all these elements. John and Mary are literally constituting or bringing about the reality of their relationship.

Human communication process Attempts to construct shared realities through social interaction.

Source/Receiver

Each individual engaged in communication with others is both a message source and a message receiver. We talk (send messages) while closely monitoring the nonverbal reactions of others (receiving messages). We listen (receive messages) and determine how to respond (send messages). We use technology to rapidly exchange messages without cues important in face-to-face interactions. Often message-sending and message-receiving activities occur so rapidly that they seem to be happening simultaneously.

Source/Receiver Individuals send messages as sources and receive messages as receivers. The process is often so rapid as to appear simultaneous.

Encoding/Decoding

Encoding/Decoding Message encoding is the process of formulating messages, choosing content and symbols to convey meaning. Message decoding is the process of assigning meaning in the role of receiver to message symbols generated by the message source.

As a message source and receiver, each individual encodes and decodes messages. Message encoding is the process of formulating messages, choosing content and symbols to convey meaning. Message encoding is determining what we want to be understood (content) and how we believe that it can best be presented (choosing symbols). Message decoding is the process of assigning meaning in the role of receiver to message symbols generated by the message source. Decoding is taking what we see and hear from others and deciding how it should be interpreted or

understood. Both encoding and decoding are influenced by our communicative competence (knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values), our personal identifications (cultural, social, organizational, and other), our specific intentions (desire for clarity, openness, manipulation, deceit, control, and so forth), our past experiences, our perception of the competence of others, and the communication context.

Message

The message is the symbolic attempt to transfer meaning; it is the signal that serves as a stimulus for a receiver. Sources send messages consisting of auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile stimuli in any combination of these five senses. Sources of messages intend meaning, but messages in and of themselves do not carry meaning. Meanings, or interpretations of messages, are assigned when the receiver decodes the message. Messages serve as symbols for meaning and as such are subject to situational and cultural influences. In other words, to understand a message as a source intends requires an understanding of the source’s symbol system (language and actions and intent of language and actions) in a particular situation.

Message Symbolic attempt to transfer meaning; the signal that serves as a stimulus for a receiver.

Channel

The channel is the medium through which the message is transmitted. It is the link or links between source and receiver. Channels include the five senses and any technological means used for message transmission. Channels are frequently used in combination (verbal and nonverbal, oral and written, face-to-face, and telemediated), with certain channels generally more credible than others. When verbal and nonverbal messages appear to contradict, for example, researchers tell us most people will find the nonverbal channel more credible than the verbal one. In other words, most of us believe it is more difficult to lie nonverbally than verbally. Channels can distort messages both technologically and in sensory reception. Indeed, the very selection of one channel over another may become a message in and of itself. Written channels, for example, are more often used than face-to-face channels for giving bad news. Evidence is growing suggesting e-mail and text messages are often more harsh than face-to-face communication. Receiving a memo or e-mail from your boss—the bad-news channel—may be cause for alarm even before the actual message has been read.

Channel Medium through which the message is transmitted.

Noise

Noise Distortion or interference that contributes to discrepancies between the meaning intended by the source of a message and the meaning assigned by the receiver.

Noise is the distortion or interference that contributes to discrepancies between the meaning intended by the source and the meaning assigned by the receiver. Noise can be anything: physical distractions, channel interference, communicative competence, communication context, or psychological predispositions. Noise is always present in one form or another,

and the type or types of noise contribute to the meanings assigned to messages by receivers and to the encoding of new messages. Think for a moment about your reaction to receiving an important message from a person whose credibility you have reason to doubt. What meaning do you assign to the message based on your prior relationship with this individual? Assume next that you receive the same message from a trusted friend. Is your reaction different? What type of noise was generated by your past experiences with both individuals? How did that noise affect meaning?

Competence

Each individual brings knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values to communication interactions. Our ability to understand appropriate behaviors, our specific intentions, our willingness to engage in communication, and our ability to interact with others to generate shared realities all contribute to our impression of our own competence. Also, we continually evaluate and form impressions about the competence of those with whom we communicate. Our impression of our own competence and the impression we have of the competence of others contribute to both the encoding and decoding of messages. Ultimately, competence contributes to communication effects and how we evaluate the effectiveness of our interactions.

Field of Experience

All parties in a communication interaction bring a specific set of experiences or background to bear on the interaction. What we do in a particular situation is related to how much we know about the situation from past experiences and whether we share any common past experiences. We may behave very differently in situations in which we have considerable past experience than we would in situations that are new and unfamiliar. The field of experience is situation specific and may or may not relate to broader evaluations of self-competence. In other words, although we may feel less competent in situations in which we have little past experience, that impression does not automatically transfer to other circumstances in which we have more background.

Field of experience Set of specific experiences or background that all parties in communication bring to bear on the interaction.

Generally, it is believed that the more common the field of experience among those communicating, the easier it is to share similar meanings or to construct shared realities. Have you ever tried, for example, to explain an American sporting event to a visitor from another country where the sport is not played and has never been televised? Did you even know where to begin? Chances are that the lack of any prior experience on the part of your receiver (no common field of experience between you) required you to engage in considerable detail, making it difficult even to begin to describe the event. You can imagine that your approach would be entirely different if you described the same event to a longtime fan of the sport.

Communication Context

The communication context is the environment for the communication interaction. Context includes not only the specific time and place of the interaction but also the roles, relationships, and status of communication participants. As such, prior interactions among participants contribute to the construction of the current communication context. It is fair to say context contributes to our specific intentions in a given circumstance. Communication intentions, as most of us have experienced, can range from full disclosure, openness, and clarity seeking to deception, ambiguity, manipulation, and control. Most of us recognize we communicate differently depending on how well we know people, what their formal position is in relation to us, and how visible our communication is to others. The way we express ourselves in the privacy of our own homes may differ from what we will say and do in our work environments. How we communicate in face-to-face interactions often varies from what we do with our mobile technology. Openly disagreeing with a friend or coworker is different from openly disagreeing with our boss. The way we express ourselves is related to whether we believe others to be more knowledgeable or competent than we are or whether we believe that we possess the best information in a specific setting. The way we express ourselves also reflects the expectations of the particular culture or environment in which we communicate. We can therefore say that context is both culturally and physically influenced, and as with other elements in the communication process, perception of context can differ from one communication participant to another.

Communication context Environment for the communication interaction.

Realities and Effects

The communication realities or effects are the result, consequence, or outcome of the communication exchange. Effects can be observed to be directly related to communication interactions. When people have an argument and terminate relationships at the end of the argument, we witness what we would call an obvious effect. At other times, the effect is not immediately observable or is, at best, delayed in time and context. A student does not contribute to a group project; the project is completed and all group members receive the same grade. Nothing appears to happen until the next class project begins and members of the group ask the instructor to reassign the student to another team. They share a reality from a previous set of communication exchanges which influences their desire of a different future. Although less direct, this reality or effect nevertheless should be understood as an outcome of previous communication exchanges.

Reality or Effect Created social reality or result, consequence, or outcome of communication exchanges.

In addition to being viewed in terms of results, the effect of an interaction is evaluated by communication participants for effectiveness and ethics. Did the outcomes result from the free, informed choices of all parties? Did one or more parties feel manipulated? Were all parties empathically supported? Were the best alternatives considered as a result of the interaction? It is in this evaluative area—ethics and effectiveness—that future interactions are influenced. Perceptions of whether past interactions were ethical and effective influence perceptions of the desirability of future communication.

Communication as Constitutive of Shared Realities

Human communication is the process of attempting to construct shared realities, to create shared meanings. It is our attempts to have others understand our world as we do or as we want them to understand it and our efforts to comprehend the world of those around us. As Robert Craig (2007) describes, “A first-order constitutive model of communication posits that communication, rather than merely a neutral conduit for transmitting independently existing information, is the primary social process through which our meaningful common world is constructed.” As a process for the construction of shared realities, human communication is culturally and contextually influenced, dynamic, and ever-changing.

Shared realities Meanings resulting from the communication process; attempts to have others understand our world as we do or as we intend for it to be understood and our efforts to comprehend the world of those around us.

When this process occurs between two individuals with some type of ongoing relationship, we call the process interpersonal communication. When the process occurs among several individuals, we describe it as group communication. When large numbers of people are involved (either personally or through technological channels), we call the process public or mass media communication. Finally, we refer to the human communication process in organizations as organizational communication, the subject of our text. Whether in interpersonal, group, public, mass media/networked/telemediated, or organizational contexts, the human communication process involves attempts to construct shared realities among people to generate shared meaning. Think back to the “What Business Is This of Ours?” case. What were the shared realities at Quality Engineering? Describe the fields of experience and the context of the interaction between John and Mary. What were the noise factors? Can you predict the effect of their interaction? Will they be able to work together in the future?

A word of caution is appropriate at this point. Although we continue to describe human communication as the process of constructing shared realities and creating shared meanings and realities, we must remember shared meanings are always incomplete and characterized by ambiguity. The human communication process as an attempt to construct shared realities can represent openness and clarity but also be characterized by manipulation, control, or deceit. I can deliberately attempt to have you understand a situation as I understand it, hoping for a shared reality characterized by openness, but I can also deliberately attempt to have you understand a situation very differently from what I know the facts to be. Imagine I want you to share with me a reality that I choose but not one based on my more complete knowledge, experience, or awareness. My messages then generate a shared reality between us that is characterized by deceit. The important concept here is that the construction of meaning is an intentional process between us related to our knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values.

Twenty-First-Century Concepts of Organizations

We have defined and described the human communication process in a variety of possible contexts. Our particular interests are, of course, communication and organizations and how communication creates and influences organizational

processes and events. We begin to explore the relationship between communication and organizations by first identifying what an organization is and what it does. The term organization is applied to the results of the process of organizing. Organizing is an attempt to bring order out of chaos or establish organizations, entities in which purposeful and ordered activity takes place. Organizing is accomplished through purposeful activities generated as a result of communication behaviors. In other words, the process we call organizing is accomplished through human communication as individuals seek to bring order out of chaos and establish entities for purposeful activities.

Organization Result of the process of organizing; dynamic system in which individuals engage in collective efforts for goal accomplishment.

Amitai Etzioni (1964) described organizations as social units or groupings of people deliberately constructed and reconstructed to strive for specific goals. As such, organizations are characterized by divisions of labor for goal achievement. These efforts also are directed by relatively continuous patterns of authority and leadership. Interdependence exists among organizational components as well as with the external environment. This complex interdependence requires coordination achieved through communication.

Katherine Miller (2003) identified five features she believed are possessed by all organizations: two or more people (a social collectivity), goals, coordinating activity, structure, and environmental embeddedness. Gerald Pepper (1995) provided a communication-based definition when he described organizations as consisting of the organizing activities of their members. Pepper argued, “Though this definition may seem circular, it really is quite descriptive of a communication explanation of organizations. The definition accounts for traditional, pyramidal organizational form just as easily as it accounts for nontraditional democratic, ‘feminist’ organizational forms, because the key to the definition is the communicative relationships among the members, rather than arbitrary components assumed to define the organization” (pp. 17–18).

Taken as a whole, these definitions and issues help us understand organizations from their structure and from the ways they continually create and change what they do and how they do it. This process occurs through communication behaviors. Put another way, understanding what an organization is and how it works requires an understanding of the process of organizational communication. Throughout the next several chapters, we explore many different types of organizations. We examine organizations with which you have personal contact and involvement. We discuss traditional hierarchical organizations, profit-making organizations, and nonprofit groups. We describe organizations in which hierarchy is replaced by flatter forms and the use of technology to create virtual groups or entire organizations. We identify family-owned, social justice, and volunteer organizations. We explore partnerships, entrepreneurial opportunities, and home-based work as well as global ventures. We look at temporary, local, regional, or global organizations. For all these “types” of organization, you will come to understand human communication behaviors as creating and shaping both relationships and events. You will come to grasp communication as constituting organizations and social realities.

Definitions of Organizational Communication

Organizational communication is both similar to and distinct from other types of communication. Organizational communication has sources and receivers who engage in the encoding and decoding of messages. Messages are transmitted over channels distorted by noise. As with other forms of communication, organizational communication is related to the competencies of individuals, their fields of experience, the communicative context, and the realities, effects, or results of interactions. Yet organizational communication is more than the daily interactions of individuals within organizations. It is the process through which organizations constitute realities through creating and shaping events. Next, we describe organizational communication as a complex interaction of process, people, messages, meaning, and purpose. In sum, we describe organizational communication as constitutive of organizations.

Organizational communication Process through which organizations are created and in turn create and shape events. The process can be understood as complex interactions of people, messages, meaning, realities, and purpose.

Organizational Communication as Process

As with other forms of communication, organizational communication is best understood as an ongoing process without distinct beginnings and ends. The process includes patterns of interactions that develop among organizational members and those external to the organization and how these interactions shape organizations.

Because the process is ever-changing, it can be described as evolutionary and culturally dependent. In other words, the ongoing process of creating and transmitting organizational messages reflects the shared agreements and disagreements resulting from previous message exchanges and evolves to generate new realities that create and shape events.

The process can be found in all types of organizations with vastly different goals. The process occurs in developing strategy, planning, decision making, and executing the work of the organization. The process also occurs, however, during unexpected crises, changes in the external environment, encounters with competitors, and in a host of less visible ways. The process occurs between individuals whether performing daily work or socializing and includes messages to large numbers of employers, customers, and stakeholders. All these interactions taken together create and shape the ongoing organization.

Organizational Communication as People

Individuals bring to organizations sets of characteristics that influence how information is processed. Organizational communication contributes to creating relationships and assists both individuals and organizations in achieving diverse purposes. Organizational communication occurs between and among people who share both work and interpersonal relationships. Organizational communication also occurs between and among people who are geographically separated and who may speak different languages and have widely differing cultural perspectives. It is fair to say that organizational communication occurs across networks of people who seek to obtain a variety of objectives requiring communication interactions.

Organizational Communication as Messages

Organizational communication is the creation and exchange of messages. It is the movement or transmission of verbal and nonverbal behaviors and the sharing of information throughout the organization. Communicators are linked together by channels, and messages are described with such terms as frequency, amount, and type. Concern is expressed for message fidelity, or the extent to which messages are similar or accurate at all links through the channels. Organizational messages increasingly are telemediated (using complex technologies), extending their geographic reach, changing notions of time and space, and altering who participates in communication processes.

Organizational Communication as Meaning

Organizational communication creates and shapes organizational events. Role taking occurs as individuals engage in social interaction within the ever-changing organizational context. Organizational communication is the symbolic behavior of individuals and organizations that, when interpreted, affects all organizational activities. Organizational communication does not create a singular set of meanings for organizational members and activities. The interactions of ever-changing behaviors often create multiple perceptions of events and multiple realities that become the process through which organizational meanings are generated.

Organizational Communication as Constitutive of Organizations

Organizational communication is organizing, decision making, planning, controlling, and coordinating. Organizational communication seeks to reduce environmental uncertainty. It is people, messages, and meaning. It is intentional and unintentional messages explaining the workings of the organization. Organizational communication reflects the purpose of the organization. It is the process through which individuals and organizations attempt goal-oriented behavior in dealing with their environments.

Stanley Deetz (1994) provided an important summary perspective to our discussion of definitions for organizational communication. Deetz suggested, “Communication, in the view I am suggesting, refers to the social processes by which meanings, identities, psychological states, social structures, and the various means of the contact of the organization with the environment are both produced, reproduced, or changed. In both its constitutive and reproductive modes, communication processes are central to how perceptions, meanings, and routines are held in common. In all interactions, including those in organizations, perception, meaning, and data transmission are all complex, multileveled phenomena produced out of and producing conflicting motives and structures” (p. 90).

Can you now answer the question about the differences between organizational and other types of communication? You should be able to do so. Whereas interpersonal and group communications occur in organizations, organizational communication is a more comprehensive process including, but not limited to, one-on-one and group exchanges. Competencies for organizational communication

include interpersonal abilities, but organizational communication competencies also require effectiveness in complex and changing environments where diverse groups of people join in purposeful activity. The goal of this book is to help you identify and develop important competencies for organizational communication. The next several chapters concentrate on knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values important in interpersonal, group, and organization-wide contexts.

Let us return to our case study. Describe the interaction between John and Mary from an organizational communication perspective. Can you identify organizational factors influencing their exchange? Do John and Mary have a work relationship, or are they communicating as friends? Can they be both? Is this an example of organizational goal-directed behavior? How might their exchange affect Quality Engineering?

It is difficult to be certain about our answers for this case. The chances are that most of us feel the need for additional information about John and Mary and Quality Engineering. Yet the lack of complete information is characteristic of many, if not most, of our organizational experiences. In fact, it is probable that even with more information we can never be certain of all the shared realities between John and Mary. Indeed, as we begin our study of organizational communication, a key to our personal development rests with our ability to analyze thoughtfully while recognizing the limits of our understanding.

Self-Assessment of Personal Development Needs: Your Personal Workbook

The last section of this book is Putting It All Together. This section contains a Personal Development Workbook designed to provide you information about you which will contribute to your personal and professional development. You will be entering data into the workbook and developing personal profiles as you move through the next eleven chapters. The information in the workbook is designed to be used by you not only for this course but for current and future planning as well.

Figure 1.1 is the first assessment in the workbook. It is located on page 411. The material in the next eleven chapters is designed to help you develop important competencies for organizational communication. Before you begin to study that material, however, please complete your Self-Assessment of Personal Development Needs. The following chapters will be more meaningful if you approach theory, practice, and analysis opportunities with a personal assessment of your current strengths and weaknesses. You are about to complete the first of several self-assessments contained in your workbook. Before you proceed, it is important to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of self-assessment. Self-assessments are generated by you about you. They can be helpful guides to understanding behavior, perceptions, and attitudes important for your communication behaviors. Self-assessment, however, is not a complete or final analysis about you. The questions asked determine the profiles developed. Sometimes we tend to answer the way we think we should as opposed to what we really believe or do. Important questions or issues for you as an individual may not be considered in a particular assessment. Also, although assessments can guide development, they should not be used

to develop profiles of “this is the way I am,” or “this is the way I am not.” In other words, the self-assessments in the text should be used to stimulate your thinking about you and your experiences, not to develop rigid categories or self-descriptive labels.

Chapter Highlights

The information-rich conceptual world is a reality of our lives that places increasing importance on our individual communication competencies. Organizations of today and tomorrow must depend on people and the machines of the communications era to solve problems creatively and to adapt to rapid change. In this fast-paced environment, organizational excellence is directly related to effective communication from all members of the organization. To prepare for the communication responsibilities and opportunities of the future, individuals need to develop broad-based communication competency. Communication competency is best understood as a complex interaction of knowledge, sensitivity, skills, and values.

Human communication is the process through which we attempt to construct shared realities. The human communication process includes sources and receivers, message encoding and decoding, channels, noise, communicative competence, participants’ fields of experience, contexts, and realities and effects. The process is evaluated for effectiveness and ethical behaviors, with these evaluations influencing future interactions. Organizations are the products of organizing activities and can be described as deliberately constructed social units designed to strive for specific goals. As such, organizations are dynamic mergers of human behaviors and technological operations. Organizational communication includes all the descriptors in the human communication process. It is also the process through which organizations are created and in turn create and shape events. As such, organizational communication can be understood as a combination of process, people, messages, meaning, and purpose. In sum, we describe organizational communication as constitutive of organizations.

Workshop

1. A major case is provided in the Putting It All Together section of this book. The case, Hockaday Responders: Teams Across Time and Space, is designed for you to apply what you learn in each chapter to the issues faced by Hockaday Responders. Please read the case on page 400 and discuss in class the questions for Chapter 1 posed at the end of the case.

2. Small groups should use The Case against Hiring Karen Groves, which follows, to determine how communication behaviors influenced Munday’s management team to vote against hiring Karen Groves.

3. Visit one of the numerous job-search sites on the Internet. Identify at least fifty job titles that represent information/communication jobs. Bring your list to class for discussion.

4. Identify all the organizations of which you are a member. Include the school you currently attend. Describe shared realities for each organization. Discuss as a class the shared realities of your school.

5. Shared meanings or shared realities are what organizational communication is all about. My Meaning, Your Meaning, Our Meanings, an exercise to illustrate the importance of meanings and shared realities, is found below. Divide the class into groups of six members each and complete the exercise. Discuss what you have learned about meanings and shared realities.

6. The following case, “What Do You Mean I’m Not Getting a Raise?” illustrates organizational messages with multiple meanings. Study the case and attempt to understand how people receiving the same message can arrive at very different meanings.

My Meaning, Your Meaning, Our Meanings

Read each of the following four statements and write your response. You may agree, disagree, or take no position on the statement. Your response should accurately reflect the statement’s meaning to you.

1. Oral skills are more important than written communication skills for most jobs. I (agree with, disagree with, don’t know about) this statement. It means to me.…

2. People who are the most intelligent make the best grades and are the most successful. I (agree with, disagree with, don’t know about) this statement. It means to me.…

3. The successful organizational member must be competitive and persuasive. I (agree with, disagree with, don’t know about) this statement. It means to me.…

4. The successful organizational member is more analytical than others and believes technical skills are more important than communication abilities. I (agree with, disagree with, don’t know about) this statement. It means to me.…

Discuss your responses and compare similarities and differences in groups of six. What influenced the similarities and differences in your answers? How do these influences contribute to the meanings we assign to messages?

Next, consider the following four professions: minister, salesperson, lawyer, television executive. As a group, attempt to determine how you think that most people in these professions would react to the four statements. Again, what does that tell us about how meanings are influenced? How accurate can you be about your perceptions of the meanings others might assign?

Finally, as a group, attempt to develop a response to each statement that all group members can support. (Total agreement is not necessary, only general support.) How do these group statements differ from your individual statements? Did your statements become a shared reality for your group? If so, why? If not, why not? (If time permits, compare your group’s statements with those of other groups in your class. What are the similarities and differences? Are there any surprises?)

The Case Against Hiring Karen Groves

John Murphy, the head of personnel for Munday Corporation, was excited about the application of Karen Groves to become Munday’s new training director. Karen’s educational background in organizational communication and business, her work in the training department of a major competitor of Munday’s, and her excellent letters of recommendation made her an appealing candidate. John’s initial interview with Karen had gone well and he was anxious for her to meet Munday’s management staff, who approved John’s hiring decisions for major company positions.

John was surprised and dismayed when Munday’s president reported to John that the staff did not favor hiring Karen. According to the president, Karen surprised the group when she said _______ and _______. They did not believe that she would be good for Munday? because of her _______.

In groups of four to six members, fill in the blanks to account for what might have happened to create the case against hiring Karen. Describe how the communication abilities of all involved may have contributed to the negative decision. Following individual group discussions, each group should present to the class as a whole its members’ description of the situation and how they believe communication affected the outcome.

The “What Do You Mean I’m Not Getting A Raise?” Case

Jane Jackson, division manager of AMC, Inc., had spent the day in the cafeteria meeting with each of AMC’s three manufacturing shifts. She had good news and had been eager to make the announcement that the company would not begin the layoffs rumored to occur at the end of the present round of contracts. Instead of layoffs, management had decided to freeze wages and evaluate in six months when cost-of-living and merit increases could resume. Jane had been careful with the announcement, reading the press release exactly as it was written from corporate headquarters.

Following her cafeteria meetings, Jane asked her section managers to meet with individual supervisors on each of the three shifts to determine how the news was being received. Jane had been concerned about the layoff rumors and expected a generally favorable response to the announcement. She was not prepared for her section managers’ feedback. Several supervisors reported that although there was considerable relief that layoffs were not imminent, many workers did not understand that they would not receive their annual increases at performance appraisal time. Numerous workers believed management intended to consider layoffs again at the end of the six-month freeze period, and others thought that the wage freeze meant no new people were being hired. Jane could not understand how all this confusion was possible. After all, everyone got exactly the same message.

What would you tell Jane about messages and meanings? What are the probable reasons for this confusion? What would you do if you were Jane and her section managers?

Tips for Effective Communication

1. Ask for (and listen to) feedback on your communication strengths and weaknesses.

2. Identify which new communications technologies you should learn. Make a plan for skill development.

3. Identify three excellent communicators with whom you can talk. Ask them for personal advice about communication.

4. Give at least five speeches during the upcoming year.

5. Practice asking others to describe what they think you meant when having important conversations. Listen, and learn to clarify if descriptions do not match your intentions.

References and Suggested Readings

Barnard, C. 1938. The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bronowski, J. 1958. The creative process. Scientific American 199(3): 59–64.

Craig, R. T. 2007. Pragmatism in the field of communication theory. Communication Theory 17(2): 125–145.

Deetz, S. A. 1992. Democracy in an age of corporate colonization. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Deetz, S. A. 1994. Transforming communication, transforming business: Building responsive and responsible workplaces. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

Etzioni, A. 1964. Modern organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Friedman, T. 2006. The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Hackman, M., and C. Johnson. 2004. Leadership: A communication perspective. 4th ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Jablin, F., and P. Sias. 2001. Communication competence. In The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods, eds. F. Jablin and L. Putnam, 819–864. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kennedy, G. 1969. Quintilian. New York: Twayne.

Littlejohn, S. W., and D. M. Jabusch. 1982. Communication competence: Model and application. Journal of Applied Communication Research 10(1): 29–37.

Miller, K. 2003. Organizational communication: Approaches and processes. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Morreale, S. 2009. Competent and incompetent communication. In 21st century communication: A reference handbook, ed. W. Eadie, 444–453. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Pepper, G. 1995. Communicating in organizations: A cultural approach. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Pink, D. 2005. A whole new mind: Moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York: Riverhead Books.

Rischard, J. F. 2002. High noon: 20 global problems 20 years to solve them. New York: Basic Books.

CHAPTER 2 Perspectives for Organizational Communication

Justin Payroll Company’s Processing Crisis

Justin Payroll Company, located in Los Angeles, California, is a medium-sized transaction processing company specializing in providing payroll services for small nonprofit organizations. The situation you are about to examine threatens the future of Justin. We will use Justin’s processing crisis to assist in understanding major theoretical perspectives for organizational communication.

Jane Douglas is the founder and president of Justin. Jane had worked for many years with a large transaction processing company specializing in providing payroll and accounts payable and receivable services for high-technology companies. During her tenure as a sales representative for her former employer, Jane came to understand small organizations, particularly those working in the social services non-profit arena, often needed professional assistance with payroll and payroll taxes. With two of her close friends, Jane founded Justin Payroll with the expressed desire to work with often-struggling nonprofit organizations. Justin became known for quality and cost-effective services to over 150 small nonprofit agencies in the Los Angeles area.

Jane was shocked to learn from her sales manager, Tom Merton, that three of their long-term clients were leaving at the end of the month. She was dismayed to hear of the mistakes her processing team had made for the last three months in the payrolls for these accounts. Jane asked Tom why she had not been informed earlier of the problems. Tom indicated he had not known because the processing team had not filed any problem reports. Only when the clients began to call him did he investigate and learn of the mistakes. Tom further reported problems in the new release of their processing software were related to the miscalculations of withholding for paychecks. Jane wanted to learn why the processing team had not reported any concerns. Jane asked Tom to convene the processing team so that she might understand how this could have happened. Jane also asked Tom to make appointments so she could personally visit each of the clients. Tom indicated he would work with both the software vendor and Justin’s internal technology support people to thoroughly examine the software issue and check all other accounts for mistakes not previously identified.

Jane is confronted with a set of problems requiring immediate action. The decisions she and her team make, the actions they take, and what ultimately happens to Justin Payroll provide examples of how organizational communication creates and shapes events and literally constitutes the current and future organization.

Introduction

In Chapter 1 we defined organizational communication as the process through which organizations create and shape events and literally constitute organizations. This chapter is designed to help us understand this process and to develop our competencies in determining how Jane Douglas might approach her problem. Three

different approaches—Functional, Meaning-Centered, and Emerging Perspectives—are presented as ways to understand the processes of organizational communication and are used as frameworks to help analyze specific organizational situations, experiences, and problems. The approaches in this chapter are communication approaches or theory perspectives focusing specifically on organizational communication. In Chapter 3 we will discuss theories and approaches from an organizational perspective. Chapter 3 helps us understand the communication implications of how organizations have been described over time. It is important to distinguish between communication perspectives and organizational perspectives to develop our abilities to understand the significance of organizational communication. As Matt Koschmann (2010) suggests, we are “…developing distinctively communicative explanations of human organizing.”

The Functional and Meaning-Centered approaches ask different questions about organizational communication. The Functional tradition asks how and why communication works, whereas the Meaning-Centered approach asks what communication is. The Functional tradition asks what purpose communication serves within organizations and how messages move. The Meaning-Centered approach asks if communication is the process through which organizing, decision making, influence, and culture occur. The Functional approach describes organizational reality in such terms as chains of command, positions, roles, and communications channels, whereas the Meaning-Centered approach defines as reality the symbolic significance of these terms. The Functional tradition subordinates the importance of the individual to his or her organizational position and function, whereas in the Meaning-Centered approach the significance of the individual is the key focus.

The Twenty-First-Century Emerging Perspectives we discuss ask questions about communication as a constitutive or basic process of social construction. It is the perspective which claims communication constitutes organization (CCO). Emerging Perspectives focus attention on power and control and on the marginalization of voices other than those of the dominant control structure. They also begin our discussion of influences beyond a specific organization, namely, the concepts of institutions, globalization, and technology.

After studying this chapter, you will be able to answer several questions about the Functional tradition, the Meaning-Centered approach, and Emerging Perspectives. Specifically you will begin to utilize perspectives for organizational communication as practical theory. Based on the work of Robert Craig and Karen Tracy (1995), Vernon Cronen (2001), and Stephen Littlejohn and Karen Foss (2008), we describe how perspectives and theories can be utilized to understand and improve organizational life. Littlejohn and Foss suggest, “A practical theory does not prescribe the action you should take, but enables you to act in a coherent way that leads to understanding how you might improve the situation. A good practical theory enables you to (1) focus on a real situation you are facing; (2) explore what is unique about this situation; (3) consider both the powers and limits of each action you could take; (4) take actions that enhance your life and achieve positive outcomes as well; and (5) learn from experience in the actual situations you face and prepare you to manage new ones” (pp. 25–26).

Practical theory A set of principles enabling communicators to construct tentative models and approaches relevant to broad ranges of practical situations.

The Functional Tradition

1. What are different types of organizational messages?

2. How do organizing, relationship, and change messages differ?

3. How can communication networks be described?

4. How do different communications channels affect messages?

5. What is communication load?

6. What is distortion in organizational communication?

The Meaning-Centered Approach

1. How is “reality” generated through human interaction?

2. Why are communicating and organizing almost synonymous processes?

3. How does communication contribute to decision making?

4. What is meant by sensemaking?

5. What are influence processes in organizations?

6. What are communication rules?

7. What is the difference between treating culture as something an organization has versus something an organization is?

8. What is meant by communication climate?

Emerging Perspectives

1. What is meant by the constitutive role of communication?

2. Does communication constitute organizations?

3. What are the issues for organizational communication when adopting a post-modern viewpoint?

4. What is the emphasis of critical organizational communication theory?

5. What is feminist organizational communication theory?

6. What does understanding race and class perspectives contribute to organizational communication?

7. How do the values evidenced in Emerging Perspectives differ from the Functional tradition and Meaning-Centered approaches?

8. How does practical theory relate to the Functional tradition, Meaning-Centered approaches, and other Emerging Perspectives?

9. What is the common ground among the three perspectives? What are the most important differences?

10. How does the concept of institutions influence individual organizations?

11. What is the relationship between global cultures and organizational communication?

12. What is the relationship of communications technologies to issues in the Functional, Meaning-Centered, and Emerging Perspectives approaches?

Think back to the Justin Payroll Company’s Processing Crisis case. Which of these questions should Jane Douglas ask? As you study the material in this chapter, try to determine how the Functional tradition, the Meaning-Centered approach, and Emerging Perspectives can help Jane Douglas solve her problem at Justin Payroll.

This chapter contributes to knowledge competencies by describing and contrasting three approaches to organizational communication. It contributes to the development of individual sensitivity competencies by examining the development of meaning in organizations and individual communication behaviors that shape

and change organizational events. It contributes to skill development by applying Functional, Meaning-Centered, and Emerging Perspectives approaches to cases and exercises. Finally, it encourages value competencies by examining organizational communication as the fundamental organizational process including multiple ethical issues and concerns.

The Functional Tradition

The Functional tradition helps us understand organizational communication by describing what messages do and how they move through organizations. The Functional tradition describes how communication produces organizational outcomes. This perspective describes communication as a complex organizational process that serves organizing, relationship, and change functions: what messages do. The way messages move through organizations is described by examining communication networks, channels, message directions, communication load, and distortion. The Functional tradition suggests communication transmits rules, regulations, and information throughout the organization. Communication establishes and defines human relationships, helps individuals identify with goals and opportunities, and is the process by which the organization generates and manages change. These functions occur during the repetitive patterns of communication interactions in which organizational members engage.

Functional tradition Way of understanding organizational communication by describing what messages do and how they move through organizations.

In Chapter 1 we described organizations as dynamic systems in which individuals engage in collective efforts to accomplish goals. We found that organizations can be understood not only in terms of their structure but also by the way they continually create and change what they do and how they do it. We claimed that, as such, organizations emerge and evolve through communication. The Functional tradition describes organizations as dynamic communication systems with the various parts of the system working together to create and shape organizational events.

Organizational Communication Systems: Component Parts

Organizational communication system Number of related units and processes that operate together within the organization and with its environment to create and shape organizational events. Information processing is the primary function of the communication system.

Before we can examine what messages do and how they move in organizations, we need to understand the concept of an organizational communication system on which the Functional tradition is based. What are the main parts of the system? What parts work together to create and shape organizational events? How does communication contribute to keeping a system dynamic? What role did communication play in organizations that cease to exist?

In the Functional tradition, information processing is seen as the primary function of organizational communication systems. It takes place in a number of related units that when taken together are called organizations or suprasystems. The individual units, sometimes called subsystems, are related by some degree of structure and when described as a whole can be

distinguished from other organizations in the environment by their boundaries. The individual units are interdependent and permeable to other units and the external environment.

The Justin Payroll Company’s Processing Crisis case provides an example of an organizational communication system with its processing team and technical support units; Jane Douglas as president represents a management unit. These units relate to one another to produce a service that customers in the external environment, outside the Justin boundary, will buy. Justin Payroll Company is the suprasystem with management, processing support, and technical subsystems. The external environment, however, is important to Justin. Clients have announced they are leaving. Jane Douglas needs external information (from the customers) to make decisions about internal operations, decisions that in turn will influence future clients.

Communication Inputs

This relationship between external environment information and internal information processing is important for understanding organizational communication systems. Information in the external environment, commonly known as communication inputs, is any information that can potentially influence the decision making of the suprasystem (organization). It is crucial for an organization to have accurate and timely information inputs to adapt and change. Jane Douglas realizes that the future of Justin Payroll is related to the accuracy of the inputs about processing mistakes from her customers. Without this information her understanding of the payroll problem is incomplete. Only with accurate information about quality problems can she make informed decisions.

Communication inputs Information in the external environment that may influence the decision making of the organization.

Communication Throughput

When information enters the organization, the communication system begins a process known as communication throughput, or the transforming and changing of input information for internal organizational use. Jane Douglas, in listening to Tom’s report and evaluating what to do, is taking inputs and transforming them into organizational action. Her decisions and the decisions of Tom, the processing team, and the technical staff are throughput communication. In other words, the internal subsystems (management, processing team, technical team) of Justin move messages through the organization that will influence the quality of payroll processing and ultimately customer satisfaction. The quality of throughput communication will determine whether the defects problem is solved. Even with accurate and timely inputs, the subsystems of Justin require effective internal communication to retain clients or regain lost clients. Jane Douglas questions the throughput communication of her organization when she realizes that despite weekly staff meetings, she was unaware of the quality problem.

Communication throughput Transforming and changing of input information for internal organizational use and the generation and transmission of internal information throughout the organization.

Communication Output

Messages to the external environment from within the organization are known as communication output. Outputs can be thought of as the results of the input and throughput process and are both intentional and unintentional. Justin Payroll, through its sales force and advertising, generates intentional output communication. The mistakes in its payroll processing, however, have become unintentional output messages with important consequences. The low-quality message from the defective processes is a potentially more powerful message than positive messages from advertising and sales campaigns.

Communication output Messages to the external environment from within the organization.

Open versus Closed Systems

The response of the environment (in Justin’s case, the customers) to organizational communication is feedback that in turn becomes new inputs to the system. The way the organization responds to these new inputs with throughput efforts and new outputs determines whether it has an open or closed system. Open systems continually take in new information, transform that information, and give information back to the environment. By contrast, closed systems are characterized by a lack of input communication, making it difficult to make good decisions and stay current with the needs of the environment. Open systems use a variety of problem-solving approaches. There is no one best way to do things. This ability to use a variety of approaches is called equifinality, meaning that there are many ways to reach system goals.

Open systems Organizations that continually take in new information, transform that information, and give information back to the environment.

Closed systems Organizations that lack input communication, making it difficult to make good decisions and stay current with the needs of the environment.

Equifinality Potential for the use of a variety of approaches to reach system goals.

Jane Douglas wants Justin Payroll to operate as an open system. She listens to customer complaints to try to decide what to do. She can consider a new advertising campaign or new approaches from her sales staff. She knows, however, that she is unlikely to be successful until the processing problem is solved. In the long term, if Jane Douglas pays no attention to sales or quality problems, she increases the likelihood that Justin Payroll will go out of business. As we can see from studying the Justin case, however, Jane Douglas has more than one way to approach her problems. She can work with both the processing team and sales, she can work only with sales, she can assign responsibility to others, she can retain much of the responsibility herself, and she has other options. There are a number of ways (equifinality) to solve Justin’s problems.

Message Functions

Message functions What communication does or how it contributes to the overall functioning of the organization.

When we talk about message functions within organizations, we are talking about what communication does or how it contributes to the overall functioning of the organization. In our attempt to understand organizational communication from the Functional approach, we describe message functions in three broad categories—organizing functions, relationship functions, and change functions. Each function is seen as necessary for an open communication system, although the exact balance among message functions will vary by organizational type and circumstance.

Organizing Functions

People who work together talk more about doing tasks than any other subject. This finding is not surprising. To engage in organized activity in pursuit of goals, people in organizations must develop and exchange messages about rules, regulations, policies, and tasks.

Organizing functions establish the rules and regulations of a particular environment. Policy manuals, employee handbooks, orientation training, newsletters, and a variety of other sources convey information about how the organization expects to work and what it requires of its members. These organizing messages define and clarify tasks, develop work instructions, and evaluate task accomplishment.

Organizing functions Messages that establish the rules and regulations of a particular environment.

Organizing messages can be found in every aspect of our lives. The school you attend publishes standards for admissions and requirements for specific majors and degrees. Instructors establish requirements and define performance expectations. You converse with teachers and peers about assignments and responsibilities. All these messages and many more describe how your school is organized, how it is supposed to work, and how you fit into that process.

The adequacy and effectiveness of organizing messages can be evaluated by how well organizational members understand and perform tasks, how rules and regulations are understood and followed, and how adequately daily operations support organizational goals. In sum, the organizing function of communication guides, directs, and controls organizational activity.

Relationship Functions

The relationship function of organizational communication helps individuals define their roles and assess the compatibility of individual and organizational goals. Relationship communication contributes to individuals’ identification with an organization or sense of “belonging” in their work environment. Frequently referred to as integrative or maintenance messages, relationship communication contributes to employee morale and maintains or integrates individuals with their work environments.

Relationship functions Communication that helps individuals define their roles and assess the compatibility of individual and organizational goals.

Communication establishes relationships between supervisors and employees and within peer groups. Relationship messages range from informal conversations to visible symbols of status such as large offices and reserved parking spaces. Job titles, awards, and promotions are other examples of relationship communication that determine how individuals identify with or relate to the organization.

Whereas organizing messages communicate how the organization operates; relationship messages establish the human interactions that make such operation possible. Chances are, for example, your sense of belonging with your school or lack of it closely relates to your interpersonal interactions with teachers and other students. In fact, your ability to meet performance expectations successfully may be

influenced by your relationships with your instructors and how comfortable you are in exchanging ideas with them. The same may be true of your relationships with other students. The quality of your work on a team project is probably influenced by how much you feel a part of—or integrated with—your group. The effectiveness of relationship messages is reflected in individual satisfaction with work relationships, productivity, employee turnover, overall support for organizational practices, and a variety of other less obvious ways.

Change Functions

Change functions help organizations adapt what they do and how they do it and are essential to an open system. Change messages occur in organizational problem solving, individual decision making, feedback from the environment, and numerous other choice-making situations. Change communication is the processing of new ideas and information as well as the altering of existing procedures and processes. It is essential for continual adaptation to the environment and for meeting the complex needs of individuals working together.

Change functions Messages that help organizations adapt what they do and how they do it; viewed as essential to an open system.

Experiences in decision-making groups help illustrate how change messages function. When working with a group of students to develop a class presentation, chances are you can recall messages speculating about the best approach and who should take what type of responsibility. Furthermore, you probably attempted to reduce the ambiguity of the assignment by determining what the instructor wanted and what would be appropriate for the time you had. Your group’s ability to exchange innovative messages and adapt to the requirements of the assignment influenced your effectiveness and final grade. In the Justin case, Jane Douglas became aware of her quality problem through change messages, specifically through the loss of long-term clients. Her attempt to correct the problem will require change messages with her sales and processing team and new approaches to reverse the negative reactions of her customers.

The ultimate effectiveness of change communication is the survival of the organization. Without appropriate change, organizational systems stagnate and die. Change communication is necessary for innovation and adaptation and is the process through which the organization obtains new information, chooses among various alternatives, and weighs current practices against emerging needs. Timely and creative change communication is required for a dynamic and open system. The effectiveness of change messages can be determined by whether the organization gathers information from the best available sources and acts on that information with a timely, quality decision. Figure 2.1 illustrates organizing, relationship, and change functions.

Message Structure

Message structure Movement of organizing, relationship, and change messages throughout the organization and between the organization and its external environment.

The message structure of organizational communication is the movement of organizing, relationship, and change messages throughout the organization and between the organization and its external environment. The Functional tradition approach to structure asks questions about the repetitive patterns of interactions among members of the organization (networks), the use of

a variety of channels for communication, message directions, and the amount of messages and the types of distortions that can be expected to occur in organizational communication. In other words, the structure of organizational communication can be understood in terms of networks, channels, message directions, load, and distortion.

Communication Networks

Communication networks are the formal and informal patterns of communication that link organizational members together. Networks can be described by how formally or informally they are organized, by the links between people, and by the roles people perform as they link.

Networks Formal and informal patterns of communication that link organizational members together.

Communication networks develop as a result of both formal organization and informal social contact. Organizations divide work by function and task. Organization charts that map out who reports to whom and in what area of responsibility can be described as blueprints for the way decisions are to be made, the way conflicts are to be resolved, and which groups are responsible for “networking” to reach organizational goals. The formal organization (as illustrated by the organization chart just mentioned) prescribes who has the right to tell others what to do, who is to work together as a unit or team, and who has the final authority in disagreements. In other words, the formal act of organizing creates organizational communication networks or the formal communication system.

As individuals work together, interpersonal relationships develop and extend beyond the specific requirements of the work group. Informal networks emerge, with individuals exchanging diverse types of information related both to the organization and to their social relationships. The organizational grapevine is perhaps the most frequently discussed example of an informal network.

Supervisors and employees, task forces, committees, quality circles, and other types of decision-making bodies are examples of formal communication networks. Formal networks also are established with various forms of technology such as computers and video systems. Generally speaking, these telemediated networks establish communication links that geographic separation would otherwise make difficult and costly. These new technologies change literally all aspects of formal and informal networks. Fluid and geographically diverse organizational structures link networks of individuals who may never meet in any face-to-face interaction. Supervisors manage workers with whom they communicate only through technology. The around-the-clock organization of work creates networks of people who regularly interact with each other across time zones and vast distances.

Informal networks emerge as a result of formal networks and are formed by individuals who have interpersonal relationships, who exchange valuable information across reporting chains, and who disregard formal status and timing. Typically, informal networks exclude numerous individuals who are designated for network inclusion by the formal chain of command.

Formal and informal networks exist side by side; individuals maintain membership in both. Formal and informal networks contribute to organizational reality, and both networks change and shape organizational events. Message structure within organizations cannot be understood without evaluating how both formal and informal patterns of interaction take place.

Think about your own personal networks. What formal networks exist in the organizations of which you are a member? What types of networks exist in your school? How do you establish your informal networks? Which type of network is more meaningful to you? We are all involved in both formal and informal networks. When we evaluate our personal experiences, we can better understand how organizational networks function and how they contribute to the movement of organizing, relationship, and change messages.

Communication Channels

Channels are the means for transmission of messages. Organizations typically have a wide variety of channels available for transmitting oral and written messages. Face-to-face interaction, group meetings, memos, letters, computer-mediated exchanges, Web sites, presentations, and teleconferencing are among the channels commonly used in contemporary organizations. Increasing emphasis is placed on developing new and improved technical channels that speed information transfer and shorten decision-making response time. Indeed, it is fair to say the choice and availability of communication channels influence the way the organization can and does operate.

Channels Means for the transmission of messages. Common means are face-to-face interaction, group meetings, memos, letters, computer-mediated exchanges, Web sites, presentations, and teleconferencing.

Questions arise as to the effectiveness of various channels and what is communicated by channel selection. Although most of us take channel use for granted, selecting one channel over another can communicate subtle and important attitudes about both the message receiver and the message itself. For example, most of us like to communicate good news in face-to-face interaction. We enjoy the reactions of others and deliberately choose channels that permit close, immediate contact. If the news is not positive, we may prefer another channel. Negative messages, more than good news, are likely to be transmitted in a less immediate channel such as letters or memos, the telephone, e-mail, or a third-party announcement. In fact, research suggests that our attitude about the message and our willingness to have contact with the receiver significantly influence the channels we use for communication.

Attitudes about messages and receivers are not the only factors that influence channel selection. Power and status, work requirements, technical capability, and judgments about channel effectiveness all contribute to the mode or modes we use. High-status organizational members, for example, can determine what channels they personally want to use and what modes others must use in communicating with them. The president of the company can initiate face-to-face interaction with just about anyone in the organization. The chances are good, however, that not all organizational members can walk into the president’s office for an unscheduled visit. In the Justin’s case, Jane Douglas can require Tom to submit a report and recommendations in writing. Douglas can require her sales and processing people to meet with her and make detailed presentations of their ideas. It is unlikely that these individuals and teams could make the same requirement of Jane Douglas.

Jane Douglas will be confronted with channel selection as she works on the processing problem. She will use internal channels, and once the problem is solved she must consider how to communicate to her customers. How would you advise Douglas? Are particular channels more appropriate than others as she seeks to regain lost clients? Attempt to describe the criteria Douglas should use for channel selection.

Message Direction

As messages move through channels, we begin to think about that movement in terms of direction. Researchers typically describe three primary message directions in organizations: downward, upward, and horizontal. Downward communication describes message movement from a person in a position of authority to an employee or group with lesser authority. It is characterized by those with higher authority developing messages to transmit to those lower in authority, with authority being defined by the chain of command or the formal structure of the organization. We have downward communication, for example, when the board of regents for the university votes to raise tuition for the upcoming semester. The board formally informs the school’s president, who in turn informs officials in admissions and records; finally, students, who will pay the new fees, are advised of the bad news.

Direction Description of the movement of messages in organizations based on authority or position levels of message senders and receivers; typically described as downward, upward, and horizontal communication.

Upward communication describes message movement that begins with lower organizational levels and is transmitted to higher levels of authority. As with downward

communication, the formal organization defines authority levels. Employees engage in upward communication when they complain about working conditions to a supervisor, who in turn reports their concerns to higher management.

Horizontal communication moves laterally across the organization among individuals of approximately the same level and without distinct reporting relationships to one another. In other words, horizontal flow occurs when various department heads come together to discuss common problems from their respective groups. This communication generally moves messages more quickly across the organization than if the messages were to follow the vertical chain of command.

Increasingly, information flow cannot be described in terms of specific direction. Informal network flow such as the grapevine and flow between organizational members and the organizational environment (i.e., customers, vendors, stockholders, regulators) may move both vertically and horizontally, all within the transmission of a single message. The call a salesperson makes to a customer does not specify a place in a single organizational hierarchy for either individual with regard to the other. Messages may move among people of different organizational authority levels and different organizations without the message having anything to do with authority or reporting relationships. When the research engineer speculates about the feasibility of a new product with the head of the marketing department, they represent different authority levels. One is a manager and one is not. We do not, however, label that flow as up or down the chain of command because the exchange is about a subject not related to the authority of the two individuals. The widespread use of communications technologies has altered what is possible in directional flow, increasing the likelihood of messages moving without regard to formal direction, structure, time, or geographic location.

Communication Load

The number of messages moving through the communication system is yet another important variable for describing the message structure of organizational communication. We commonly refer to the number of messages as communication load, or the volume, rate, and complexity of messages processed by an individual or the organization as a whole.

Load Number of messages moving through the communication system; commonly referred to as load, overload, and underload.

Load is a common term for most of us. In fact, it is a rare student who does not proclaim himself or herself to be in information overload during midterms or final examinations. The concept of load, however, is not limited to the overload state. Load, for example, can be defined as the optimum or ideal volume, rate, and complexity of messages for a particular individual or organization. Underload is present when the volume, rate, and complexity of messages to an individual or organization are lower than the capacity of the individual or system. Underload is frequently found when individuals engage in routine, repetitive tasks that have been thoroughly learned and no longer present challenges. This situation leads to boredom and the underutilization of human potential. Overload, on the other hand, occurs when the volume, rate, and complexity of messages exceed the system’s capacity. It generates stress and strains the capacity of individuals to deal with information. In fact, one of the continuing

concerns with the increasing use of communications technologies is the ease with which we can process large volumes of messages, generating a permanent overload in many jobs, a situation that actually impairs rather than strengthens the decision-making process.

Message Distortion

Closely related to the concept of load are the types of communication problems, or distortions, which occur as messages move throughout the organization. These distortions occur because of load, message direction, channel usage, and the very composition of the networks themselves. Put simply, distortions are those things that contribute to alterations in meaning as messages move through the organization. Distortions are noise in the organizational communication system.

Distortion Anything that contributes to alterations in meaning as messages move through the organization.

Organizational communication is characterized by the serial transmission of messages. Messages pass first to individuals as receivers, who then become senders of information. Supervisors learn of changes in policies and have the responsibility to transmit those changes to an employee group. Messages are influenced by the numbers of people involved (the network), the channels for transmission (oral, written, or a variety of electronic combinations), the speed of message exchanges, and the direction of flow (vertical, horizontal, informal). Research consistently finds that original messages change or are distorted in the serial transmission process. Information is lost from or added to the message, the interpretation of facts changes, and new interpretations develop.

These distortions in serial transmission are brought about in part by perceptual differences among people, differences influenced by role and status. A manager may view a change in work hours as much less important than do the employees, who believe that no one was concerned about them when making the decision. The manager sees the change as necessary to accommodate a new schedule; whereas the workers are convinced the company never takes them into consideration. These perceptual differences affect the amount of attention given to the message and the interpretation of its meaning. They also influence the ability of the manager and members of the group to transmit the message to others. In addition to role, status, experience, values, and personal style, numerous other influences contribute to perception and how individuals knowingly or unknowingly distort organizational messages.

Finally, the very language of the message is subject to distortion. Definitions of terms and concepts vary throughout the organization. An excellent example of this phenomenon occurred in a small East Coast manufacturing company involved in introducing computer-assisted manufacturing processes. The president of the company announced the “entry of Cooper Manufacturing into the information age.”

Training classes were scheduled for all personnel working in areas where the new systems were being installed. Instead of the expected positive response, management was amazed when the director of personnel reported employee concern that the training programs were designed for people to fail and were really a way to push them out of jobs.

The Functional Tradition: Summary of Essential Characteristics

The Functional tradition helps us understand organizational communication by describing message function and structure. Based on a view of organizations as complex communication systems, the Functional tradition identifies organizing, relationship, and change functions for messages and describes message structure as the movement of messages through formal and informal networks. Network members use diverse channels that transmit messages in lateral, vertical, and less structured directions. The load of these messages on the networks is the capacity measure of the organizational communication system. Finally, the Functional tradition suggests all messages are subject to numerous and predictable types of distortions, distortions that affect both message movement and meaning.

Can you now answer the questions asked at the beginning of the chapter? Could you use the Functional tradition as a practical theory to help advise Jane Douglas about Justin Payroll? More important, can you describe your school as an organizational communication system?

The Meaning-Centered Approach

The second major approach for understanding organizational communication is the Meaning-Centered approach. This approach asks what communication is, not how and why it works. The Meaning-Centered perspective is concerned with how organizational reality is generated through human interaction. As such, message purposes (functions) and message movement (structure) are secondary to understanding communication as the construction of shared realities (human interaction). Specifically, the Meaning-Centered approach describes organizational communication as the process for generating shared realities that become organizing, decision making, sensemaking, influence, and culture. Figure 2.2 summarizes key assumptions of the Meaning-Centered perspective.

Meaning-Centered approach Way of understanding organizational communication by discovering how organizational reality is generated through human interaction. The approach describes organizational communication as the process for generating shared realities that become organizing, decision making, sensemaking, influence, and culture.

FIGURE 2.2 Key assumptions of the meaning-centered approach

Think back to Justin Payroll. Proponents of the Meaning-Centered approach would have Jane Douglas ask questions about which human interactions contributed to the shift away from the company’s quality culture. They would encourage her to discover why her perception of the values of the company seems not to be evidenced in either the processing team or sales. They would advise her to understand her present problem by reviewing Justin’s organizing and decision-making activities.

Communication as Organizing and Decision Making

Organizing

In Chapter 1 we described organizing as bringing order out of chaos and organizations as the products of the organizing process. The Meaning-Centered approach to organizational communication describes communicating and organizing as almost synonymous processes. Decision making, or the process of choosing from among uncertain alternatives, also is viewed as essentially a communication phenomenon and part of the organizing process.

Organizing Bringing order out of chaos with organizations as the products of the organizing process; described as almost synonymous with the communication process.

What do we mean when we say that communicating, organizing, and decision making are essentially similar processes? Karl Weick, in his important book The Social Psychology of Organizing (1979), provided helpful insight for answering our questions. Weick proposed organizations as such do not exist but rather are in the process of existing through ongoing human interaction. In other words, there is no such thing as an organization; there is only the ongoing interaction among human activities, interaction that continually creates and shapes events. As previously discussed, all ongoing human interaction is communication in one form or another.

The Weick perspective suggested Justin Payroll can be better understood as several years in the process of evolution rather than as an organization that was founded and structured by Jane Douglas and her colleagues. Jane Douglas and her colleagues initiated the ongoing process, and Douglas is part of the continuing stream of interactions. Put another way, the Weick model contended organizations do not exist apart from the human interactions of members. As Weick has described, communication is “the substance of organizing.”

Weick focused on the organizational environment as the communication links and messages that are the basis of human interaction. He is not as concerned with

the physical or technical structure of organizations as he is with the information to which individuals react. Weick contended that human reactions “enact” organizational environments through information exchanges and the active creation of meanings. This creation or enactment of organizational environments differs among individuals, resulting in multiple and diverse meanings and interpretations. Weick explained that organizational members use rules and communication cycles to continually process what he calls “equivocal” messages or messages susceptible to varying interpretations. Organizational rules are the relatively stable procedures or known processes that guide organizational behavior. In Justin’s case, the processing of a new client has some fairly specific procedures for internal communication response. These rules (procedures) can be used as guidance for most inquiries. The processing mistakes are not as well defined. Communication cycles—conversations among those involved with the problem—become important to reduce the equivocality of the Justin’s problem. Weick described the use of rules and communication cycles as “selection” processes or the use of selected information to reduce uncertainty. Selected rules and communication cycles, however, will vary in their effectiveness for actually reducing equivocality. When the selection process is effective, Weick proposed, individuals engage in “retention” to literally save rules and cycles for future guidance. Weick described this retained information as causal maps used to make sense of future equivocality. Weick concluded that the main goal of the process of organizing is an attempt to reduce equivocality—ambiguity—in order to predict future responses to organizational circumstances.

Supervisors reduce equivocality for their employees by the organizing of work assignments and the communication of task requirements. The supervisor gives an employee an assignment (desired action); the employee attempts the assignment (response); the supervisor evaluates the assignment (feedback). This interaction reduces equivocality for both the supervisor and the employee. The supervisor understands what the employee believed the assignment to be by evaluating what was accomplished. The feedback to the employee (often in the form of rewards or punishment) reduces uncertainty about the adequacy of the performance. This cycle—repeated at all organizational levels—is the organizing process.

Jane Douglas is processing equivocal messages. She is attempting to determine why the team did not either understand the mistakes or notify Tom. She is more concerned with the loss of clients than specific technical problems. Even if software fixes are needed, it is through human communication that problems will be identified and solved. Douglas does not understand how the company values of quality and customer service have changed. She is uncomfortable with the equivocality (ambiguity) of her interactions with the processing team. She needs to figure out what his alternatives are and what to do next.

Decision Making

The process of choosing from among numerous alternatives—decision making—is the organizing process of directing behaviors and resources toward organizational goals. Decision making, as with other organizing efforts, is accomplished primarily through communication. Decision making is the process in which Jane Douglas and her staff must engage.

Decision making Process of choosing from among numerous alternatives; the part of the organizing process necessary for directing behaviors and resources toward organizational goals.

A practical example helps to illustrate decision making as an organizing process. When you work with a group of students on a major class project, one of your goals may be a high grade from your instructor. There are numerous ways to approach this goal. Choosing from among these alternatives (decision making) is the first step toward assigning individual responsibilities within the project and deciding what resources the group will need (organizing). This choosing or decision making results from the communication interactions of the group. The quality of the group’s decisions will influence the quality of the project and whether the group reaches its goals.

What influences the way this decision making occurs? Each member of the group brings different experiences, abilities, and expectations to the group. Each member operates with a set of premises or propositions about what he or she believes to be true. Decision making is the attempt to merge these individual premises into more general ones (shared realities) that most members of the group can accept.

Think for a moment about a group of students working on an assignment. One student may operate from the premise that group projects are not worth much time and effort. Others may believe that the project is important for the course grade and needs careful planning and attention. Another may believe that his or her idea for the topic is superior. These premises (propositions about what is true) influence individual behavior and the types of alternatives the group will consider. Also, some members may identify (experience a sense of “we”) with the efforts of the group, whereas others may feel no sense of belonging or commitment. Those individuals who identify with one another are more likely to attempt a decision that most members of the group believe is appropriate than are those members who identify elsewhere.

Organizational decision making is the process that sets in motion much of the “doing” of the organization. Decision making reduces message equivocality by choosing from among numerous alternatives. These choosing activities occur through human communication.

Communication as Influence

The Meaning-Centered approach proposes that influence is a necessary process for creating and changing organizational events. In other words, who and what are viewed as influential, the way people seek to influence others, and how people respond to influence all contribute to organizing and decision making. Questions about the influence process in organizations focus on how individuals identify with their organizations, how organizations attempt to socialize members, how communication rules emerge to direct behavior, and how power is used. Identification, socialization, communication rules, and power all are essentially communication processes that help us understand how organizational influence occurs. From the Meaning-Centered perspective, the influence process is fundamental to the development of shared organizational realities and ultimately to creating and shaping organizational events. Indeed, it is fair to say that from a Meaning-Centered approach organizational communication is the process through which organizational influence takes place.

Influence Organizational and individual attempts to persuade; frequently seen in organizational identification, socialization, communication rules, and power.

Identification

We all come to organizational experiences with a sense of self, or our personal identity or identities. Our identity can be described as relatively stable characteristics that include our core beliefs, values, attitudes, preferences, and decisional premises. We are more likely to be receptive to influence attempts in organizations with which we identify or have a sense of “we” or belonging. Identification or the lack of it results from the identity or identities we bring to our organizational experiences and from a variety of organizational relationships (supervisors, peers, employees). As such, identification can be understood as an active process to which both individuals and organizations contribute.

Identity Relatively stable characteristics, including core beliefs, values, attitudes, preferences, decisional premises, and more that make up the self.

Identification Dynamic social process by which identities are constructed; includes perceptions of a sense of belonging. Usually associated with a link between individual and organizational goals and a belief that these goals are compatible.

Most organizations encourage members to identify with the organization. Chances are that when you entered school you were encouraged to join various organizations, attend sporting functions, and oppose your school’s most important rivals. Although most of these activities are enjoyable in and of themselves, they also develop a sense of “we” with the school. This sense of “we” means that our school’s interests become our own and are influential in our choices.

It is likely that when people perceive the goals of an organization as compatible with their individual goals, they identify with the organization. The person who identifies is likely to accept the organization’s decisional premises or reasoning. We can therefore say that the person who identifies is more likely to be positively influenced by the organization. An employee, for example, is more likely to be persuaded that a need for operating changes is favorable if the employee identifies with the organization and his or her supervisor. On the other hand, the employee who does not identify with the organization may view the same decision with resistance and suspicion. Mathieu Chaput, Boris Brummans, and François Cooren (2011) stress identification is literally performed through interactions among organizational members in ongoing relationships. Therefore, identification is dynamic and potentially ever changing. As organizations face increasing challenges to change, the issue of identification as influence takes on particular importance. Organizations need constructive work-related opinions, concerns, or ideas from employees in diverse organizational positions. Recent research suggests that identification moderates how employees will respond to speaking up when change may be needed. Employees with strong organizational identification who believe they have personal control in their work setting are likely to give voice to their opinions. Interestingly enough, employees who believe they have little personal control in their work setting are unlikely to speak up if they have high organizational identification. These findings support the perspective that all organizational members must be concerned not only with the positive aspects of identification but also with the potential limitations of identification. Identification contributes to problems if its influence contributes to silence or to a suspension of critical thinking. Practically speaking, we can all see how identification works by looking at our personal and organizational lives. The chances are that we are more likely to be influenced by individuals and groups with whom we feel a strong sense of “we” than by those with whom we feel no such relationship.

Socialization and Assimilation

Closely associated with identification is the influence process of socialization, or active organizational attempts to help members learn appropriate behaviors, norms, and values. The socialization process attempts to help new members understand how their interests overlap with those of the organization.

Socialization Active organizational attempts to help members learn appropriate behaviors, norms, and values.

Socialization efforts frequently are categorized in phases or stages: anticipatory socialization, encounter socialization, and metamorphosis socialization. Anticipatory socialization begins before individuals enter organizations and results from past work experiences and interactions with family, friends, and institutions such as schools, churches, or social organizations. Anticipatory socialization is shaped by pre-entry information about the organization and the anticipated work role. Anticipatory socialization is the readiness an individual brings to the “reality shock” of organizational entry. Anticipatory socialization also includes what individuals learn about particular organizations prior to entry. The employment interview is an important example. Organizational representatives conducting interviews provide important socialization information while assessing the potential fit of the candidate to the organization. In addition, interviews are important opportunities for individuals to determine whether their expectations match their perceptions of the expectations of the organization.

Anticipatory socialization Pre-entry information about the organization and the anticipated work role.

Encounter socialization Early organizational experiences reducing uncertainty about all aspects of organizational life.

Metamorphosis socialization Initial mastery of basic skills and information and adjustments to organizational life.

The encounter stage for socialization involves new employee training, supervisor coaching, peer groups, and formal organizational documents. Newcomers learn tasks, develop relationships, and reduce uncertainty about most aspects of organizational life. The encounter phase includes social activities, messages about performance proficiency, and other experiences that contribute to learning about the organization. These messages can be described as memorable messages for newcomers.

Finally, the metamorphosis phase of socialization occurs when the newcomer begins to master basic organizational requirements and adjusts to the organization. The phases, however, should be considered only general descriptions of the socialization process with full realization that differences in individuals and influence attempts generate very different socialization experiences.

Generally speaking, during socialization processes individuals learn role-related information and organizational culture information. Presumably, as with the identification process, the greater the degree of socialization, the more likely individuals will be to respond positively to organizational persuasion. In fact, little doubt remains that socialization relates to organizational commitment, decision making, perceptions of communications climate, and overall job satisfaction.

Assimilation Ongoing membership negotiation between individual and numerous other organizational members about functional and social roles within organizations.

Socialization and assimilation are closely related but not identical processes of influence. New organizational members (and individuals throughout their tenure with organizations) don’t just wait for information from the organization but actively negotiate their functional and social roles within the organization. Clifton Scott and Karen Myers (2010) describe

assimilation as a complex membership negotiation along multiple dimensions within organizational social and work systems. Newcomers often want to find out for themselves how they can succeed in an organization, gain a variety of competencies, and, in general, reduce the uncertainty of new environments. Newcomers want to know how they are perceived by others and whether they are accepted in their new roles. Although information-seeking tactics vary among newcomers, it is fair to say information seeking by newcomers is a powerful part of assimilation processes.

Karen Myers and J. G. Oetzel (2003) proposed organizational assimilation processes occur across six dimensions: familiarity with others, acculturation, recognition, involvement, job competency, and role negotiation. Based on the Myers and Oetzel work, Bernadette Gailliard, Karen Myers, and David Seibold (2010) tested the six dimensions to create a multidimensional measure to assist in explaining assimilation processes. Based on their work, we can say generally the dimensions refer to: (1) familiarity, friendships with coworkers and supervisors; (2) acculturation, understanding values and expectations of the organization; (3) recognition, experiences of feedback and listening from supervisors; (4) involvement, describing enjoyment of work and volunteering; (5) job competency, expertise in performing work and confidence in that expertise; and (6) role negotiation, helping to define specific job responsibilities. You can readily see these dimensions are important when a newcomer in an organization is establishing ongoing membership relationships.

Communication Rules

Communication rules are general prescriptions about appropriate communication behaviors in particular settings. Rules operate to influence behavior, are specific enough to be followed, and occur in particular contexts. In other words, communication rules are informal norms about what type of communication is desirable in a particular organization. Rules tell us, for example, whether disagreement is encouraged or discouraged, how we are expected to contribute our ideas, and whether we should ask for a raise or never mention the subject of salary in a particular situation. Rules aid in socialization and are therefore likely to be used by those high in organizational identification, those who want to exhibit a sense of “we” with the organization. Generally, rules are learned through informal communication such as organizational stories, rituals, and myths.

Communication rules General prescriptions about appropriate communication behaviors in particular settings. Thematic rules are general prescriptions of behavior reflecting the values and beliefs of the organization, whereas tactical rules prescribe specific behaviors as related to more general themes.

Communication rules are of two general types, thematic and tactical. Thematic rules are general prescriptions of behavior reflecting the values and beliefs of the organization. Tactical rules prescribe specific behaviors as related to more general themes. Several tactical rules may evolve from one general thematic rule. A major Midwest computer company has a strong thematic rule of “Communicate your commitment to the company.” Several tactical rules have developed that relate to that theme, such as “Come in on Saturday to finish up, but make sure you tell someone,” “Complain about how tough the challenge really is,” and “Use the term family to refer to the company.” These examples illustrate the contextual nature of thematic and tactical rules. Although the preceding statements are not only acceptable but also desirable in one particular company, they make little or no sense outside that

context. Compliance with thematic and tactical rules indicates that an individual has received socializing information and identifies, at least to some extent, with the organization.

In an interesting expansion of our understanding of rules, Jennifer Ziegler (2007) describes the functions and problems with organizational lists. Lists can be described as organizationally developed statements designed to control a process or direct behavior. Ziegler’s study of firefighters’ 10 Standard Fire Orders illustrates a list which is intended to provide control in crisis situations but also is subject to cultural and individual differences in interpretations. She has demonstrated how these differences have contributed at times to significant problems. Ziegler goes on to identify numerous organizational lists, such as pilots’ checklists, codes of conduct, recall lists, and others which, on the surface, are developed to provide rules to solve enduring organizational problems but may result in rules which create new problems.

Marshall Scott Poole and Robert McPhee (1983) and Poole, David Seibold, and McPhee (1985) added the dimension of structuration when they contended structurational rules theory provides a dynamic view of communication rules where diverse rule sets emerge through complex formal and informal interactions. As Stephen Littlejohn and Karen Foss (2008) describe, “…structuration is a process in which the unintended consequences of action create norms, rules, roles, and other social structures that constrain or affect future action. Structuration occurs constantly in all social systems.” Structurational theory proposes that rules not only influence behavior but also are influenced by members’ conceptions of appropriate behaviors. Poole and McPhee (1983) explained:

Structuration refers to the production and reproduction of social systems via the application of generative rules and resources in interaction. For example, the status hierarchy in a work group is an observable system. The structure underlying this system consists of rules, such as norms about who takes problems to the boss, and resources, such as a special friendship with the boss or seniority. The status system exists because of the constant process of structuration in which rules and resources are both the medium and outcome of interaction. Members use rules and resources to maintain their places or to attempt to rise in the hierarchy; the structure of rules and resources thus produces the status system. (p. 210)

Structuration Production and reproduction of social systems via the application of generative rules and resources in interaction.

We expand our understanding of communication rules when we discuss communication as culture.

Power

An additional communication dynamic that influences behavior is the use of power. In its most general sense, power has been defined as an attempt to influence another person’s behavior to produce desired outcomes. As such, power is a neutral term subject to positive use as well as abuse. The power process occurs through communication and relates to resources, dependencies, and alternatives.

Power Attempts to influence another person’s behavior to produce desired outcomes. The process occurs through communication and is related to resources, dependencies, and alternatives.

A resource is something owned or controlled by an individual, group, or entire organization. Resources are materials, information, knowledge, money, and a variety of other possible assets. Either owning or controlling resources allows individuals or organizations to influence interactions with others. A manager may control budget allocations within a department. Individual department members control important technical information not known to the manager. Both are resources influential in interactions between the manager and employees. Resources are closely linked to alternatives. A resource is more valuable if few alternatives to the use of the resource are available. Generally speaking, the individual controlling scarce resources is in a more influential (higher-power) position than the individual who controls resources with ample alternatives.

Although it is an outmoded notion, many believe power is a fixed commodity rather than a process of human interaction. In other words, many individuals behave as if the more power they have, the less is left for others. In reality, power is not a commodity but an influence process that permits all involved to gain more power, lose power, or share power. Therefore, when influence attempts result in abuse, evidence suggests we will seek other alternatives and lessen our dependency on the power abuser. Communication between supervisors and employees can illustrate this phenomenon. Supervisors and employees both have resources. The supervisor has the formal authority established by the chain of command. The supervisor can be said to represent the generally agreed-upon roles, practices, and beliefs of the organization. The supervisor controls information flow and performance evaluation. Employees control technical performance and have vital firsthand information about the progress of work. Both are dependent on each other; the supervisor directs, but without compliance and performance, no work is accomplished. Both have authority and power. If the supervisor becomes abusive in directing the work, an employee group may seek other alternatives by withdrawing from interaction with the supervisor or withholding information the supervisor needs to make good decisions. At an extreme the employee group may complain to others in management, transfer to other departments, or leave the organization. Power is one of the central issues we discuss in the Twenty-First-Century Emerging Perspectives section of this chapter.

Communication as Culture

Organizing, decision making, and influence processes, when taken together, help us describe the culture of organizations by describing how organizations do things and how they talk about how they do things. Put another way, organizational culture is the unique sense of the place that organizations generate through ways of doing and ways of communicating about the organization. Organizational culture reflects the shared realities and shared practices in the organization and how these realities create and shape organizational events. Organizational culture is the unique symbolic common ground that becomes the self-definitions or self-images of the organization.

Culture Unique sense of the place that organizations generate through ways of doing and ways of communicating about the organization; reflects the shared realities and shared practices in the organization and how they create and shape organizational events.

Metaphors help us understand the differences between the Functional tradition and Meaning-Centered approach to organizational cultures. Metaphors are ways

of describing the likeness of one concept or person to another concept or person by speaking of the first as if it were the second. We say “She is the life of the party” or “He is the salt of the earth.” Managers are referred to as quarterbacks, coaches, or lions in battle, with organizational decisions described as game or battle plans. These metaphors give us underlying assumptions for understanding behavior or concepts based on our knowledge of what we say something is like. We use our knowledge of what quarterbacks do, for example, to understand what managers do (a common metaphor supporting a bias toward male managers). We use the metaphor of a string quartet to explain excellence in teamwork based on the varying talents of individual contributors. Organization-wide metaphors used for the Functional tradition and Meaning-Centered approach work in much the same way.

When we described the Functional tradition to organizational communication, we talked about communication systems with inputs, throughput, and outputs. We described subsystems, suprasystems, and boundaries to external environments. We were using the organic metaphor of the dynamic system taken from the study of biology for conceptualizing or understanding organizational communication. The systems metaphor provided a distinct and descriptive set of assumptions about the way organizational communication works. Culture, in the systems metaphor, is one of many organizational variables.

In the Meaning-Centered approach the cultural metaphor replaces the systems metaphor of the Functional tradition. This culture metaphor describes communication as culture rather than describing culture and communication as separate processes. The culture metaphor promotes understanding communication as a process for generating shared realities and practices that in turn we call organizational culture.

When culture is used as a metaphor for organizational communication, we attempt to understand communication by understanding the uniqueness or shared realities in particular organizations. We explore how organizations use language, the symbols, jargon, and specialized vocabulary used by people working together. We examine behaviors exhibited in rituals and rites of organizational life and listen for the general standards or values of the organization as described in stories, legends, and reminiscences. As Joann Keyton (2005) suggested, organizational cultures must be shared by a collective of people and culture in a multilevel construct comprised of primarily artifacts, values, and assumptions.

We focus on how communication activities generate uniqueness or symbolic common ground. There is a danger, however, in oversimplifying culture as a single set of commonly held values, beliefs, actions, practices, rules, and dialogues mutually supported by all organizational members. In reality, organizations commonly reflect subcultural consensus and even lack of consensus about values, beliefs, actions, practices, rules, and dialogues. Embedded in this notion of culture as a metaphor for organizational communication is a view of organizations as dynamic, continually changing, often with competing values and assumptions, and meaning producing.

Members of organizations working together communicate to create the activity and practice of the organization and to interpret the meaning of that activity and practice. Observing who is involved in important decisions, how influence takes place, and how people treat one another helps in understanding the “uniqueness” of an organization. Words, actions, artifacts, routine practices, and texts are the regular communication interactions among organizational members that generate uniqueness or culture(s). Differences in the cultural knowledge organizational members possess can lead to subcultures and use of cultural information for personal benefit. For example, longer-term organizational members may provide cultural information to newcomers, or they may choose to withhold that information, making organizational entry difficult. Communication provides organizational members with similar experiences and realities (if not similar levels of agreement and values about experiences and realities). In this dynamic view of culture as communication, these realities are constantly subject to change as organizational members react to new information and circumstances.

Whether personal, task, social, or organizational, rituals help define what is important or the values of the culture and provide a communication process to transmit those values. Awards ceremonies, Friday afternoon get-togethers, graduation, and numerous daily routines are all rituals that both provide regularity and signify importance in organizational life.

Organizational storytelling infuses passion or interest into everyday activities. Stories generate a sense of history about organizational existence and identify values through descriptions of success and failure. In the Justin Payroll case, stories about the need of small nonprofit organizations communicated important information about the Justin values of quality and customers. The Meaning-Centered approach suggests Justin’s processing problem can be described in terms of a shift in culture or values.

Jane Douglas must understand the communication interactions that have contributed to a change at Justin in terms of what constitutes quality. Stories about the founding of Justin have not been sufficient to maintain the earlier focus on customers. Can you suggest ways she might find out about the current focus on customers? How can her perception of the values of Justin be different from that of others in the company? What should Douglas do to determine what the culture of Justin Payroll really is?

Communication Climate

The culture of an organization describes the unique sense of the place, its practices, and how that organization describes itself. The reaction to an organization’s culture is the organization’s communication climate.

Communication climate Reaction to the organization’s culture; determination or evaluation of the desirability of a culture.

We are used to thinking of climate in geographic terms. We think about temperature, humidity, winds, and rainfall and react somewhat subjectively to what we believe is a desirable climate. So it is with a climate for communication. The climate is a subjective reaction to organization members’ perceptions of communication events. The subjective reaction is shared to a great extent by either individual groups or the entire organization.

Think for a moment about the culture of your school. By now you probably know how things are supposed to work. You know who holds power, what some of the rituals are, and how socializing generally takes place. You can describe the unique sense of the place to others, but your description does not necessarily tell whether you think it is a good place. Your positive or negative attitude—climate evaluation—is your reaction to the culture, not a description of the culture itself.

Identify the organizations of which you are a member. How would you describe their climate? How does a positive view of climate influence your behavior? What are the differences when your view is negative?

The Meaning-Centered Approach: Summary of Essential Characteristics

The Meaning-Centered approach to organizational communication understands communication as a complex process that creates and shapes organizational events. As such, communication is organizing, decision making, influence, and culture. Organizing is viewed as an ongoing process of human interactions attempting to reduce message equivocality. Decision making is part of organizing and is the process responsible for moving individuals and resources toward accomplishment of organizational goals. Influence is the process in which individuals and organizations engage to generate desired behaviors and is therefore closely related to organizing and decision making. Culture, as a metaphor for organizational communication, is the unique sense of a place that reflects the way things are done and how people talk about the way things are done. Finally, communication climate is the subjective reaction to the communication events that contribute to uniqueness or culture. The Meaning-Centered approach makes only limited distinctions among organizing, decision making, influence, and culture. All are seen as processes of communication, and all help us understand how organizations create and shape events through human interaction.

Now return to the beginning of the chapter. Can you answer each of the questions about the Meaning-Centered approach? How does it differ from the Functional tradition? What are the similarities? Earlier you described the communication system of your school. Now describe the culture of your school. Are there particular stories or rituals that come to mind? What are the communication rules?

Twenty-First-Century Emerging Perspectives

Emerging Perspectives for organizational communication expand, critique, and challenge many of the basic assumptions and interpretations found in the Functional and Meaning-Centered approaches and provide important value propositions for our consideration. In the next section of this chapter we introduce the concept of communication as a constitutive process and describe four approaches—communication constitutes organizations (CCO), postmodernism, critical theory, and feminist, race, and class theories—as important perspectives for the study of organizational communication.

The rising interest in CCO, postmodernism, critical theory, and feminist, race, and class theories can be understood when we consider the magnitude and rate of change in almost all aspects of our lives and the failure of more traditional approaches to guide our uncertainty. Organizations are increasing in size and complexity, with communications technologies changing even the most basic of organizational processes. Globalization both influences organizing processes and changes the very nature of work itself. Almost simultaneously we experience the influence of mass culture and the fact that fewer and fewer of us use similar information sources.

In addition, our awareness of issues of diversity, difference, and marginalization grows. Put simply, this current time of turbulence and rapid change has given rise to a contemporary context in which new questions and new challenges are important for understanding our organizational lives. We are in the process of examining most, if not all, of our taken-for-granted assumptions about organizations.

Communication as Constitutive Process

Stanley Deetz (1992) helped us understand the concept of communication as constitutive process when he suggested, “Communication cannot be reduced to an informational issue where meanings are assumed to be already existing, but must be seen as a process of meaning development and social production of perceptions, identities, social structures, and affective responses.” Deetz suggested we move beyond Functional concerns for message production and transfer and the Meaning-Centered issues of “realities” and cultures to a fundamental view of communication that constitutes or brings about self and social environments. Communication is not synonymous with organizing, decision making, and influence but is better understood as the process that literally produces organizing, decision making, and influence.

Constitutive process Communication seen as a process of meaning development and social production of perceptions, identities, social structures, and affective responses.

This view of communication as a constitutive process, and the call for more participative communication processes can be seen in each of the four approaches to the study of organizational communication that follow. Additionally, we describe emerging discussions of institutions, global cultures, and technology as they relate to organizational communication. We begin with the important communication constitutes organization (CCO) perspective.

Communication Constitutes Organization (CCO)

Communication Constitutes Organization (CCO) Communication processes or flows which generate and sustain organizations.

Earlier in this chapter we described the work of Karl Weick with relationship to the ongoing processes of organizing and decision making. Influenced by the concepts of Weick and others, an important perspective for organizational communication known as communication constitutes organization (CCO) has emerged. Generally speaking, CCO rejects the notion portrayed in the Functional tradition that the organization contains a variety of discrete and independent communication interactions which are manifested in an identifiable structure with known boundaries. CCO expands what Weick and numerous others have described as the organization in the continual process of becoming through the numerous interactions of participants—essentially the Meaning-Centered approach described earlier. CCO extends the Meaning-Centered approach by discussing how organizations develop identities, exercise power and influence, and sustain themselves. This extended approach has been described by Gail Fairhurst and Linda Putnam (2004) as an action perspective anchoring the organization in the continuous flow of communication. In summarizing the Fairhurst and Putnam perspective as it relates to CCO, Putnam, Anne Nicotera, and Robert McPhee (2009) suggested, “This approach aims for a balance between structure and agency rather

than privileging one or the other. Organizations never emerge as entities per se, but as systems, objects anchored in social practices, texts, or memory traces derived from the properties of language and action. Communication and organization are not equivalent concepts per se, but they are mutually constitutive” (p. 9). In other words, CCO attempts to understand the interactions and balances among agency (communicative actions) and broad structures. CCO addresses how agency and structures are mutually constitutive, that is, how they construct each other.

James Taylor and Elizabeth Van Every (2011) offer a concept of “thirdness” which explains how we come to understand the authority we ascribe to organizations. Actions and events of the organization (“firstness”) and all of the people (agents) engaging in these activities (“secondness”) interact to become “thirdness” or an abstract representation of what an organization is about and how its “authority” influences present and future actions.

Tim Kuhn (2008) challenges economic and resource-based explanations of organizational existence when he argues that organizational members’ communication literally “authors” the definitive descriptions of how the organization is understood. These authoritative texts specify roles and responsibilities, values, outcomes to be achieved, and what is recognized as legitimate power for the organization. François Cooren (2006) describes how organizations influence daily situations through “organizational presentification” or representations of an organization such as logos, buildings, machines, and formal statements. The notions of “authoritative texts” and “presentification” are basic and important examples of how communication constitutes what we call organizations. Matt Koschmann (2012) contends the organizational rituals are the integration of authoritative texts and presentification.

In a slightly different but complementary description of CCO, McPhee and Pamela Zaug (2000/2009) focus on the flows of communication which are present in ongoing organizing processes. The McPhee and Zaug framework describes four flows which work in complex ways to constitute and sustain organizations: (1) relationships of members to the organization; (2) organizational self-structuring features for ongoing design and control; (3) activity coordination for work processes; and (4) institutional positioning with external stakeholders. Specifically, the first flow addresses how members address their roles, statuses, and overall relationships to the organization; the second flow describes how leaders design, implement, and deal with problems of control and decision; the third flow focuses on work design and implementation; and the fourth flow deals with complex relationships to stakeholders or other organizations.

Larry Browning, Ronald Greene, S. B. Sitkin, Kathleen Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld (2009) add concepts of complexity to understanding the four flows and CCO in general. Browning and his colleagues contend, “Constitutive complexity allows us to search for multiple dimensions that explain a particular question, rather than accepting one and only one ‘correct’ answer. As dynamic relationships in organizations move from singular, to paired, to group processes, the concept of dynamic complexity emerges….evolved complexity, accounts for units developing in different ways despite originating in quite similar circumstances” (p. 91). In other words, complexity helps us understand that the flows are not mutually exclusive and often overlap. While they can be described as separate processes, the overlap and the complexity generated are critical to understanding how organizations develop and sustain themselves. Cooren

and Gail Fairhurst (2009) caution us to not lose sight of the importance of human interactions and nonhuman signs and symbols when describing communication flows and complexity. They argue for what they call a “bottom-up perspective” which continues to focus on human interactions as creating what we refer to as structure. Cooren and Fairhurst contend, “There is no structure overarching human interactions to the extent that what makes human actors do things (which is usually what we have in mind when we use the term ‘structure’) is nothing but other human or non-human actors” (p. 137). They go on to explain,

If the idea of the communicative constitution of organization makes any sense, it is for us on the sole condition that the concept of “communication” is extended to what non-humans do. For instance, this means that we need to acknowledge that the sign indeed tells visitors what behavior has to be adopted upon entering the building, that the security system dissuades visitors from squeezing in without checking in at the front desk, or that the procedure leads the concierge to ask visitors specific questions. Only if these contributions are acknowledged can we expect to find in communication and interaction the building blocks of organization. Going back to the four flows identified by McPhee and Zaug (2000), we can then adopt a bottom-up perspective and translate them to show that they are the product of these micro-associations between humans and non-humans. (p. 142)

James Taylor and his colleagues focus on language and foster the concept that organizing occurs when people interact around particular concerns. Taylor calls this process “co-orientation,” which creates through conversation the construction of organizations. Taylor (2009) clarifies his position:

I have argued that it will be taking account of the properties of language, and the practices of language-users, that we will advance. Language is both how people relate to each other, and how they express their understandings of such relating. Interaction mediated by language is thus reflexive, and retrospective, as both Giddens and Weick have pointed out, in that people monitor the interaction they are caught up in and make sense of it in retrospect…. It is, furthermore, in this recursive, retrospective dynamic that the identities of objects, individuals, technologies, communities, and finally, the organization itself are born. (p. 181)

Regardless of the specific positions regarding CCO, the perspective expands prior thinking about organizational communication and the complex relationships and structures which we call organizations.

Postmodernism and Organizational Communication

Postmodernism Theoretical perspectives representing an alienation from the past, skepticism about authority structures, ambiguity of meanings, and mass culture.

The term postmodernism has been variously defined and hotly debated in fields as diverse as architecture, film, education, philosophy, sociology, and communication. Generally referring to perspectives that reject former notions of authority and power, stability of meanings, and concepts of effectiveness, postmodernism has become known as theoretical perspectives that represent an alienation from the past, skepticism about authority structures, ambiguity of meanings, and

mass culture. Historical modernism is viewed as preceding postmodernity in time and experience, with postmodernism presenting challenges to the established traditions of modernism.

Postmodern theorists reject the claims of the Functional and Meaning-Centered perspectives as overly simplistic and lacking in understanding of a world characterized by rapid change, multiple meanings, and pervasive ambiguity. The notion of grand master narratives—stories with broad application and explanatory power (e.g., principles of scientific management or prescriptions for strong cultures)—is replaced by the micronarratives of individual organization members. Postmodern theorists look at individual behaviors without implying relationships to underlying values, assumptions, and rationales. In particular, postmodern organizational communication seeks to understand how multiple meanings and multiple interpretations of organizational events influence multiple and diverse behaviors.

Deconstruction is the method of postmodern analysis. Put simply, deconstruction refers to the examination of taken-for-granted assumptions, the examination of the myths we use to explain how things are the way they are, and the uncovering of the interests involved in socially constructed meanings. The value base of postmodern organizational communication rests with shared power, concepts of empowerment and interdependence, and multiple interpretations of everyday events.

Deconstruction The examination of taken-for-granted assumptions, the examination of the myths we use to explain how things are the way they are, and the uncovering of the interests involved in socially constructed meanings.

Postmodern analysis challenges traditional notions of rationality and, as such, rejects many of the tenets of the Functional tradition as well as the emphasis on shared realities in the Meaning-Centered perspective.

What can Jane Douglas learn from the postmodern perspective? Are individual behaviors in her management team contributing to multiple meanings about what she should know or about what should be communicated between the processing and leadership teams? Has she been taking for granted the assumption that the processing team agrees that the customer is number one? Does she need to deconstruct his own myths about how things are? Although admittedly complex in its propositions and concepts, postmodern organizational communication analysis provides additional useful ways for Jane Douglas to ask questions about the communication in Justin Payroll.

Critical Theory and Organizational Communication

Critical theory focuses our attention on studying privilege, control, and power with specific attention to abuses of power through communication and organization. As Deetz (2001) explained, “The central goal of critical theory in organizational communication studies has been to create a society and work-places that are free from domination and where all members can contribute equally to produce systems that meet human needs and lead to the progressive development of all” (p. 26). As Dennis Mumby (1993) claimed, “One of the principal tenets of the critical studies approach is that organizations are not simply neutral sites of meaning formation; rather, they are produced and reproduced in the context of struggles between competing interest groups and systems of representation” (p. 21).

Critical theory Focuses attention on studies of power, control, and abuses of power through communication and organization.

The critical theory approach depicts organizations where dominant groups control the development of ideologies or basic assumptions about how things should be. From these assumptions come legitimized controls (sometimes referred to as reified controls) in which power is hidden from ready observation and accepted as normal if not desirable. This notion of pervasive power that is not visible or overt and is generally accepted based on our myths of “how things came to be” is called hegemony. Hegemony is a process of control based on a dominant group leading others to believe that their subordination is normal or the norm. Hegemony implies to some (but not all) critical theorists that certain people in organizations are oppressed even when they do not recognize their experience as such. This perspective is in direct contradiction to both the Functional and Meaning-Centered approaches, which rely heavily on overt communication actions and practices.

Hegemony Process of control based on a dominant group leading others to believe that their subordination is the norm.

Critical theory seeks to understand power structures and identify interests served by various types and alignments of power and control. Critical theory also seeks to uncover power abuses in order to contribute to more fulfilling organizations and entire societies. Critical theory, more than our earlier perspectives, seeks to support both analysis and action, whether stimulating resistance, promoting change, or focusing on emancipating those abused by power structures.

For critical theorists, power and communication are closely intertwined. Power is exercised through communication, and power influences communication rules and structures. Dennis Mumby (1987) characterized organizational power controls as domination based on getting people to organize their behavior around particular rule systems. Legitimate control emerges through stories, myths, rituals, and a variety of other symbolic forms. These forms in turn become the rules that prescribe appropriate behavior. This “legitimate” yet hidden exercise of power can contribute to the suspension of critical thinking.

As Deetz (2001) described: “While organizations could be positive social institutions providing forums for the articulation and resolution of important group conflicts over the use of natural resources, distribution of income, production of desirable goods and services, the development of personal qualities, and the direction of society, various forms of power and domination have led to skewed decision making and fostered social harms and significant waste and inefficiency” (p. 26).

Critical theory helps us ask questions about how we can change and reform organizational practices to better represent a variety of stakeholders with competing interests.

Distinctions between postmodern and critical approaches generally focus on differences in approach to organizational understandings. Specifically, postmodern approaches emphasize deconstruction and the unmasking of myths and assumptions to open up the possibility of new understandings and new processes. Critical approaches, on the other hand, seek to demonstrate domination and to produce opposition.

What questions should Jane Douglas ask using critical theory? Are there hidden power struggles contributing to the processing problem? Is someone or a group of people attempting to silence others in order to keep problems from Douglas? How

can she know? Is there something wrong in the organization that is more important than the processing problem? Jane Douglas would be well advised to think about potential power abuses as she evaluates the problems she faces.

Feminist, Race, and Class Perspectives and Organizational Communication

Feminist theory focuses on the marginalization and domination of women in the workplace and the devaluing of women’s voices in all organizational processes. Although diverse in perspective and approaches, feminist theory generally attempts to move our society beyond patriarchal forms and social practices by critiquing power relationships that devalue women. Race perspectives and organizational communication currently are less developed, emerging, and of significant importance. Race perspectives focus on the domination of those not of a majority race and the uncovering of practices which both silence and devalue minority voices.

Feminist and race theory Focuses on the marginalization and domination of women and persons of color in the workplace and the valuing of diverse voices in all organizational processes.

Judi Marshall (1993) described male forms as the norms to which organizational members adapt. She proposed that the male principle can be characterized as self-assertion, separation, independence, control, competition, focused perception, rationality, analysis, clarity, discrimination, and activity. The female principle is described as interdependence, cooperation, receptivity, merging, acceptance, awareness of patterns, awareness of wholeness, and synthesizing. Although males and females can access both types of values, evidence exists that females in organizations adapt to male norms while being evaluated against female stereotypes. Marshall concludes, “The male domination of cultures goes largely unrecognized in organizational life and in mainstream organizational theory.”

Patrice Buzzanell (1994) described feminist organizational communication theorizing as discussing “the moral commitment to investigate the subordinated, to focus on gendered interactions in ordinary lives, and to explore the standpoints of women who have been rendered invisible by their absence in theory and research.” Buzzanell discussed how gender is socially constructed and enacted in organizations, with messages, structures, and practices becoming the contexts for gender construction and negotiation. Organizational communication is therefore the focal process for this construction and negotiation.

Buzzanell (1994) examined three traditional themes in organizational writings—competitive individualism, cause-effect/linear thinking, and separation or autonomy—and contrasts them to feminist organizational communication theory. The ethic of competitive individualism creates organizational winners and losers based on competition and a need to excel over others. This competitive ethic typically casts women in the role of the “other,” whereas stereotypical expectations and behaviors cast women as “losers.” Buzzanell contrasted the competitive ethic with the cooperative enactment of organizations in which opportunities exist to understand how women translate the cooperative ethic into talk and behavior. She called for understanding how people communicate in cooperative-oriented and feminist-based organizations and contrasting that talk with how people communicate in competitively driven groups.

Also not as extensively explored in communication work, most of the above discussion also applies to racial and ethnic differences.

The second theme, cause-effect/linear thinking, is based on the superiority in traditional society of the rational, direct, and solution-oriented. Feminist organizational communication theory asks questions about alternatives and explores the double binds created for women who are negatively sanctioned for adopting the scientific male style and who also are devalued for choosing stereotypical feminine communication patterns. Race perspectives also challenge the superiority of tradition models which limit contributions that do not follow a traditional white-male communication model.

The third theme, separation and autonomy, is based on socialization practices that urge men to become separate and autonomous through action, work, and status; women, by contrast, are socialized for nurturing, being attractive, following authority, and being well liked. Feminist organizational communication theory offers the potential to examine the consequences of these socialized differences for both men and women. Feminist theory explores the importance of integrating emotion in communication theory while promoting discussions of developing the authentic self.

Karen Ashcraft and Brenda Allen (2003) extended the concepts of feminist theory to understanding issues of race in organizations. Ashcraft and Allen claimed that not only are organizations fundamentally gendered but also fundamentally raced. Many of the assumptions in organizations about the contributions of women apply to people of color. Stereotypical expectations related to race, while differing by race, are evidenced in all types of organizational settings. Additionally, notions exist which suggest that discrimination and marginalization will be eliminated when more people of color and women are in more diverse organizational positions. To date the facts simply do not support this perspective, making gender and race ongoing concern for individuals as well as organizational excellence.

Material, socioeconomic-based distinctions such as educational level, income, and job type descriptors (blue- and white-collar occupations) contribute to identifying descriptions referred to as social class. We commonly hear descriptions such as upper class, middle class, working class, lower class, or poverty class. As with feminist and race perspectives, social class is encountered in organizational settings and, in many respects, constructed through communication. Allen (2011) illustrates how occupational differences create class: hourly versus salaried work; educational requirements for promotional mobility; service versus line responsibilities; private office versus open space or no assigned space work locations; and numerous other distinctions. In a specific example of understanding mobility aspirations and social class, Karen Lucas (2011) describes how working class identity influences mobility aspirations. Lucas states, “Class mobility-based ambivalences are well documented. Emotionally charged feelings of dislocation arise when people from blue-collar, working class backgrounds enter the world of white-collar, idle to upper class work. In contrast to all they have gained by upward social mobility, many feel a deep sense of loss” (p. 348). Obviously social class is related to gender and race. However, communication about class is an important distinction in understanding organizational communication and processes of marginalization and domination.

Social Class Material, socioeconomic-based identity distinctions such as education, income, and occupation type. Often described in levels from low to high.

When discussing the Meaning-Centered approach, we discussed organizational socialization or attempts by organizations to help members learn appropriate behaviors, norms, and values. Connie Bullis (1993) used feminist theory to develop an alternative perspective. Bullis described why it is important to consider how socialization practices can construct women as marginalized others. Bullis challenged us to think about voices marked as outsiders, unsocialized, uncommitted, disloyal, absentee, unemployable, or dropouts. Her work and the work of others has raised important questions about socialization processes that function both to marginalize as well as socialize. Think for a moment about your own experiences. Have you ever considered yourself marginalized? If so, what were the communication experiences contributing to this feeling? If not, can you identify examples of times when others may have been excluded during socialization communication?

Feminist, race, and class perspectives can assist Jane Douglas in asking questions about whether all managers and team members are being heard. Have important voices been discounted, contributing to her current problems? Has she mistakenly assumed that all good ideas and inputs were equally valued? Although we cannot know the answers without more details of the case, we can see how these questions give Jane Douglas additional ways to understand Justin’s problems. We continue our discussion of important Emerging Perspectives in Chapter 3.

Institutions and Organizational Communication

Both the Functional and Meaning-Centered approaches have been criticized for focusing too intensely on single organizations without adequate regard to influences in the larger environment. A discussion of institutions and organizational communication has begun as a partial answer to this criticism. The definitions of institutions vary. The word institution is sometimes used interchangeably with the term organization. A particular high-prestige organization may be referred to as an institution in its field. Institution sometimes refers to what John Lammers and Joshua Barbour (2006) described as “supraorganizational entities or governing bodies such as the economy, the state, or a religion. A given level of aggregation has been said to be the institutional level (e.g., contrasted with the individual, group, or organizational levels). The traditional professions, such as medicine, law, and clergy, are sometimes referred to as institutions. Institution has also been used to describe specific customs and practices (e.g., the institution of marriage) as well as rules and laws (e.g., the institution of criminal justice)” (p. 358). In other words, institutions provide our environments relatively stable traditions, practices, standards, customs, rules, and laws.

Institutions High-prestige organizations; process, practice, or groupings of similar organizations that are prominent parts of our environments; relatively stable traditions, practices, standards, customs, rules, and laws.

If institutions are more permanent and established than individual organizations, the question becomes: how does an organization or groups of organizations, processes, or practices become institutionalized? Based on the work of Pamela Tolbert and Lynne Zucker (1996), Tim Kuhn (2005) described a process of institutionalization which involves innovation, habitualization, objectification, and sedimentation. Organizational communication is fundamental in this description of

the institutionalization process. Tolbert and Zucker and later Kuhn described the process of institutionalization as beginning when an innovation or new understanding enters a field of practice, organization, or related group of organizations. In order for the innovation to be sustained, the habitualization phase must occur, whereby the innovation becomes part of patterned approaches to problem solving usually used by a limited set of individuals who have contact with each other across organizations.

The Internet provides a useful example. The needs in the scientific and military communities for the transmission, retrieval, and linkage across time and space of large volumes of information gave rise to what today we call the Internet. The communication and technological advances occurred over several decades with the initial protocols and uses of the emerging technology primarily reserved for academics, scientists, and a lesser number of military personnel. Once the introduction of the innovation was stabilized and habitualization among this somewhat limited group occurred, the objectification phase rapidly emerged.

The objectification phase is characterized by social consensus about the value of the innovation, often based on limited knowledge about the specifics of the innovation but agreement that based on convincing arguments of merit the innovation has significant potential. Once this legitimacy has been established, the sedimentation phase occurs. Sedimentation refers to the spread of the innovation and its persistence over time. Likely everyone reading this book would agree the Internet has become an institution of our time and vital to the subject of our study, organizational communication.

In further explanation of the importance of institutions, Lammers and Barbour suggested institutions bring us observable routines that go across many settings or organizations. For example, the school you currently attend is in many ways unique; yet, many routine practices in your school can be found in similar schools throughout the world. Your school is part of the institution of education. Lammers and Barbour also suggested institutions manifest beliefs, which influence decisions and choices that individuals make. You probably have beliefs defining a good school based not only on the school you attend but also on what you know about the institution of education in general.

Lammers and Barbour noted that institutions are established through associations among people and are characterized by low rates of change with fixed and enduring qualities, often formalized with specific rules for conduct and specific prescriptions for rational purpose and how to get things done. This institutional perspective suggests that understanding organizational communication in specific circumstances must be informed by understanding the broader institutional context in which specific organizations and individuals find themselves.

It also is fair to conclude that institutions influence concepts of professions and professional identity. A medical doctor can be said to identify with the institution of medicine and its institutional concepts of professional practice perhaps even more strongly than identifying with the organization or organizations in which he or she currently practices. The same is true of many professions such as law enforcement, education, and finance and accounting.

What does an institutional perspective mean for Jane Douglas? Is it possible that her personal institutional influences differ significantly from others on his management team? In some respects Jane Douglas must deal with the fact that “quality”

is no longer as institutionalized at Justin Payroll as she would like. How would you advise her using an institutional perspective?

Global Cultures and Organizational Communication

Most of us are aware of a myriad of changes, usually referred to as globalization, made possible for both individuals and organizations by emerging communications technologies. Fewer of us have been exposed to the profound cultural differences influencing organizational communication in a global workforce. It is fair to say, there are no overarching global principles for effective organizational communication. In fact, many legitimately argue much of what we describe as effective communication is U.S.-centric or at best Eurocentric.

Robert House, Paul Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter Dorfman, and Vipin Gupta (2004) led a ten-year study of sixty-two societies to describe varying values and practices related to functioning in a world of global collaborations. This massive study included 170 social scientists and management scholars from around the world with 17,300 participants in 951 organizations. It identified nine core dimensions of global cultures: uncertainty avoidance, power distance, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation. The differences here can be profound and create differences in how individuals and groups may approach global collaborations. For example, societies with higher uncertainty avoidance will have a tendency to formalize their interactions with others, exhibiting low tolerance for breaking rules and showing stronger resistance to change. On the other hand, societies with lower uncertainty avoidance tend to be more informal in their interactions with others, exhibiting tolerance for breaking rules and supporting more change. It is relatively easy to imagine how working with these differences can challenge collaborators across cultures.

Global cultures Regional or country-specific societal values and practices including core dimensions such as uncertainty avoidance, power distance, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation.

The value of assertiveness provides another excellent example. Societies valuing high assertiveness tend to favor dominant, tough behavior with an emphasis on success and progress. Societies with low assertiveness values view dominant and tough behavior as socially unacceptable and favor people and relationships over more measurable descriptions of success and progress. High-assertiveness cultures tend to value direct and unambiguous communication, whereas lower-assertiveness cultures favor speaking indirectly and emphasizing “face-saving.” Although the study conducted by House and his colleagues provides important guidance for our thinking, it must not be considered comprehensive or inclusive of all valuable ways of knowing and communicating. Communication in global environments will require new understandings informed by many voices not traditionally part of our organizational dialogues.

There is no innate right or wrong in the ranges of cultural values and communication approaches, but the myriad of differences has the potential to influence collaborations across cultures with particular emphasis on power relationships, treatment of others, and marginalization of voices lower in dominance. It is fair to say that global cultural differences affect all of the basic assumptions we use as we work in increasingly diverse environments. In our Justin Payroll case, Jane Douglas does not have to deal with global differences. Think for a moment how much more complicated her problem might be if her customers were global and her processing teams were in several different countries.

Technology and Organizational Communication

Emerging communications technologies influence organizational structure, processing of information, newcomer socialization, interactions among work groups, interactions with customers, the speed of work, information security, individual privacy, networks for innovation, problem solving, decision making, and a host of other organizational experiences. Access to and control of technology are powerful communication influences changing the way work is performed, how people relate to each other, how power is exercised, and a host of organizational participation practices. We will discuss use of technology in greater detail in later chapters, but it is important to understand that the emergence of these technologies changes fundamental assumptions in all of the theoretical perspectives we discussed.

Think back to our discussion of networks in the Functional tradition. Will these new technologies challenge what we currently know about information flow? The Meaning-Centered perspective is focused on influence, power, and cultures, among other issues. The virtual nature of work and the vast geographic distances over which work is performed among people of diverse backgrounds complicate a vision of organizations as composed of relatively homogeneous individuals with backgrounds that can be easily understood by coworkers.

Postmodernism, critical theory, and feminist, race, and class theories ask important questions about how reality is constructed in organizations. However, these perspectives also face challenges from the increasing complexity of a technologically linked global work environment. Some of their assumptions about participation and power will be called into question by global cultural differences expressing divergent value orientations. Our purpose here is not to understand fully this complexity but to recognize its emergence as part of our individual and collective competency challenges. Think again of our Justin Payroll case. Technology likely will be an increasing part of Jane Douglas’s environment. If she is not getting the information she needs now, what might a more technologically sophisticated environment bring in terms of benefits and problems?

Twenty-First-Century Emerging Perspectives: Summary of Essential Issues

Emerging Perspectives for organizational communication describe communication as a constitutive process, increasingly described as communication constitutes organization (CCO), and critique and challenge basic assumptions of message meaning and transfer, power and domination, and notions of rationality associated with hierarchical and patriarchal systems. Communication as a constitutive process brings about self and social environments. Communication literally produces organizing, decision making, and influence. Postmodernism rejects former (modern) notions of authority and power, stability of meanings, and concepts of effectiveness. Deconstruction is the method of postmodern analysis, with its emphasis on the exposure of the myths we

use to explain the way things are and the uncovering of interests involved in socially constructed meanings.

Critical theory shifts our attention to power, control, and abuses of power through communication and control in organizations. Organizations are depicted as political decision-making sites with potential for both domination and codetermination. Feminist, race, and class theories focus on the marginalization and domination of women and people of color in the workplace and how identities are communicated and valued along social class structures. The valuing of diverse voices contributes to equality for differences rather than the equality of sameness characteristic of the Functional and Meaning-Centered approaches. Finally, Emerging Perspectives must include an understanding of the increasing influence of institutions, global cultures, and technologies for organizational communication.

Return to the Justin Payroll case presented at the beginning of this chapter. Examine how the Functional, Meaning-Centered, CCO, postmodern, critical, and feminist, race, and class perspectives help us understand Jane Douglas’s issues. What are the differences? Where can you find similarities?

Practical Theory and Organizational Communication

The Functional tradition, Meaning-Centered approach, and Emerging Perspectives all can be described in some respects as practical theory for organizational communication. Simply put, the Functional, Meaning-Centered, and Emerging Perspectives approaches all help us ask questions, understand, critique, and think about how to stimulate excellence in organizational communication. J. Kevin Barge and Robert Craig (2009) describe the importance of practical theory when they explain

…three broad approaches to practical theory… (1) mapping, (2) engaged reflection, and (3) transformative practice. First, practical theory as mapping begins by creating a high-quality map of reality through scientific, interpretive, or critical methods that subsequently can be used to inform practice…. Second, practical theory as engaged reflection explicitly addresses the reflexive relationship between theory and practice—how each can inform the other—and, therefore, reflects an integration of practical and theoretical discourses…. Third, practical theory as transformative practice… from this perspective is viewed as a useful resource for theorists and practitioners to help them make sense of situations and take action that is intended to improve these situations. (p. 59)

The remainder of this text will assist you in utilizing a variety of practical theories to develop excellence in diverse communication competencies.

Chapter Highlights

The Functional tradition, the Meaning-Centered approach, and Emerging Perspectives for understanding organizational communication help us ask questions important for analyzing problems. You should now review summary sections for each perspective. Figure 2.3 identifies key questions from each perspective. These questions can be used throughout the text as we analyze a variety of organizational problems—a practical theory approach.

FIGURE 2.3 Analyzing organizational problems

Workshop

1. Form groups of four to six members each. Turn to page 400_and review again the Hockaday Responders case. Answer the questions for Chapter 2 at the end of the case.

2. In small groups, read either The “United Concepts Advertising Agency Dilemma” Case or The “Newcomers Aren’t Welcome Here” Case that follows and select from Figure 2.3 the questions that best help you understand the problems in the case. Answer at least six questions and then prepare answers to the following questions. The United Concepts Advertising Agency Dilemma Case

1. How would you advise Jane?

2. What would you tell Chris and John?

3. What would you tell Frank Donnell?

The “Newcomers Aren’t Welcome Here” Case

1. What should Joe and Henry do?

2. Could Bernie have handled the announcement in a manner that would not have alienated Joe and Henry?

3. What do you think is going to happen?

Groups should report to the class as a whole and compare and contrast questions selected and answers.

The United Concepts Advertising Agency Dilemma Case

Jane Peters was having the best morning of her career. Since coming to United Concepts Advertising as an account executive, she had been successful in acquiring new business, but nothing as big as the Raven Furniture account. Raven was the largest chain of furniture stores in the West, and landing the account meant something not only in the West Coast offices of United Concepts but in Chicago and New York as well.

Jane knew that her creative team, John and Chris, was largely responsible. The close working relationship among the three was the best Jane had experienced in her fifteen years in the advertising industry. In fact, Jane began to think of ways to make John and Chris more visible to her boss, Frank Donnell. After all, Frank was pleased that the agency got the Raven account. Perhaps he could be persuaded to promote John and Chris to senior creative positions.

Three Weeks Later

Jane was exhausted. Getting the Raven account up and going was not only requiring long hours but was also complicated by the resistance of some of the top management at Raven. She had never imagined there would be resistance at Raven to changing agencies and considerable disagreement about the United Concepts proposal. In fact, dealing with the various people at Raven was taking too much time. Her other accounts were not getting the service they needed, and Chris had just made a major error in the Raven ad scheduled to run this weekend. Jane caught the mistake as it was about to go to the printer. Although it was costly to adjust the error at that point, she was relieved but shaken at how close they had come to a major problem. Jane considered approaching Frank Donnell for more help on the account.

One Week Later

The creative meeting wasn’t working. John and Chris were angry with each other and could not agree on an approach for Raven’s Christmas promotion. They complained that Jane was too busy to work with them the way she used to and blamed her for rushing the creative process. Jane was sympathetic but told John and Chris that they did not understand her current pressure. The meeting ended with the first real tension the group had experienced. Jane went to see Frank Donnell and asked for help, additional people, and promotions to recognize the real efforts of John and Chris.

Two Weeks Later

Jane was angry as she read her memo from Frank Donnell. Yes, her request for one additional staff person would be honored, but no promotions for Chris and John. Company policy prohibited the creation of additional senior creative positions in the West Coast office. Jane began to draft an angry response. Raven people were just beginning to appreciate their work. How was she going to continue to motivate Chris and John? Would they resent the new person? Was the Raven account worth all this trouble?

The “Newcomers Aren’t Welcome Here” Case

Joe and Henry have worked for Temple Air Conditioning and Heating for over twenty years. Both men are competent workers who were hired by Temple’s founder, Bernie Jones. In fact, Joe, Henry, and Bernie still have an occasional beer together on Friday nights after work. Bernie is always complaining that the good old days are over and that nobody should have so much paperwork to run a heating and air-conditioning business. Joe and Henry don’t think things have really changed all that much except that the houses keep getting bigger and fancier. Joe and Henry have worked as a team for the last fifteen years without a supervisor. They are part of the reason Temple has a good reputation for quality work and fast service. Joe and Henry don’t spend time with other installation teams and don’t see any reason why they should.

Early Monday Morning

Bernie’s announcement was a blow. He was bringing in a college-educated person to supervise the installation teams. Joe and Henry could hardly believe what they were hearing. They should have known something was up when Bernie called everyone together before the trucks went out on Monday morning.

JOE:

Who does he think he is, bringing in some college guy—what do we need another guy for?

HENRY:

Yeah, Bernie is losing it. He knows how this place got built—off our backs. I am not going to work for anybody, let alone somebody with a fancy degree.

JOE:

I always looked up to Bernie—and I thought he felt the same way about us. Obviously we were wrong. After twenty years, to be wrong about a guy makes you feel stupid.

HENRY:

What do you think we should do?

JOE:

How would I know?

HENRY:

Well, I’m not going to take this lying down. Are you with me?

JOE:

Sure, we can make Temple fall apart.

3. Emerging Perspectives challenge many current notions of organizational communication. Add to the following list of myths any common assumptions you can identify about organizational life.

Myth List:

Men are stronger leaders than women during organizational crises.

Women are more nurturing managers than men.

Management must exercise control for organizations to succeed.

Only a select few are capable of innovating.

Our social class determines our future.

For each myth on the list, discuss the following questions:

1. How do notions of power contribute to this statement?

2. Does this statement marginalize men or women? What does it mean for other important differences such as race and social class?

3. Describe abuses of power related to this statement.

4. How much genuine participation occurs in decision making if this statement is true?

5. What is the basis of rationality for the statement?

6. How are these statements viewed in different parts of the world?

Listen to the discussion. Is it difficult to deconstruct or critique myths of how things happen? Why? Why not?

Tips for Effective Communication

1. Identify several examples in which you believe you have been misunderstood. Take each of these examples and determine how you might have created more clarity with your message and the channels you chose for message sending. Ask for feedback about what others have understood you to mean when you send an important message.

2. Describe what is important to you in a working relationship. Ask others to describe what is important to them.

3. Learn to watch for individuals who do not participate in a discussion or project. Encourage them to participate by asking for their ideas and input.

4. Seek out individuals from cultures different from your own. Talk with them about your culture, and encourage them to share their experiences.

5. Pick out two countries about which you know very little. Use the Internet and other approaches to increase your awareness of these countries. Think about how you would communicate with a work colleague from each country.

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