PLAGIARISM FREE "A" WORK FIELD PROJECTS

Assignment 1 This is the first step in your Field Project: finding an organization to study. As your text notes: All knowledge is contextually derived- it also means that it is a good idea to study an organization in your own community. Why? Because chances are pretty good that access to the organization will be easier to acquire (e.g., friends and family members work there, you had summer employment or an internship there, you know someone who knows someone). Additionally, you probably have a basic understanding of the history and role of the organization within the community, which will come in handy when you write the paper... Approaching an organization for the purpose of doing a study is always problematic. Many for-profit companies and government agencies strictly limit access to employees and usually have no interest in allowing students from the local college or university to hang around observing people, interviewing employees and managers, and otherwise disrupting their work. Some companies even have regulations against it--and no company or agency is required to let you inside. For these reasons, it is a good idea to develop a professional relationship with the organization study before requesting permission to do a communication study. The more the people you contact trust you, the more they learn to see you as a serious person, the more likely it is that they will cooperate with your goals. To facilitate your professional relationship, we recommend the following: (This is where your assignment begins:)

• Write a one-page proposal detailing the purpose and time frame for your study, the methods of data collection that you plan to use, and the anticipated results. I can provide you with examples from prior student projects.

• Offer to provide the organization with a copy of your final paper. Agree that nothing you discover or write about will be disseminated to the public without prior written approval by the company.

• Always arrive on time, dressed in a professional manner appropriate to the standards of the organization you want to study, with a prepared list of questions to ask and a way of recording or keeping notes of interviews.

• Never directly interfere with ongoing organizational work. Make your observations as unobtrusively as possible; schedule interviews for times convenient for the interviewees.

Assignment 2 One of the fun parts of qualitative field research is "observing people in their natural environment." If this sounds like something you would do with giraffes or zebras on a safari, you would be correct: one of the biggest parts of research (quantitative and qualitative) is observing what's happening (and not interfering with it). Let's start with a reading assignment: If you have not already done so, please read "Framing Your Study" and "Ten Assumptions About Doing Field Research" on pages 363-364 in your textbook.

• "Framing Your Study" will give you some ideas about where to get more information about the organization in question. This can be very helpful, even if you are an employee/participant/member of it. What does the Internet say about it? What about local papers? Have any books or journal articles been written about it? On the other hand, how does the organization display what it does to the public? Road signs? Tall billboard? TV ads? In a later chapter, we'll talk about what these signs, etc., say.

• Second, look at the "Ten Assumptions About Doing Field Research." These guidelines are helpful for planning the next parts of your study.

• Finally, read the first four bullet points on page 365 under the header, "How to Study Naturalistic Communication in an Organization." Use these bullet points to write the next section of your paper. Use at least 100 words per bullet (if applicable), but keep the entire section under 1,000 words.

Assignment 3 The first thing I need you to do is think about the organization you are looking at as a system or a part of a system (using our systems theory lecture).

• How do the organization's members receive and send information? • If you ask them, "How are things around here?" what do they say? Does Karl Weick's

"retrospective sense-making" help you understand their answers? Second, who's in charge? Yes, we know what the titles of each person are, but are they really in charge?

• How do you know who is really in charge? Is it their communication style, their style, their attitude? Is there no leader at all, or is there more than one leader?

• Is leadership shared in your organization? Third, what about power?

• Is power in the organization linked to one's academics, their gender, their age, their reputation, or something else?

• Are there heroes and/or heroines in the organization? Are there stories about the organization that people readily know, and if so, what do these stories tell you about the organization?

As before, please keep this entire section under 1,000 words, with at least 150 words per bullet point topic (above). Oh, and don't use bullet points when covering each of these points in your paper: Make it more professional than that.

Assignment 4 This week, “communication” is the keyword in your organization:

• What is the role of communication consulting and training in this group or Department?

o Is there an overall company plan for training and development, or is it left up to the individual workers?

o What kinds of issues or problems are managed by the group or department, and what kinds of issues or problems require the assistance of a professional consultant?

o How satisfied are the employees with past consulting interventions? ▪ What stories do they tell? How do the members describe the future of

this company or agency? ▪ Do their metaphors suggest particular outcomes?

o Remember, you are studying everyday communication in this organization. ▪ How are you defining “communication” for the purposes of your

study? ▪ What counts as communication? ▪ What doesn't?

▪ Can you see communication as the moment-to-moment working out of the tensions between individuals’ desire for creativity and the organizations’ need for constraint?

This last major point may require some thinking, so mull it for a while before putting pen to paper. As before, please keep this entire section under 1,000 words, but use at least 150 words per each main point. Oh, and don't use bullet points when covering each of these points in your paper: Make it more professional than that.

Assignment 5 Final Paper: Narrative Format – Putting the data into a readable, comprehensive format. The final paper (Part 5) must address all the questions asked in each of the earlier parts and include a thoughtful, well-communicated summary of the entire project. It must also contain any revisions to the earlier sections and the balance of the paper.