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While theories in many disciplines can be hard for some to understand, in a field like Communication, our theories are important to understand because they directly impact our daily lives. In this respect, they serve several functions in guiding our communication.
Communication Theory and You
Sean De’Bey with Sylfronia King
In elementary school you might have believed in cooties. Or, you might have believed that if a boy was mean to a girl, he must have liked her, and vice versa. In Jr. High and High School, finding a date to the homecoming or prom could be one of the most intimidating things to do. Now, in college, the dating world has once again evolved. The ambiguity between what defines a date and a friendly night out can be frustrating for some and exciting for others. Regardless, when situations like these appear, it is easy to seek advice from friends about the situation, ask a parent, or search the web for answers. Each of these resources will likely provide theories about functioning in relationships that you can choose to use or dismiss when clarifying the relationship’s dynamic situation. What are some theories you’ve heard about how to communicate in cross-gendered relationships?
The first function theories serve is that they help us organize and understand our communication experiences. We use theories to organize a broad range of experiences into smaller categories by paying attention to “common features” of communication situations (Infante, Rancer & Womack). How many times have you surfed the internet and found articles or quizzes on relationships and what they mean for different genders? Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversations, argues that men and women talk in significantly different ways and for significantly different reasons. Of course, these differences cannot be applied to all men and women. But, theories on gender communication help us organize and understand the talk of the different genders in a more simplified context so we can understand general patterns of communication behavior. This helps us make appropriate decisions in gendered communication situations.
A second function of theories is that they help us choose what communicative behaviors to study. Theories guide where we choose to look, what we look at, and how we look at communicative phenomenon. Remember back to Chapter 1 where we defined communication study. Theories focus our attention on certain aspects of that definition. If you find that Tannen’s theories regarding how men and women talk differ from your own perceptions, or that they’re outdated, you might choose to more closely study the talk or non-verbals of men and women to see if you can rectify the difference in theoretical perspectives. You likely already do this on a personal level. Googling something as simple as “how to act in a relationship,” will lead you to hundreds of websites and articles breaking down the dynamics of relationships depending on one’s gender. Likewise, if you want to persuade someone to do something for you, you probably have a theory about what strategies you can use to get them to do what you want. Your theory guides how you approach your persuasive attempts, and what you look for to see if you were successful or not.
A third function of theories is that they help us broaden our understanding of human communication. Scholars who study communication share theories with one another online, through books, journal articles, and at conferences. The sharing of theories generates dialogue, which allows us to further refine the theories developed in this field. Tannen’s book allowed the public to re-think the personal theories they had about the communication of men and women. With the opportunity to find countless theories through new books, magazines, the Internet, and TV shows, the general public has the opportunity to find theories that will influence how they understand and communicate in the world. But, are these theories valid and useful? It’s likely that you discuss your personal theories of communication with others on a regular basis to get their feedback.
A fourth function of theories is that they help us predict and control our communication. When we communicate, we try to predict how our interactions will develop so we can maintain a certain level of control. Imagine being at a party and you want to talk to someone that you find attractive. You will use some sort of theory about how to talk to others to approach this situation in order to make it more successful. As in all situations, the better your theoretical perspectives, the better chances for success when communicating. While theories do not allow us to predict and control communication with 100% certainty, they do help us function in daily interactions at a more predictable and controlled level. Notice that when you are successful, or unsuccessful, in your interactions, you use this information to assess and refine your own theoretical perspectives.
A fifth function of theories is that they help us challenge current social and cultural realities by providing new ways of thinking and living. People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that the ways we communicate are innate rather than learned. This is not true. In order to challenge the communicative norms we learn, people use critical theories to ask questions about the status quo of human communication, particularly focusing on how humans use communication to bring advantage and privilege to particular people or groups. For example, Tannen argues that when men listen to women express their troubles, they listen with the purpose of wanting to provide a fix, or give advice. Tannen argues that many times, women are not looking for advice or a fix, but rather empathy or sympathy from their male conversational partners. With this understanding, it’s possible to begin teaching men new strategies for listening in cross-gendered conversations that serve to build stronger communication ties. Critical theories challenge our traditional theoretical understandings, providing alternative communicative behaviors for social change.
While theories serve many useful functions, these functions don’t really matter if we do not have well-developed theories that provide a good representation of how our world works. While we all form our personal theories through examining our experiences, how are communication theories developed?
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.03%3A_Functions_of_Communication_Theory.txt |
At this point, you may be wonder where communication theories come from. Because we cannot completely rely on our personal theories for our communication, people like your professors develop communication theories by starting with their own personal interests, observations, and questions about communication (Miller & Nicholson). Those of us who study communication are in a continual process of forming, testing, and reforming theories of communication (Littlejohn & Foss) so that we have a better understanding of our communicative practices. There are three essential steps involved in developing Communication theories: 1) Ask important questions, 2) look for answers by observing communicative behavior, and 3) form answers and theories as a result of your observations (Littlejohn & Foss).
Asking important questions is the first step in the process of discovering how communication functions in our world. Tannen’s work grew out of her desire to find out answers to questions about why men and women “can’t seem to communicate,” a commonly held theory by many. As a result of her line of questioning, she has spent a career asking questions and finding answers. Likewise, John Gottman has spent his career researching how married couples can be relationally successful. Both of their findings, and the theories the have developed, often contradict common beliefs about how men and women communicate, as well as long-term romantic relationships.
However, simply asking questions is not enough. It is important that we find meaningful answers to our questions in order to continue to improve our communication. In the field of Communication, answers to our questions have the potential to help us communicate better with one another, as well as provide positive social change. If you’ve ever questioned why something is the way it is, perhaps you’re on your way to discovering the next big theory by finding meaningful answers to your questions.
When we find answers to our questions, we are able to form theories about our communication. Answering our questions helps us develop more sophisticated ways of understanding the communication around us – theories! You may have a theory about how to make friends. You use this theory to guide your behavior, then ask questions to find out if your theory works. The more times you prove that it works, the stronger your theory becomes about making friends. But, how do we know if a theory is good, or not?
Developing Good Theories
Take a moment to compare Newton’s theory of gravity to communication theories. Simply put, Newton theorized that there is a force that draws objects to the earth. We base our physical behaviors on this theory, regardless of how well we understand its complexities. For example, if you hold a pen above a desk and let go, you know that it will fall and hit the desk every time you drop it. In contrast, communication theories change and develop over time (Infante, Rancer & Womack; Kaplan; Kuhn). For example, you might theorize that smiling at someone should produce a smile back. You speculate that this should happen most of the time, but it probably would not surprise you if it does not happen every time. Contrast this to gravity. If you dropped a pen, and it floated, you would likely be very surprised, if not a little bit worried about the state of the world.
Communication Theory Now
The Environmental Paradigm Shift
Not long ago those concerned about environmental issues were considered minority or fringe groups and, as a result, many of their concerns were dismissed. Yet today environmental concerns have so infiltrated the mainstream that it is now “trendy” to be an environmentalist. Thanks to scientists asking difficult theoretical and practical questions about consumption of scarce resources, awareness about air and water quality, food safety, and global warming has become part of global public discourse and “environmentalism has caught on everywhere.” According to Jackson, “There’s been a paradigm shift in society away from thinking of the Earth as an unending source of resources to instead looking at it as a wider living ecosystem that we are slowly killing. The shift is evident in everything from popular movies to eco-friendly products. From international political treaties regarding environmental policies to waste management strategies within small communities (Jackson).” In fact, evidence has contributed so significantly to theories around global warming that NASA now reports that 97% of climate scientists believe that “climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”
If communication theories are not 100% consistent, like theories in the physical sciences, why are they useful? This question has initiated a great deal of debate among those who study communication. While there is no definitive answer to this question, there are a number of criteria we use to evaluate the value of communication theories. According to Littlejohn and Foss, scope, parsimony, heuristic value, openness, appropriateness, and validity are starting places for evaluating whether or not a theory is good.
• Scope refers to how broad or narrow a theory is (Infante, Rancer & Womack; Shaw & Costanzo). Theories that cover various domains are considered good theories, but if a theory is too broad it may not account for specific instances that are important for understanding how we communicate. If it is too narrow, we may not be able to understand communication in general terms. Narrow theories work well if the range of events they cover can be applied to a large number of situations. It is easier to understand some theories when we are given examples or can see being played out.
• Parsimony refers to the idea that, all things being equal, the simplest solution takes precedence over a more complicated one. Thus, a theory is valuable when it is able to explain, in basic terms, complex communicative situations. If the theory cannot be explained in simple terms it is not demonstrating parsimony.
• Heuristic Value means that a theory prompts other theorists to engage in further study and theorizing about a given problem. The Greeks used the term heurisko, meaning “I find” to refer to an idea, which stimulates additional thinking and discovery. This is an important criterion that facilitates intellectual growth, development, and problem solving. For most Communication theories, it would be quite easy to track their development as more people weighed in on the discussion.
• Openness is the quality that a theory allows for, and recognizes, multiple options and perspectives. In essence, a good theory acknowledges that it is “tentative, contextual, and qualified” (Littlejohn & Foss, 30) and is open to refinement. The openness of a theory should allow a person to examine its multiple options and perspectives in order to personally determine if the theory holds up or not.
• Appropriateness refers to the fit between the underlying theoretical assumptions and the research question. Theories must be consistent with the assumptions, goals, and data of the research in question. Let’s say you want to understand the relationship between playing violent video games and actual violence. One of your assumptions about human nature might be that people are active, rather, than passive agents, meaning we don’t just copy what we see in the media. Given this, examining this issue from a theoretical perspective that suggests people emulate whatever they see in the media would not be appropriate for explaining phenomenon.
• Validity refers to the worth and practical nature of a theory. The question should be asked, “is a theory representative of reality?” There are three qualities of validity — value, fit, and generalizability. Is a theory valuable for the culture at large? Does it fit with the relationship between the explanations offered by the theory and the actual data? Finally, is it generalizable to a population beyond the sample size? In our example of the relationship between violent video games and actual violence, let’s say we studied 100 boys and 100 girls, ages 12-15, from a small rural area in California. Could we then generalize or apply our theories to everyone who plays video games?
The above criteria serve as a starting point for generating and evaluating theories. As we move into the next section on specific theoretical paradigms, you will see how some of these criteria work. Let’s now turn to look at ways to more easily conceptualize the broad range of communication theories that exist.
Theoretical Paradigms
One way to simplify the understanding of complex theories is to categorize multiple theories into broader categories, or paradigms. A paradigm is a collection of concepts, values, assumptions, and practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for a community that shares them, especially an intellectual community. According to Kuhn, intellectual revolutions occur when people abandon previously held paradigms for new ones. For example, when Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. argued the earth was a sphere, rather than flat, he presented a paradigm shift.
In the field of communication there are numerous ways to categorize and understand theoretical paradigms. No single way is more valuable than another, nor is any paradigm complete or better in its coverage of Communication. Instead, paradigms are a way for us to organize a great number of ideas into categories. For our purposes, we’ve divided communication theories into five paradigms that we call the Empirical Laws, Human Rules, Rhetorical, Systems, and Critical Paradigms.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.04%3A_How_We_Develop_Communication_Theories.txt |
Theories in the Empirical Laws Paradigm approach Communication from the perspective that there are universal laws that govern how we communicate. Other names for Empirical Laws include: hard science, the positivist approach, the covering-laws approach, and the classical approach. Natural scientists look for universal laws to understand and explain our world.
Using our example of gravity, we know that objects fall to the earth 100% of the time when we drop them. This is a universal law. As Chapter 2 showed, in the late 1950’s scholars began studying human communication using approaches developed in the natural sciences (aka the Scientific Method). Thus, early proponents of Empirical Laws theories studied communication to see if there were universal communication laws similar to those in the natural world.
Laws and Communication
Natural laws at work in our world influence every moment of our lives. Every time you fly in an airplane or cross a bridge you trust that the people who designed and built the plane and bridge followed the physical laws that allow a plane to fly and a bridge to span a distance without collapsing. Every time you press the brakes on a car you trust them to slow you down based on the laws explaining how long a mass, traveling at a certain speed, takes to stop. Even if you do not understand all of these laws, you live by them and believe the laws themselves hold true 100% of the time.
Are there laws you follow about communication with this kind of regularity? Are they applicable 100% of the time, in all situations, and with all people? What happens if someone breaks one of these laws? Are the consequences similar to when you break physical laws? For example, is the consequence for calling someone by the wrong name comparable to that of hitting your brakes and them not working?
Those who approach communication from an empirical laws perspective believe there are laws that govern human communication. The premise of this approach can be stated as a simple equation of causation: If X, then Y. For example, if I greet a person with “Hi, how are you?” then I anticipate a response, “Fine, how are you?” It’s likely that you conduct much of your communication using this equation. However, does that mean that it works all of the time?
Communication Theory Then
The Empirical Revolution (1950–1970): Theory In A Test Tube
Speech departments in the 1950s promoted the ancient rhetorical wisdom that persuasive discourse was a matter of an ethical speaker using logical arguments—‘‘the good man speaking well.”11 But younger faculty with training in the social sciences were no longer willing to accept this ‘‘truth” by faith. Armed with a scientific skepticism and new methods to assess attitudes, they put rhetorical principles to the test…
Aristotle, for example, wrote that ethos was a combination of a speaker’s intelligence, character, and goodwill toward the audience. Empirically oriented speech researchers subsequently discovered that audience rankings of “communicator credibility” did indeed include factors of competence (intelligence) and trustworthiness (character).12 But they found no evidence that audiences regarded goodwill or positive intentions as traits separate from character.
Scholars interested in this kind of study adopted the media-effects term communication research to distinguish their work from the historical-critical textual analysis of rhetoricians. In 1950 a group of communication researchers founded what is now the International Communication Association (ICA) as a science-based professional organization to rival the Speech Association of America, which was grounded in the humanities. Traditional speech teachers of this era often accused communication researchers of succumbing to ‘‘the law of the hammer.” This was a not-so-subtle dig at those who would pound away with newly acquired statistical tools no matter what the job required.
But irony did little to slow the radical transformation within the communication discipline….The empiricists continued to borrow their core ideas from other disciplines—especially social psychology. Indeed, five of the thirty-three communication theories in this book come from that specialized branch of psychology. Their common methodology and unity of world view gave social scientists in the communication field a greater impact than their numbers alone would indicate. In 1969, the SAA changed its name to the Speech Communication Association (SCA). The term communication in the title was tacit evidence that the scientific approach now dominated the discipline. At the start of the 1960s few departments that taught speech had the word communication as part of their title. By the mid 1970s there were few that didn’t.
There are three characteristics that help us understand empirical laws theories: causation, prediction, and generalization (Infante, Rancer & Womack). Causation states that there is a “cause and effect” relationship for all actions. In the physical world, if someone drops a pen it will fall. In human communication, if someone says “hello” to someone, that person responds. Prediction suggests that once someone determines a particular law is at work, they will use it to predict outcomes of communication situations. Have you ever rehearsed how you will ask someone out on a date and tried to predict the outcome?
Causation, Generalization, Prediction
What evidence did you use to make your prediction? In this example, you are using the “if X, then Y” equation to predict the outcome of the interaction. Generalization suggests that if a prediction shows that a behavior produces a certain outcome, we can generalize our predictions to include a wide variety of people, situations, and contexts. We make generalization such as, “If I’m friendly to others, they will be friendly to me” based on our past experiences with this type of behavior. However, this does not account for scenarios in which the person might not hear you, might be having a bad day and do not wish to respond, or assume you are talking to another person so they choose not to acknowledge you.
In the physical sciences, laws are absolute. This is comforting because it allows us to make informed decisions based on what we know about the laws that govern the world around us. In our example of gravity, we know that dropping an object will produce the same result every time. We could spend the rest of our lives testing this theory, but we don’t have to. We know what the result will be without having to continuously drop an object. Now, imagine what it would be like to always know what the outcome would be of every communication situation! Would that be comforting to you, or make your life boring?
Unlike the physical world, laws that govern human communication are not absolute and are most often bound by culture and context. Empirical laws theories are generally approached from the perspective of probability rather than absoluteness (Miller & Berger). Probability states that under certain conditions it is highly likely that we can predict communication outcomes. For example, when you greet someone with “hello” it is probable, not absolute, they will respond back with a greeting of their own. If they do not, you might run through a variety of reasons why the other person did not respond in accordance with the “laws” that govern greetings in our culture. Even though empirical laws theories do not produce absolutes about communication, we still use them in our everyday interactions with one another. Businesses, advertisers, schools, and other organizations use this approach to predict consumer, educational, and behavioral habits of particular demographic groups. While their approaches never produce a 100% cause-effect relationship, the information they gather helps them determine what actions to take to be successful in their communicative behaviors.
Empirical Laws in Action
Empirical laws theories are a relatively new approach for understanding communication. We have only been developing empirical laws theories of communication for the past 100 or so years. To date, none of this research has come to the conclusion that, given a certain circumstance, a particular communicative behavior will ALWAYS produce a particular outcome. However, working under an empirical laws approach that accepts probability, we have many research examples that demonstrate probable laws that govern human communication.
Communication Theory Then
Hovland, Janis, and Kelley (1953) were some of the first to use empirical laws theories to explain communication. Their interests in mass communication and propaganda during World War II led them to study effective persuasion in mass communication and propaganda campaigns. They theorized that the more attractive a communicator, along with other traits, the more likely people would be persuaded. Their empirical laws theories still influence how a great deal of mass media is produced today. Think about movies, television shows, and advertisements you see. Are most of the people you watch in these mediums considered attractive and intelligent? Those who produce mass media use tremendous resources to research probabilistic empirical laws of human behavior before making decisions about what and who to include in their messages. On a smaller scale, we all use probabilistic empirical laws to govern, predict, and control our communication with others.
The area of leadership in group and organizational communication has a body of well-established empirical laws theories called the trait approaches. These theories suggest that there are certain physical, personality, and communicative characteristics that make one person more likely to be a leader over another (Northouse). Trait theories propose that people in western societies who are physically tall, charismatic, intelligent, white, and male are more likely to be leaders, be perceived as leaders, be placed in more leadership positions, and make better leaders than those who don’t exhibit these characteristics. You may be thinking, “But what about people like Mother Theresa, Mohatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Caeser Chavez, or Barack Obama?” This question brings up two important points. First, it shows that communication theories are not absolute. Second, it shows that some theoretical viewpoints may work to promote a certain worldview of those in positions of power, an idea we’ll explore more thoroughly when we look at the Critical Theories Paradigm. Despite feeling uncomfortable with some of the assumptions of trait theories, if you look at those in the highest levels of leadership in the U.S., the vast majority have characteristics described in trait theories.
Strengths
A particular strength of empirical laws theories is that they help us determine cause and effect relationships in our communication with others. Understanding communication using these theories helps us predict the outcomes of our interactions with others. While we know that not all outcomes can be determined with 100% reliability, prediction and control allows us to more easily navigate our encounters. Think about the number of encounters you have each day in which you quickly predict and control your interaction with others. While not 100% conclusive, it’s comforting that a great number of our interactions have a certain level of probable outcomes.
Weaknesses
A criticism of empirical laws theory is that while it is useful for understanding relatively simple interactions, it can oversimplify or fail to explain situations where a number of variables exist. Your classroom environment serves as a good example. While there are certain predictions you can make about how communication will occur in your classes, why is it that each classroom experience is unique? In your classrooms, it is impossible to predict, control, and generalize how a class will go with 100% accuracy because it is impossible to replicate classes in exactly the same ways. This approach does not account for the variety of human choices and behaviors that are brought into every communication context. It operates under the assumption that, given the same context, people bring the same things to the context each time. Obviously, this is not the case. Human behaviors are complex and cannot be predicted at a 100% accuracy rate. However, empirical laws theories work well for showing us patterns of behavior that guide our communication.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.05%3A_Empirical_Laws_Paradigm.txt |
Some Communication scholars believe that we cannot, and should not, try to study communication with an approach that does not work as accurately as it does in the physical sciences (Winch). These scholars believed empirical laws theories could not explain communication effectively so they began developing theories around the idea of rules rather than laws. By now you are aware that we all follow rules that guide our communication. If we didn’t, human communication would be total chaos and confusion. The Human Rules Paradigm approaches communication from the perspective that we follow shared rules of communication, not strict laws (Shimanoff). While Human Rules theories share similar assumptions with empirical laws, they promote a more flexible approach to communication by suggesting that we follow general rules of communication rather than absolute laws that apply 100% of the time to our interactions.
The Difference Between Rules and Laws
There is an old saying, “rules are meant to be broken.” This simple statement highlights the fundamental difference between empirical laws and human rules approaches to communication. If you break a law in the physical world there is always a consequence. For example, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. A car accident is often a disastrous example of an attempt to break this law. However, if you break a rule, it may not have the same consequences as breaking a law. For example, your parents may have set a curfew for you when you were younger. Imagine you were on your way home at night but stopped to help a friend change a flat tire. Your parents may choose to not punish you after you explain to them the reason you violated the rule.
Those who approach communication using human rules theories believe that communication rules are created by people, and are therefore always open to change. Put another way, empirical laws theories seek absolute “Truth” that we can discover through careful observation and testing. Human rules theories see “truth” as subjective and created by humans, not set by the universe in which we live.
Rules are dynamic, whereas laws are not. Rules are contextually and culturally dependent and change as we change. Take for example Social Exchange Theory, which theorizes that people participate in relationships when there is a fair exchange of costs and rewards (Roloff; Walster, Walster & Berscheid). When the rules of exchange are violated, participants may choose to terminate the relationship. For example, you’ve likely had a friend who began dating a new boyfriend or girlfriend. You probably realized quite quickly that your friend suddenly, “did not have time for you anymore.” If you were upset over this, you were most likely upset that your friend violated the rules of social exchange; in this case the exchange was time spent together. In this example, you may feel like the change in relationship means you not having your needs met by your friend, while they are likely getting their needs met by the new relationship. Thus, a violation of social exchange has occurred.
Using human rules theories we are still able to predict how people might communicate, much like empirical laws theories. However, unlike empirical laws theories, rules are bound by context and not universal to all situations. For example, we predict that most people abide by posted speed limits on roadways. While we know that there are always exceptions to this (sometimes we are the exception!), we can predict a certain type of driving experience based on rules. Not all places approach speed limits from this perspective.
One of our exchange students came to class one day extremely upset. When asked what was wrong, the student stated he had received a speeding ticket. To this student, the speeding ticket made no sense at all. Why? In the U.S. we approach speed limits as a maximum speed, and risk a ticket when we exceed it. It’s a law. However, this student stated that in his country, speed limits are considered guidelines for how fast to drive. The student went on to explain that police officers in his country are not interested in determining if people accidentally or purposefully drive above the posted speed limit. Instead, they let people make their own decisions regarding the guidelines of the posted speed limits. In this example, the U.S. approach to speed limits is one of law; break the law and there are consequences. The student’s country approached speed limits from a rules perspective; there is flexibility to interpret and act according to the interpretation of the rules based on the current driving conditions, or context.
Think of rules you choose to follow or break every day. Sitting in a classroom, taking notes, listening to your instructor, and doing homework are all “rules” of how to communicate being a student. However, no one is forcing you to follow these rules. You can choose to follow them or not. If you choose to follow them, you probably do so for a variety of reasons. Each rule we choose to follow is a choice. As with all things, there are outcomes as a result of our choices, but unlike empirical laws theories, human rules theories suggest that our experiences are socially constructed in ways that make it easier to organize experience into collectives of general rules that we follow. That way, we are not overly surprised when our interactions do not produce predicted outcomes 100% of the time.
Strengths
One of the primary strengths of human rules theories is that they account for choice in communication behaviors. They suggest that we are not controlled by external laws when it comes to our communication. Instead, we develop rules to help facilitate and understand our interactions, while at the same time not being bound to abide by these rules at all times (remember, rules are sometimes meant to be broken). Thus, we can take comfort in following rules of communication to guide our interactions, but also know that we have flexibility to “play” with the rules because they are dynamic and contextual.
Weaknesses
The primary criticism with human rules theories is that they cannot fully predict behavior or outcomes. However, as of now all theories fail to do this when applied to human communication. Another criticism of human rules theories is that they are culturally and contextually bound. So, when we develop theories about something like communication anxiety as it relates to public speaking, we do so under the framework of our cultural perspective. These same theories often do not apply to other cultures.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.06%3A_Human_Rules_Paradigm.txt |
The Systems Theory Paradigm represents a dramatic theoretical shift from empirical laws and human rules approaches for understanding communication. Systems thinking began in the social and physical sciences in the 19th century with George Hegel (Kaufmann), and was more fully developed by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 20th century.
Von Bertalanffy argued that everything is interconnected and therefore, we should study interconnectedness as a means of understanding the world. This departs from empirical approaches that traditionally study phenomena by looking at individual components. Conversations surrounding global warming are among the most recognizable ideas of systems theory. In effect, those that warn us of global warming tell us that all of our actions have an impact on one another and our environment, and thus, we must be mindful of what we do, or we will continue to cause harm to everything on earth.
Case In Point
Bike and Surf California — as written for www.Phoresia.org
It started off as a simple idea. My friend Mike and I wanted to go on a surf trip. Nothing strange about that! However, we have grown increasingly alarmed at how much we drive around looking for surf and the environmental impact this has. It’s been much easier to recognize the amount of gas we burn as fuel prices have now pushed \$5.00 a gallon in our area. As a result of our increasing awareness and concern, Mike and I wanted to do our trip with minimal environmental impact. How close to a zero-carbon footprint could we come?
I wondered if it would be possible to tow boards and gear behind bikes. We began to plan out all of the details of our trip, preparing to do the ride from Fort Bragg, CA to Santa Barbara, CA over a nine day period. All seemed perfectly simple as we began to put together the pieces for a successful trip. Then, at 4:00 a.m. on a February morning I woke up and thought, “I wonder if we can get sponsors?” We began a letter writing campaign to environmentally friendly gear manufacturers letting them know what we were doing, why we were doing it, and asked if they would like to donate sustainable gear to help us on our journey. While having new gear is great, it was our intent and promise to use the donated gear to educate others about our environmental impacts as consumers and sports enthusiasts, and to demonstrate the alternatives that are available. To our surprise, we received sponsorships from 22 organizations! Going back to systems theory, each of our sponsor’s actions impacted Mike and me. We can never fully realize the full scope of our actions. We can only hope that our actions do more positive than negative. What we were seeing taking place was a real-world example of systems theory.
Systems theory is easily summed up with a simple definition: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Put another way, anything we do as individuals impacts others around us, as well as the environment in which we exist. Discussions about global warming are, in reality, debates about a global version of systems theory. We are becoming increasingly aware that none of us truly exist as individuals without impacting others. Many cultures have long-recognized the importance of thinking from a collectivist perspective, looking out for the good of the whole rather than pursuing the good of the individual. For those of us born and raised in cultures that value the experience of the individual, we are beginning to learn the larger consequences of trying to exist outside the scope of systems theory. We can never fully realize the full scope of our actions. We can only hope that our actions do more positive than negative.
When applied to communication, the Systems Theory Paradigm seeks to understand the interconnectedness of human communication rather than looking at just one part. The basic idea behind Systems Theory is, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” An easy example of this is baking a cake. If you were to lay out all of the ingredients of a cake, you would not have a cake. Instead, you would have the ingredients of cake. But, combine those ingredients in a particular way, you produce a cake. Not only that, you produce an experience surrounding the cake (think birthday, anniversary, wedding, etc.). What is produced by making a cake equals so much more than the simple combination of ingredients.
Another example is an automobile engine. If you have all the pieces of an automobile engine on a garage floor, you do not have an engine. You have parts of an engine. But, if you put the engine parts together in the right way, you get something much greater than the parts; you get transportation. These examples demonstrate the idea that, what makes a cake or automobile engine is the actual interaction or combination of their parts, not the simple sum of the parts themselves.
One area of communication study that utilizes systems theory extensively is the study of Organizational Communication. Scholars in this specialization are interested in the interaction of people to see how they create what we know as organizations (Bavelas & Segal; Katz & Kahn). For example, what makes Wal-mart different than Target? It’s not simply their products or prices. Instead, these two mega-retail stores have a certain “personality” and way of functioning that is different from the other. Those who look at communication from a systems perspective believe that it is the interaction of the participants that makes organizations what they are.
One characteristic of the Systems Theory Paradigm is that systems are teleological (Infante, Rancer & Womack), meaning that they seek to achieve a particular goal or outcome. The goal of combining the ingredients of a cake is to produce a cake and facilitate an occasion. The goal of a working automobile engine is transportation. The goal of having a family is love and support. The goal of a business is to produce products and profit. Communication researchers examine the interactions of those that make up systems to understand the systems’ goals, as well as how they attempt to achieve goals.
Another characteristic of systems is they are always trying to achieve homeostasisthe state of equilibrium or balance. Using the idea of a family, most families attempt to fit in with their neighbors, co-workers, friends, city, country, culture, etc. Systems are always in a process of trying to achieve a level of homeostasis with their environment. When changes occur in either the environment or a system, system participants will adapt in order to maintain balance. For example, if you moved away from your immediate family to attend college your move had an impact on the homeostasis of your family. As a result, everyone in your family had to adjust in some way to the change brought about by your move in order to create a new sense of homeostasis. Even though you are still part of the family system, the system changed as a result of your move, and must respond in order to adapt to the change.
The power of looking at communication from a systems perspective is that every communicative act impacts the system as a whole. When there is a change in one part of a system, it changes the entire system to some degree. Let’s revisit our example of an automobile engine. Let’s say a truck engine started making a terrible noise. The sound was so bad that one would think it might cost hundreds of dollars to fix the problem. However, a mechanic quickly finds that a small bolt had fallen out. Fifty-three cents later (tax included), and five minutes of time, the engine no longer made the terrible noise. Homeostasis was reached once again through the change of one very small part of the engine.
Like a car engine, we form systems with whom we interact. One of the reasons each of your college classes is unique is that each person (component) is unique, and thus, the interaction among the components is unique and cannot be duplicated. When we apply this approach to our communication exchanges we can learn many things about the impacts that our interactions have in the systems in which we interact. Think about systems you belong to like family, work, church, friends, etc. How do your communicative acts, whether big or small, impact the dynamics of these systems? What ways do you communicate in these systems? Do you use things like Skype, Facetime, text messaging, or the traditional phone call to communicate with the members in your systems? Technology continues to open new doors of communication that allows us to participate in a system without having to be physically apart of it.
Strengths
Systems Theory Paradigm seeks to understand a more complete picture by examining multiple layers of communication as interconnected rather than looking at isolated people or communication acts. This key strength of the paradigm does not try to predict human behavior, but rather explain it in ways that highlight the interconnectedness of people and their communicative acts. Much of the way we communicate is culturally and contextually specific. This approach does not seek to make universal generalizations about human communication, but rather, explain the totality of our interactions.
Weaknesses
One of the primary criticisms of the Systems Theory Paradigm is that it can be too broad in its focus. If everything is interconnected, how do we know what to study? What do we focus on when trying to understand communication interactions? This can prove challenging considering the dynamic and changing nature of systems, particularly human systems built on changing relationships. It can be difficult to answer why things happen when we use this approach, making it problematic for generating further theories of human communication. Finally, because it is a relatively new approach for understanding communication, this paradigm has yet to produce a definitive body of research. Studies from this perspective tend to take significant time and money to accomplish.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.07%3A_Systems_Theory_Paradigm.txt |
Rhetoric is the oldest tradition of the Communication field. A good definition of rhetoric is, “any kind of human symbol use that functions in any realm—public, private, and anything in between” (Foss, Foss & Trapp, 7). Remember that one of our definitions for theory is, “a way of framing an experience or event—an effort to understand and account for something and the way it functions in the world” (Foss, Foss, & Griffin, 8). Combining these definitions allows us to understand the Rhetorical Theories Paradigm as, “a way to understand and account for the way any kind of human symbol use functions in any realm.” Scholars have historically used rhetorical theories as a way to produce and evaluate messages.
Theories of Message Production
If you have taken a public speaking course, you were likely exposed to rhetorical theories of message production. In public speaking classes students are taught methods for organizing presentations, building credibility with the audience, and making messages more entertaining, informative, and/or persuasive. You probably intuitively understand that there are effective ways for putting together messages. But, how do you know what is truly effective or ineffective? Whether you are preparing a public presentation, an advertising campaign, or trying to persuade a friend, rhetorical theories guide the ways you produce messages. Companies devote millions of dollars to produce the advertisements we see. You can bet that significant research has gone into what messages will work the best so they do not waste their money on ineffective advertising. Audience analysis, context, goals, etc., are all considered before producing and delivering these messages.
Over the centuries, Communication scholars have devoted entire careers studying what it takes to produce effective messages. Aristotle gave us his ideas of ethos (credibility), logos (logic), and pathos (emotions) as fundamental components for constructing persuasive messages. Cicero gave us the five canons of rhetoric, or the five necessary steps for putting together an effective message. In the modern era, Stephen Toulmin developed the Toulmin model as a means for constructing persuasive arguments. Toulmin’s model of message production includes a claim, grounds, warrant, backing, modal qualifier, and rebuttal. The claim is the conclusion or argument being made. The grounds are the data and facts offered to support the claim. To logically connect the grounds to the claim, a warrant is given. The backing is used to support the warrant and the qualifiersmake a statement about the strength of the claim. Words such as “possible,” “certainly,” and “definitely” are examples of qualifiers. Any exception to the claim is the rebuttal. Even if you are unfamiliar with rhetorical theories of message production above, you likely have a good idea of what makes an effective message. For Toulmin, effectiveness was based on issues of practicality — to find a claim that is of interest to people and the ability to justify it. The greater understanding you have of rhetorical theories of message production, the greater potential you have for producing effective messages in a variety of contexts.
Toulmin Model
Theories of Message Evaluation
Super Bowl Sunday is a day that many people gather together to watch a big football game on television. It is also a day that many people give special attention to watching commercials. It has become a popular pastime for people to evaluate the quality of commercials shown during the Super Bowl. In fact, all of the commercials from the Super Bowl are put on the internet for people to watch and evaluate.
Patriots-Steelers 2005
Many people spend a considerable amount of time discussing the effectiveness of commercials. Those who engage in these conversations are, at a basic level, engaging in message evaluation. If you make a comment about these commercials such as, “that was funny” or “that was stupid” you are using some kind of criteria to come to those conclusions. A person approaching these messages using rhetorical theories would ask “why was that funny or stupid?” In other words, what works, or doesn’t work, about certain messages?
There are many ways we can use rhetorical theories to evaluate messages. We might choose to use a feminist, an ideological, or a narrative approach to evaluate message effectiveness. For example, Kenneth Burke argues that we can evaluate messages by understanding them as a dramatic play. He contends that all messages contain acts, scenes, agents, purposes, and agencies. If you were to evaluate your relationships with your friends from this perspective, who are the agents, what is the scene, and what act of the play are you in? Jean Baudrillard states that we can evaluate messages from the perspective that messages are commodities that we exchange. Whereas, Michel Foucault asserts that we can evaluate messages by looking at how power is enacted in them. Rhetorical theories give us different “lenses” for us to understand messages. No interpretation is right or wrong. Instead, each interpretation allows us to have a more comprehensive understanding of communication.
As with message production, we are constantly in the process of evaluating messages that are sent and received by us. The greater understanding you have of rhetorical theories for both putting together and evaluating messages, the greater potential you have to be an effective communicator in a variety of contexts. For rhetorical theorists, the message is the primary focus of inquiry when approaching the study of communication.
Strengths
The primary strength of the Rhetorical Theories Paradigm is its ability to help us produce and evaluate effective messages. Rhetorical theories provide a way for us to take context into consideration when we examine messages. Unlike empirical laws theories, rhetorical theories highlight the importance of considering context as essential for understanding messages. Finally, rhetorical theories provide a way for us to foster multiple perspectives in the evaluation and construction of messages.
Weaknesses
A primary weakness of rhetorical theories comes from one of its strengths. With such an intense focus on messages, it is possible to overlook alternative interpretations of messages. Also, some theories of message evaluation are not critical enough to reveal power dynamics at work in message exchanges. Finally, rhetorical theories are often not generalizable across a variety of communication contexts. While some rhetorical theories can be generalized, rhetorical theories are most often highly contextualized.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.08%3A_Rhetorical_Theories_Paradigm.txt |
At this point you have learned about four different theoretical paradigms we use to understand communication. One problem with these approaches is they often lack an explicit critique of the status quo of communication. Put another way, they serve as a general approach to understand communication norms rather than challenge them. We all realize that there are communication realities in the world that are hurtful and oppressive to particular people, and that there are people in the world that use communication to serve their own needs and interests. How do we bring these communicative practices to light and work to change communication practices that are hurtful?
Communication Theory Now
Byron Hurt is a modern theorist who uses film to critique how sexism impacts both men and women in our society. His cutting-edge film “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” looks at the Hip-Hop industry from a critical perspective, focusing on how it enables sexism against women while keeping men in narrowly defined gendered roles.
The Need for Critical Theories
The Critical Theories Paradigm helps us understand how communication is used to oppress, and provides ways to foster positive social change (Foss & Foss; Fay). Critical Theories challenge the status quo of communication contexts, looking for alternatives to those forms of oppressive communication. These theories differ from other theoretical approaches because they seek praxis as the overarching goal. Praxis is the combination of theory and action. Rather than simply seeking to understand power structures, critical theories actively seek to change them in positive ways. Easily identifiable examples of critical approaches are Marxism, postmodernism, and feminism. These critical theories expose and challenge the communication of dominant social, economic, and political structures. Areas of inquiry include language, social relationships, organizational structures, politics, economics, media, cultural ideologies, interpersonal relationships, labor, and other social movements.
Cultural Studies focus on understanding the real-life experiences of people, examining communication contexts for hidden power structures, and accomplishing positive social change as a result (Dines and Humez; Kellner). According to Kellner, cultural studies involves three interconnected elements necessary for understanding, evaluating and challenging the power dynamics embedded in communication—political economy, textual analysis, and audience reception.
• Political economy focuses on the macro level of communication. Specifically, this part of cultural studies looks at the way media as text are situated in a given cultural context, and the political and economic realities of the cultural context. In the U.S., we would note that the political economy is one marked with gender, racial, and class inequities.
• Textual analysis involves the process of deconstructing and analyzing elements of a media text. If you wanted to look at a magazine with a critical eye, you would pay attention to the visual elements (the pictures in the ads; the celebrity photos, and any other drawings, cartoons or illustrations), the verbal messages (the text of the ads, the copy, captions that accompany the photographs), and the relationship between the advertisements and the copy. For example, is there an ad for Clinique eye shadow next to an article on the “hot new beauty tips for fall?” You would also want to pay attention to the representation of gender, race, and class identities as well. Are there any differences or similarities between the portrayal of white women and women of color? What sort of class identity is being offered as the one to emulate?
• Audience reception asks us to consider the role of the text for the audience that consumes it. You might want to learn why people read particular magazines—what purpose does it fill, what is the social function of this text?
Origins of Critical Theories in Communication
Marxism is one of the earliest origins of critical theory. In addition, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism have greatly influenced how critical theories have grown and expanded to challenge a greater number of social power structures. While each of these approaches examines a different area of oppression, all are critical approaches to enact great social changes, not only in western societies, but in cultures worldwide.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Karl Marx’s ideas challenged the status quo of newly emerging industrial societies. As societies moved from agrarian-based economies to ones based in industrial manufacturing, there became an increasing division between the rich and the poor — much like the income inequality talked about so much today. Marx, in two of his most well-known works, The Communist Manifesto and Capital, argued that working class laborers were being oppressed by those in power, specifically the owners of manufacturing plants.
In any discussion of Postmodernism, another critical theoretical perspective, the difficulty of defining the term is invariably part of the discussion. Modern refers to just now (from modo in Latin) and post means after. Thus, this term translates into “after just now”—an idea that can be difficult to wrap our heads around. How do you, for example, point to or mark the period after just now? (Covino & Jolliffe, 76). In discussing the postmodern condition, Lyotard explained the relationship between those who have and don’t have social power: “The [decision makers] allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on optimizing the system’s performance—efficiency” (27).
A third major influence on the development of the Critical Theories Paradigm comes from feminist theories. Feminist theories explore power structures that create and recreate gendered differentiations in societies (Foss & Foss; Dervin; MacKinnon). Critical feminist theories contend that gender relations are often oppressive to both men and women, and that they support an institution based on patriarchal values. Thus, critical feminist theories challenge dominant assumptions and practices of gender in ways that foster more equal and egalitarian forms of communication and social structures in society.
When discussing feminism and feminist theories we refer to a set of multiple and diverse theories. Feminist theories include a wide range of philosophical arguments, economic structures, and political viewpoints. Some of these include Marxist feminism, which focuses on the division of labor as a source of gender inequality, and liberal feminism, which asserts that men and women should have equal status in the culture—such as voting rights, educational and professional opportunities, and equal pay. Eco-feminism recognizes that all parts of the universe are interconnected and that oppression of women and other minorities is analogous to the oppression of the natural environment such as in the cutting down of natural forests to meet consumer demands for paper goods, or the killing of animals for the eating of meat.
Critical Theories in Action
Whether we listen to music on our phones, watch TV, go to the movies, or read a magazine, most of us consume media. Have you ever stopped to think about who puts together those messages? Have you wondered what their goals might be and why they want to send the messages they do? One way we can use critical theories is to examine who owns what media to determine what they are trying to accomplish (Croteau & Hoynes). For example, why does General Electric want to own companies like RCA and NBC? Why does a company like Seagram’s want to buy MCA (Universal Studios) and Polygram records? What world-views are these companies creating in the media they produce? These are all questions for which we might consider using theories from the Critical Theories Paradigm. Did you know that in 1983 50 corporations controlled most of the U.S. media (papers, television, movies, magazines,etc.) and that by 2004 that number has dropped down to five corporations (Bagdikian)? Using Critical Theories Paradigm, we can begin to examine the messages that so few companies are constructing and their impacts on how we understand the world around us as shaped through these messages.
Other examples from the critical paradigm include works that examine gender, consumerism, advertising, and television. In her work, Who(se) Am I? The Identity and Image of Women in Hip-Hop, Perry examines the potential danger and damage to African-American women through their objectification in Hip-Hop videos. Carole A. Stabile examines the labor and marketing practices of Nike in her article, Nike, Social Responsibility, and the Hidden Abode of Production. Clint C. Wilson II and Felix Gutierrez discuss the portrayal of people of color in advertising in their article, Advertising and People of Color, while Jackson Katz explores mask of masculinity with his film, Tough Guise 2: The Ongoing Crisis of Violent Masculinity. We use critical theories to reveal a vast range of possible ideological structures that create and foster dominant world-views, and to challenge and change those ideologies that oppress others.
Strengths
A significant strength of the Critical Theories Paradigm is that it combines theory and practice, seeking to create actual change from theoretical development. Rather than seeking prediction and control, or explanation and understanding, critical theories seek positive social change. The intent behind these theoretical perspectives is to help empower those whose world-views and ideological perspectives have not found equality in social contexts. At their best, critical theories have the potential to enact large-scale social change for both large and small groups of people.
Weaknesses
A potential weakness of critical theories is their dependence on social values. While empirical laws theories seek an objective reality, critical theories highlight subjective values that guide communication behaviors. When values conflict the question of, “whose values are better?” emerges. Because values are subjective, answering this question is often filled with much conflict and debate. The example of gay marriage highlights a current debate taking place over ideological values. How do we define marriage? And, whose definition is best?
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.09%3A_Critical_Theories_Paradigm.txt |
Summary
Theories are lenses for understanding the world around us. We don’t have to use one theory to understand communication phenomena, but instead, it is possible to use multiple theories to examine our communication. Theories allow us to organize and understand communication experiences, select communication behavior to study, broaden our understanding of human communication, predict and control communication situations, challenge current social and cultural relationships, and offer new ways of thinking and living. Forming theories is a three step process of 1) asking important questions, 2) looking for answers through observation, and 3) forming answers or theories as a result of observation.
Are all theories alike in their usefulness? Of course not. Evaluating the usefulness or value of a theory is important. Six qualities are crucial for evaluating theories—-scope, parsimony, heuristic value, openness, appropriateness, and validity. As you recall, scope refers to the breadth of the theory, parsimony to its level of simplicity, and heuristic value is the theory’s ability to generate other theories. When a theory is open this means that it recognizes other perspectives and options. Appropriateness refers to the fit between the research question and theory used to answer it. Finally, validity is the overall worth or practicality of a theory which includes value, fit, and generalizability. When these characteristics are present we can be confident of our choice of theory.
You have also learned five major paradigms for understanding, explaining, and changing the communication around you. It is important to recognize that no theoretical perspective is the right perspective, although most Communication scholars do favor particular theoretical approaches over others, and conduct communication research from their preferred perspectives. Those that believe there are universal laws which govern human communication conduct research from the empirical laws perspective. Those that think communication is a result of shared, adaptable rules utilize the human rules paradigm. The systems perspective recognizes the interconnectedness of people, relationships and communication. If the use of symbols for message creation and evaluation is the focus, then rhetorical theory is the corresponding paradigm. For scholars who are action oriented and desire social change as an outcome of their research, the critical perspective is the one of choice.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How does understanding communication theory help you in your daily life?
2. Pick a theoretical paradigm. Now pick a communication phenomenon. How does that paradigm help explain that phenomenon to you?
3. What would you focus on using critical theories? What questions would you try to answer?
4. Think of a system in which you are a member? What communicative action could you change that would change the system? What do you think the effect would be?
5. What criteria do you use for constructing or evaluating a good persuasive message? How did you establish these criteria?
KEY TERMS
• appropriateness
• audience reception
• causation
• critical theories
• cultural studies
• empirical laws
• explain
• feminist theories
• generalization
• heuristic value
• homeostasis
• human rules
• Marxism
• openness
• paradigm
• paradigm shift
• parsimony
• political economy
• postmodernism
• praxis
• prediction
• probability
• rhetoric
• rhetorical criticism
• rhetorical theories
• scope
• social criticism
• social exchange theory
• systems theory
• teleological
• textual analysis
• theory
• Toulmin’s model
• trait theory
• validity | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.10%3A_Communication_Theory_Summary.txt |
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Winch, Peter. The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. Print.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/05%3A_Communication_Theory/5.11%3A_Communication_Theory_References.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Understand what we consider as Communication research.
• Explain how Communication research is done.
• Identify motivational factors that influence Communication research.
• Explain the three broad approaches to Communication research as well as specific research methodologies.
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/concept-man-papers-person-plan-1868728/
06: Communication Research
One stereotype about college students is that they do not have a lot of extra money to spend. As a result, we have witnessed our students conduct communication research in order to increase their cashflow, and most of them didn’t even know they were doing it. What do we mean by this? Many of our students are allotted a certain amount of money by their parents, financial aid, and jobs to pay for school, housing, and extracurricular activities. When money starts to become scarce, many of our students go to their parents to see if they will provide more money. What does this have to do with communication research? Because when these same students have asked for money from their parents in the past, they theorize what communication messages might work in order to get more. For example, if a student asked for money from their parents last semester because they said they were running out of food, and it worked, they might do that again in order to get more money. What is happening is that these students are developing hypotheses regarding what communication behaviors will work to influence their parents. If the behaviors work, it validates they hypothesis. If the behaviors don’t work, students can learn from this and adjust their behaviors in future exchanges to obtain a different outcome. It is likely you engage in these types of communication research activities on a daily basis.
Likely you have engaged in basic levels of Communication research without even knowing it. Remember our discussion in the last chapter that theory is “a way of framing an experience or event—an effort to understand and account for something and the way it functions in the world” (Foss, Foss & Griffin, 8). Well, we generally do not understand how something functions in the world unless we have had some level of experience with it, and then evaluate the outcome of that experience. Have you ever planned out what you would say and do to persuade someone to go on a date? Have you ever intentionally violated the communicative expectations (such as arriving late or forgetting to do a favor) of a friend, “just to see what would happen?” While we do not consider these to be examples of formal Communication research, they do reveal what Communication research is about. Remember our discussion in Chapter 1, those of us who study Communication are interested in researching “who says what, through what channels (media) of communication, to whom, [and] what will be the results?” (Smith, Lasswell and Casey 121).
The term “research” often conjures up visions of a mad scientist dressed in a white lab coat working through the night with chemicals, beakers, and gases on his/her latest scientific experiment. But how does this measure up with the realities of researching human communication? Researching communication presents its own set of challenges and circumstances that must be understood to better conceptualize how we can further our understanding of the ways we communicate with one another. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.01%3A_Communication_Research_Overview.txt |
Students often believe that researchers are well organized, meticulous, and academic as they pursue their research projects. The reality of research is that much of it is a hit-and-miss endeavor. Albert Einstein provided wonderful insight to the messy nature of research when he said, “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” Because a great deal of Communication research is still exploratory, we are continually developing new and more sophisticated methods to better understand how and why we communicate. Think about all of the advances in communication technologies (snapchat, instagram, etc.) and how quickly they come and go. Communication research can barely keep up with the ongoing changes to human communication.
Researching something as complex as human communication can be an exercise in creativity, patience, and failure. Communication research, while relatively new in many respects, should follow several basic principles to be effective. Similar to other types of research, Communication research should be systematic, rational, self-correcting, self-reflexive, and creative to be of use (Babbie; Bronowski; Buddenbaum; Novak; Copi; Peirce; Reichenbach; Smith; Hughes & Hayhoe).
Seven Basic Steps of Research
While research can be messy, there are steps we can follow to avoid some of the pitfalls inherent with any research project. Research doesn’t always work out right, but we do use the following guidelines as a way to keep research focused, as well as detailing our methods so other can replicate them. Let’s look at seven basic steps that help us conduct effective research.
• Identify a focus of research. To conduct research, the first thing you must do is identify what aspect of human communication interests you and make that the focus of inquiry. Most Communication researchers examine things that interest them; such as communication phenomena that they have questions about and want answered. For example, you may be interested in studying conflict between romantic partners. When using a deductive approach to research, one begins by identifying a focus of research and then examining theories and previous research to begin developing and narrowing down a research question.
• Develop a research question(s). Simply having a focus of study is still too broad to conduct research, and would ultimately end up being an endless process of trial and error. Thus, it is essential to develop very specific research questions. Using our example above, what specific things would you want to know about conflict in romantic relationships? If you simply said you wanted to study conflict in romantic relationships, you would not have a solid focus and would spend a long time conducting your research with no results. However, you could ask, “Do couples use different types of conflict management strategies when they are first dating versus after being in a relationship for a while? It is essential to develop specific questions that guide what you research. It is also important to decide if an answer to your research question already exists somewhere in the plethora of research already conducted. A review of the literature available at your local library may help you decide if others have already asked and answered a similar question. Another convenient resource will be your university’s online database. This database will most likely provide you with resources of previous research through academic journal articles, books, catalogs, and various kinds of other literature and media.
• Define key terms. Using our example, how would you define the terms conflict, romantic relationship, dating, and long-term relationship? While these terms may seem like common sense, you would be surprised how many ways people can interpret the same terms and how particular definitions shape the research. Take the term long-term relationship, for example, what are all of the ways this can be defined? People married for 10 or more years? People living together for five or more years? Those who identify as being monogamous? It is important to consider populations who would be included and excluded from your study based on a particular definition and the resulting generalizability of your findings. Therefore, it is important to identify and set the parameters of what it is you are researching by defining what the key terms mean to you and your research. A research project must be fully operationalized, specifically describing how variables will be observed and measured. This will allow other researchers an opportunity to repeat the process in an attempt to replicate the results. Though more importantly, it will provide additional understanding and credibility to your research.
Communication Research Then
Wilber Schramm – The Modern Father of Communication
Although many aspects of the Communication discipline can be dated to the era of the ancient Greeks, and more specifically to individuals such as Aristotle or Plato, Communication Research really began to develop in the 20th century. James W. Tankard Jr. (1988) states in the article, Wilbur Schramm: Definer of a Field that, “Wilbur Schramm (1907-1987) probably did more to define and establish the field of Communication research and theory than any other person” (p. 1). In 1947 Wilbur Schramm went to the University of Illinois where he founded the first Institute of Communication Research. The Institute’s purpose was, “to apply the methods and disciplines of the social sciences (supported, where necessary, by the fine arts and natural sciences) to the basic problems of press, radio and pictures; to supply verifiable information in those areas of communications where the hunch, the tradition, the theory and thumb have too often ruled; and by so doing to contribute to the better understanding of communications and the maximum use of communications for the public good” (p. 2).
• Select an appropriate research methodology. A methodology is the actual step-by-step process of conducting research. There are various methodologies available for researching communication. Some tend to work better than others for examining particular types of communication phenomena. In our example, would you interview couples, give them a survey, observe them, or conduct some type of experiment? Depending on what you wish to study, you will have to pick a process, or methodology, in order to study it. We’ll discuss examples of methodologies later in this chapter.
• Establish a sample population or data set. It is important to decide who and what you want to study. One criticism of current Communication research is that it often relies on college students enrolled in Communication classes as the sample population. This is an example of convenience sampling. Charles Teddlie and Fen Yu write, “Convenience sampling involves drawing samples that are both easily accessible and willing to participate in a study” (78). One joke in our field is that we know more about college students than anyone else. In all seriousness, it is important that you pick samples that are truly representative of what and who you want to research. If you are concerned about how long-term romantic couples engage in conflict, (remember what we said about definitions) college students may not be the best sample population. Instead, college students might be a good population for examining how romantic couples engage in conflict in the early stages of dating.
• Gather and analyze data. Once you have a research focus, research question(s), key terms, a method, and a sample population, you are ready to gather the actual data that will show you what it is you want to answer in your research question(s). If you have ever filled out a survey in one of your classes, you have helped a researcher gather data to be analyzed in order to answer research questions. The actual “doing” of your methodology will allow you to collect the data you need to know about how romantic couples engage in conflict. For example, one approach to using a survey to collect data is to consider adapting a questionnaire that is already developed. Communication Research Measures II: A Sourcebook is a good resource to find valid instruments for measuring many different aspects of human communication (Rubin et al.).
Communication Research Now
Communicating Climate Change Through Creativity
Communicating climate change has been an increasingly important topic for the past number of years. Today we hear more about the issue in the media than ever. However, “the challenge of climate change communication is thought to require systematic evidence about public attitudes, sophisticated models of behaviour change and the rigorous application of social scientific research” (Buirski). In South Africa, schools, social workers, and psychologist have found ways to change the way young people and children learn about about the issue. Through creatively, “climate change is rendered real through everyday stories, performances, and simple yet authentic ideas through children and school teachers to create a positive social norm” (Buirski). By engaging children’s minds rather than bombarding them with information, we can capture their attention (Buirski).
• Interpret and share results. Simply collecting data does not mean that your research project is complete. Remember, our research leads us to develop and refine theories so we have more sophisticated representations about how our world works. Thus, researchers must interpret the data to see if it tells us anything of significance about how we communicate. If so, we share our research findings to further the body of knowledge we have about human communication. Imagine you completed your study about conflict and romantic couples. Others who are interested in this topic would probably want to see what you discovered in order to help them in their research. Likewise, couples might want to know what you have found in order to help themselves deal with conflict better.
Although these seven steps seem pretty clear on paper, research is rarely that simple. For example, a master’s student conducted research for their Master’s thesis on issues of privacy, ownership and free speech as it relates to using email at work. The last step before obtaining their Master’s degree was to share the results with a committee of professors. The professors began debating the merits of the research findings. Two of the three professors felt that the research had not actually answered the research questions and suggested that the master’s candidate rewrite their two chapters of conclusions. The third professor argued that the author HAD actually answered the research questions, and suggested that an alternative to completely rewriting two chapters would be to rewrite the research questions to more accurately reflect the original intention of the study. This real example demonstrates the reality that, despite trying to account for everything by following the basic steps of research, research is always open to change and modification, even toward the end of the process.
Communication Research and You
Because we have been using the example of conflict between romantic couples, here is an example of communication in action by Thomas Bradbury, Ph.D regarding the study of conflict between romantic partners. What stands out to you? What would you do differently?
Which Conflicts Consume Couples the Most
http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/which-conflicts-consume-couples-most
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.02%3A_Doing_Communication_Research.txt |
We think it is important to discuss the fact that human nature influences all research. While some researchers might argue that their research is objective, realistically, no research is totally objective. What does this mean? Researchers have to make choices about what to research, how they will conduct their research, who will pay for their research, and how they will present their research conclusions to others. These choices are influenced by the motives and material resources of researchers. The most obvious case of this in the physical sciences is research sponsored by the tobacco industry that downplays the health hazards associated with smoking (Frisbee & Donley). Intuitively, we know that certain motivations influence this line of research as it is an example of an extreme case of motivational factors influencing research. Realistically though, all researchers are motivated by certain factors that influence their research.
We will highlight three factors that motivate the choices we make when conducting communication research: 1) The intended outcomes, 2) theoretical preferences, and 3) methodological preferences.
Intended Outcomes
One question researchers ask while doing their research project is, “What do I want to accomplish with this research?” Three primary research goals are to increase understanding of a behavior or phenomenon, predict behavior, or create social change.
Case In Point
The Evolution of Anti-drug Commercials
In 1987 an anti-drug campaign, Your Brain on Drugs began to air on television. Wikipedia writes, “The first PSA, from 1987, showed a man who held up an egg and said, “This is your brain,” before picking up a frying pan and adding, “This is drugs.” He then cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, “This is your brain on drugs.” Finally he looks up at the camera and asks, “Any questions?”
After careful examination, researchers quickly discovered that this ad campaign was not effective, as it actually made the frying of an egg appealing, especially to those people who were watching the ad that were hungry! Thus, in 1998, they revised the PSA to make it more dramatic.
Scholars who study health campaigns are interested in finding the most effective ways to help get accurate health information to people so they can act on that information.
Here are some anti-marijuana advertisements the millennial generation may be familiar with:
There is this anti-marijuana commercial that tries to bring about the fears of smoking marijuana. Seth Stevenson states the commercial brings out two fears: “1) the fear that nonsmoker friends, or lovers, might find them tiresome and pathetic, and 2) the fear that they might be growing dependent on the drug.”
The same can be said for this video. In the video a pet dog tells what looks to be its teenage owner to quit smoking weed. This is supposed to evoke guilt upon the owner and carry out to the viewer. Both campaigns “effectively [pick] at both of these insecurities” that anti-drug campaigns attempt to associate with smoking week.
Do you find any of these effective? Why or why not? Think of anti-drug campaigns that would be effective for teens/young adults today.
A great deal of Communication research seeks understanding as the intended outcome of the research. As we gain greater understanding of human communication we are able to develop more sophisticated theories to help us understand how and why people communicate. One example might be research investigates the communication of registered nurses to understand how they use language to define and enact their professional responsibilities. Research has discovered that nurses routinely refer to themselves as “patient advocates” and state that their profession is unique, valuable, and distinct from being an assistant to physicians. Having this understanding can be useful for enacting change by educating physicians and nurses about the impacts of their language choices in health care.
A second intended outcome of Communication research is prediction and control. Ideas of prediction and control are taken from the physical sciences (remember our discussion of Empirical Laws theories in the last chapter?). Many Communication researchers want to use the results of their research to predict and control communication in certain contexts. This type of research can help us make communicative choices from an informed perspective. In fact, when you communicate, you often do so with the intention of prediction and control. Imagine walking on campus and seeing someone you would like to ask out. Because of your past experiences, you predict that if you say certain things to them in a certain way, you might have a greater likelihood that they will respond positively. Your predictions guide your behaviors in order to control the exchange at some level. This same idea motivates many Communication researchers to approach their research with the intention of being able to predict and control communication contexts. For example, in the article The Fear of Public Speaking, Sian Beilock, Ph.D explains prediction and control in action.
A third intended outcome of Communication research is positive critical/cultural change in the world. Scholars often perform research in order to challenge communicative norms and effect cultural and societal change. Research that examines health communication campaigns, for example, seeks to understand how effective campaigns are in changing our health behaviors such as using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or avoiding high fat foods. When it is determined that health campaigns are ineffective, researchers often suggest changes to health communication campaigns to increase their efficacy in reaching the people who need access to the information (Stephenson & Southwell).
As humans, researchers have particular goals in mind. Having an understanding of what they want to accomplish with their research helps them formulate questions and develop appropriate methodologies for conducting research that will help them achieve their intended outcomes.
Theoretical Preferences
Remember that theoretical paradigms offer different ways to understand communication. While it is possible to examine communication from multiple theoretical perspectives, it has been our experience that our colleagues tend to favor certain theoretical paradigms over others. Put another way, we all understand the world in ways that make sense to us.
Which theoretical paradigm(s) do you most align yourself with? How would this influence what you would want to accomplish if you were researching human communication? What types of communication phenomena grab your attention? Why? These are questions that researchers wrestle with as they put together their research projects.
Methodological Preferences
As you’ve learned, the actual process of doing research is called the methodology. While most researchers have preferences for certain theoretical paradigms, most researchers also have preferred methodologies for conducting research in which they develop increased expertise throughout their careers. As with theories, there are a large number of methodologies available for conducting research. As we did with theories, we believe it is easier for you to understand methodologies by categorizing them into paradigms. Most Communication researchers have a preference for one research paradigm over the others. For our purposes, we have divided methodological paradigms into 1) rhetorical methodologies, 2) quantitative methodologies, and 3) qualitative methodologies. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.03%3A_Motivational_Factors_for_Research.txt |
We encode and decode messages everyday. As we take in messages, we use a number of criteria to evaluate them. We may ask, “Was the message good, bad, or both?” “Was it effective or ineffective?” “Did it achieve its intended outcome?” “How should I respond to the message?” Think about the last movie you watched. Did you have a conversation about the movie with others? Did that conversation include commentary on various parts of the film such as the set design, dialogue, plot, and character development? If so, you already have a taste of the variety of elements that go into rhetorical research. Simply stated, rhetorical methods of research are sophisticated and refined ways to evaluate messages. Foss explains that we use rhetorical approaches as a way “of systematically investigating and explaining symbolic acts and artifacts for the purpose of understanding rhetorical processes” (6).
Steps for Doing Rhetorical Research
We already outlined the seven basic steps for conducting research, but there are ways to vary this process for different methodologies. Below are the basic steps for conducting rhetorical research.
1. Determine a focus of study such as political speeches, television shows or genres, movies or movie genres, commercials, magazine texts, the rhetoric of social movement organizations, music lyrics, visual art, public memorials, etc.
2. Choose a rhetorical research method to evaluate and critique rhetorical acts and/or messages.
3. Analyze the message(s) of focus such as a Presidential address by using a particular rhetorical method.
4. Interpret the implications of the rhetorical act, as well as the rhetorical act itself. For example, a scholar might choose to rhetorically research television violence and provide interpretations regarding the implications of television violence on viewers.
5. Share the results of research. From sharing research comes the opportunity to improve our ability to create and evaluate effective messages. We can also use what we learn from rhetorical research to shape the ways messages are constructed and delivered.
Types of Methods for Rhetorical Criticism
What do rhetorical methods actually look like? How are they done? While each rhetorical methodology acts as a unique lens for understanding messages, no one is more correct over another. Instead, each allows us a different way for understanding messages and their effects. Let’s examine a few of the more common rhetorical methodologies including, 1) Neo-Aristotelian, 2) Fantasy-Theme, 3) Narrative, 4) Pentadic, 5) Feminist, and 6) Ideological.
• Neo-Aristotelian Criticism. In Chapter 2 you learned quite a bit about the rhetorical roots of our field, including a few of the contributions of Aristotle. The neo-Aristotelian method uses Aristotle’s ideas to evaluate rhetorical acts. First, a researcher recreates the context for others by describing the historical period of the message being studied. Messages are typically speeches or other forms of oral rhetoric as this was the primary focus of rhetoric during the Classical Period. Second, the researcher evaluates the message using the canons of rhetoric. For example, the researcher may examine what types of logic are offered in a speech or how its delivery enhances or detracts from the ethos of the speaker. Finally, the researcher assesses the effectiveness of the message given its context and its use of the canons.
• Fantasy Theme Criticism. Fantasy Theme analysis is a more contemporary rhetorical method credited to Ernest G. Bormann (1972; 1985; 1990; 2000; Cooren et al.). The focus of this methodology is on groups rather than individuals, and is particularly well-suited for analyzing group messages that come from social movements, political campaigns, or organizational communication. Essentially, a fantasy is a playful way of interpreting an experience (Foss). Fantasy theme research looks for words or phrases that characterize the shared vision of a group in order to explain how the group characterizes or understands events around them. Fantasy theme analysis offers names and meaning to a group’s experience and presents outsiders with a frame for interpreting the group’s rhetorical response.
• Narrative Criticism. Much of what you learned as a child was probably conveyed to you through stories (bedtime stories, fables, and fairy tales) that taught you about gender roles, social roles, ethics, etc. Fairy tales, for example, teach us that women are valued for their youth and beauty and that men are valued when they are strong, handsome, smart, and riding a white horse! Other stories you remember may be more personal, as in the telling of your family’s immigration to the United States and the values learned from that experience. Whatever the case, narrative rhetorical research contends that people learn through the sharing of stories. A researcher using this method examines narratives and their component parts—the plot, characters, and settings—to better understand the people (culture, groups, etc.) telling these stories. This research approach also focuses on the effects of repeating narratives. Think about Hollywood romantic comedies such as When Harry Met Sally, Silver Lining Playbook, Knocked Up, and Bridesmaids. When you see one of these movies, does it feel like you’ve seen it before? For example, For example, these movies use usually have a confused character and some conflict that ends in a perfect relationship. Why does Hollywood do this? What is the purpose and/or effect of retelling these story lines over and over again? These are some of the concerns of researchers who use narrative analysis to research rhetorical acts.
• Pentadic Criticism. Kenneth Burke developed the idea of the pentad using the metaphor of drama. As in a dramatic play, the pentad contains five elements—the act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose. The act tells what happened, the agent is who performed the act, agency includes the tools/means the agent used to perform the act, the scene provides the context for the act, and the purpose explains why the act occurred. By using the elements of the pentad to answer questions of who, what, when, where, and why, a rhetorical researcher may uncover a communicator’s motives for her or his rhetorical actions. Click below to watch a visual representation of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad.
• Feminist Criticism. Most feminist perspectives share the basic assumptions that women are routinely oppressed by patriarchy, women’s experiences are different then men’s, and women’s perspectives are not equally incorporated into our culture (Foss). We can use feminist rhetorical research to help us determine the degree to which women’s perspectives are both absent and/or discredited in rhetorical acts. Thus, feminist rhetorical research, “is the analysis of rhetoric to discover how the rhetorical construction of gender is used as a means for oppression and how that process can be challenged and resisted” (Foss, 168). Although many think of “women” in reference to feminism, it is important to note that many men consider themselves feminists and that feminism is concerned with oppression of all forms—race, class, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and gender.
• Ideological Criticism. Ideology is a collection of values, beliefs, or ethics that influence modes of behavior for a group or culture. Rhetorical scholars interested in understanding a culture’s values often use ideological methods. Ideologies are complex and multifaceted, and ideological methods draw from diverse schools of thought such as Marxism, feminism, structuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism. This research often uncovers assumptions and biases in our language that provide insight into how dominant groups and systems are maintained rhetorically, and how they can be challenged and transformed through rhetoric. Artifacts of popular culture such as movies, television shows, etc. are often the focus of this research as they are the sites at which struggles about meanings occur in the popular culture.
Case In Point
Rhetorical Methods In Action
In 2012, Mallary Jean Tenore examines rhetorical strategies that lead to successful speeches in an article titled “10 rhetorical strategies that made Bill Clinton’s DNC speech effective.” She looks at different rhetorical methods used to develop strong arguments in speech writing.
In contrast, Dr. Stephen H. Browne’s (2003) rhetorical criticism entitled, “Jefferson’s First Declaration of Independence: A Summary View of the Rights of British America Revisited.” explores Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America to understand and demonstrate Jefferson’s skill as a storyteller, and explain what Jefferson was trying to accomplish through a series of narratives. This piece demonstrates rhetorical research used as a means of understanding a historical rhetorical act in its particular context.
Outcomes of Rhetorical Methodologies
What is the value of researching acts of communication from a rhetorical perspective? The systematic research of messages tells us a great deal about the ways people communicate, the contexts in which they communicate, the effects of communication in particular contexts, and potential areas to challenge and transform messages to create social change.
Rhetorical research methodologies help us better determine how and why messages are effective or ineffective, as well as the outcomes of messages on audiences. Think about advertising campaigns. Advertising agencies spend millions of dollars evaluating the effectiveness of their messages on audiences. The purpose of advertising is to persuade us to act in some way, usually the purchasing of products or services. Advertisers not only evaluate the effectiveness of their messages by determining the amount of products sold, they also evaluate effectiveness by looking at audience response to the messages within the current cultural and social contexts.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
All rights reserved content
• Kenneth Burke: 2MinuteThinker. Authored by: 2MinuteThinker. Located at: youtu.be/iYjpjVDG6zs. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.04%3A_Rhetorical_Methodologies.txt |
Steps for Doing Quantitative Research
Rhetorical research methods have been being developed since the Classical Period. As the transition was made to seeing communication from a social scientific perspective, scholars began studying communication using the methods established from the physical sciences. Thus, quantitative methods represent the steps of using the Scientific Method of research.
1. Decide on a focus of study based primarily on your interests. What do you want to discover or answer?
2. Develop a research question(s) to keep your research focused.
3. Develop a hypothesis(es). A hypothesis states how a researcher believes the subjects under study will or will not communicate based on certain variables. For example, you may have a research question that asks, “Does the gender of a student impact the number of times a college professor calls on his/her students?” From this, you might form two hypotheses: “Instructors call on female students less often then male students.” and “Instructors call on students of their same sex.”
4. Collect data in order to test hypotheses. In our example, you might observe various college classrooms in order to count which students professors call on more frequently.
5. Analyze the data by processing the numbers using statistical programs like SPSS that allow quantitative researchers to detect patterns in communication phenomena. Analyzing data in our example would help us determine if there are any significant differences in the ways in which college professors call on various students.
6. Interpret the data to determine if patterns are significant enough to make broad claims about how humans communicate? Simply because professors call on certain students a few more times than other students may or may not indicate communicative patterns of significance.
7. Share the results with others. Through the sharing of research we continue to learn more about the patterns and rules that guide the ways we communicate.
The term quantitative refers to research in which we can quantify, or count, communication phenomena. Quantitative methodologies draw heavily from research methods in the physical sciences explore human communication phenomena through the collection and analysis of numerical data. Let’s look at a simple example. What if we wanted to see how public speaking textbooks represent diversity in their photographs and examples. One thing we could do is quantify these to come to conclusions about these representations. For quantitative research, we must determine which communicative acts to count? How do we go about counting them? Is there any human communicative behavior that would return a 100% response rate like the effects of gravity in the physical sciences? What can we learn by counting acts of human communication?
Suppose you want to determine what communicative actions illicit negative responses from your professors. How would you go about researching this? What data would you count? In what ways would you count them? Who would you study? How would you know if you discovered anything of significance that would tell us something important about this? These are tough questions for researchers to answer, particularly in light of the fact that, unlike laws in the physical sciences, human communication is varied and unpredictable.
Nevertheless, there are several quantitative methods researchers use to study communication in order to reveal patterns that help us predict and control our communication. Think about polls that provide feedback for politicians. While people do not all think the same, this type of research provides patterns of thought to politicians who can use this information to make policy decisions that impact our lives. Let’s look at a few of the more frequent quantitative methods of communication research.
Types of Quantitative Methods
There are many ways researchers can quantify human communication. Not all communication is easily quantified, but much of what we know about human communication comes from quantitative research.
• Experimental Research is the most well-established quantitative methodology in both the physical and social sciences. This approach uses the principles of research in the physical sciences to conduct experiments that explore human behavior. Researchers choose whether they will conduct their experiments in lab settings or real-world settings. Experimental research generally includes a control group (the group where variables are not altered) and the experimental group(s) (the group in which variables are altered). The groups are then carefully monitored to see if they enact different reactions to different variables.
To determine if students were more motivated to learn by participating in a classroom game versus attending a classroom lecture, the researchers designed an experiment. They wanted to test the hypothesis that students would actually be more motivated to learn from the game. Their next question was, “do students actually learn more by participating in games?” In order to find out the answers to these questions they conducted the following experiment. In a number of classes instructors were asked to proceed with their normal lecture over certain content (control group), and in a number of other classes, instructors used a game that was developed to teach the same content (experimental group). The students were issued a test at the end of the semester to see which group did better in retaining information, and to find out which method most motivated students to want to learn the material. It was determined that students were more motivated to learn by participating in the game, which proved the hypothesis. The other thing that stood out was that students who participated in the game actually remembered more of the content at the end of the semester than those who listened to a lecture. You might have hypothesized these conclusions yourself, but until research is done, our assumptions are just that (Hunt, Lippert & Paynton).
Case In Point
Quantitative Methods In Action
Wendy S. Zabada-Ford (2003) conducted survey research of 253 customers to determine their expectations and experiences with physicians, dentists, mechanics, and hairstylists. Her article, “Research Communication Practices of Professional Service Providers: Predicting Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty” researched the perceptions of customers’ personalized service as related to their expectations in order to predict their satisfaction with the actual service they received. In this study, the goal was to be able to predict the behavior of customers based on their expectations before entering a service-provider context.
Michael T. Stephenson’s (2003) article, “Examining Adolescents’ Responses to Anti-marijuana PSAs” examined how adolescents respond to anti-marijuana public service announcements in the U.S. On the surface, this study may fit into the “understanding” part of the continuum of intended outcomes. However, this research can be used to alter and change messages, such as PSAs, to produce behavioral change in the culture. In this case, the change would be to either keep adolescents from smoking marijuana, or to get them to stop this behavior if they are currently engaged in it.
• Survey Research is used to ask people a number of questions about particular topics. Surveys can be online, mailed, handed out, or conducted in interview format. After researchers have collected survey data, they represent participants’ responses in numerical form using tables, graphs, charts, and/or percentages. On our campus, anonymous survey research was done to determine the drinking and drug habits of our students. This research demonstrated that the percentage of students who frequently use alcohol or drugs is actually much lower than what most students think. The results of this research are now used to educate students that not everyone engages in heavy drinking or drug use, and to encourage students to more closely align their behaviors with what actually occurs on campus, not with what students perceive happens on campus. It is important to remember that there is a possibility that people do not always tell the truth when they answer survey questions. We won’t go into great detail here due to time, but there are sophisticated statistical analyses that can account for this to develop an accurate representation of survey responses.
• Content Analysis. Researchers use content analysis to count the number of occurrences of their particular focus of inquiry. Communication researchers often conduct content analyses of movies, commercials, television shows, magazines, etc., to count the number of occurrences of particular phenomena in these contexts to explore potential effects. Harmon, for example, used content analysis in order to demonstrate how the portrayal of blackness had changed within Black Entertainment Television (BET). She did this by observing the five most frequently played films from the time the cable network was being run by a black owner, to the five most frequently played films after being sold to white-owned Viacom, Inc. She found that the portrayal, context and power of the black man changes when a white man versus a black man is defining it. Content analysis is extremely effective for demonstrating patterns and trends in various communication contexts. If you would like to do a simple content analysis, count the number of times different people are represented in photos in your textbooks. Are there more men than women? Are there more caucasians represented than other groups? What do the numbers tell you about how we represent different people?
• Meta-Analysis. Do you ever get frustrated when you hear about one research project that says a particular food is good for your health, and then some time later, you hear about another research project that says the opposite? Meta-analysis analyzes existing statistics found in a collection of quantitative research to demonstrate patterns in a particular line of research over time. Meta-analysis is research that seeks to combine the results of a series of past studies to see if their results are similar, or to determine if they show us any new information when they are looked at in totality. The article, Impact of Narratives on Persuasion in Health Communication: A Meta-Analysis examined past research regarding narratives and their persuasiveness in health care settings. The meta-analysis revealed that in-person and video narratives had the most persuasive impacts while written narratives had the least (Shen, Sheer, Li).
Outcomes of Quantitative Methodologies
Because it is unlikely that Communication research will yield 100% certainty regarding communicative behavior, why do Communication researchers use quantitative approaches? First, the broader U.S. culture values the ideals of quantitative science as a means of learning about and representing our world. To this end, many Communication researchers emulate research methodologies of the physical sciences to study human communication phenomena. Second, you’ll recall that researchers have certain theoretical and methodological preferences that motivate their research choices. Those who understand the world from an Empirical Laws and/or Human Rules Paradigm tend to favor research methods that test communicative laws and rules in quantitative ways.
Even though Communication research cannot produce results with 100% accuracy, quantitative research demonstrates patterns of human communication. In fact, many of your own interactions are based on a loose system of quantifying behavior. Think about how you and your classmates sit in your classrooms. Most students sit in the same seats every class meeting, even if there is not assigned seating. In this context, it would be easy for you to count how many students sit in the same seat, and what percentage of the time they do this. You probably already recognize this pattern without having to do a formal study. However, if you wanted to truly demonstrate that students communicatively manifest territoriality to their peers, it would be relatively simple to conduct a quantitative study of this phenomenon. After completing your research, you could report that X% of students sat in particular seats X% of times. This research would not only provide us with an understanding of a particular communicative pattern of students, it would also give us the ability to predict, to a certain degree, their future behaviors surrounding space issues in the classroom.
Quantitative research is also valuable for helping us determine similarities and/or differences among groups of people or communicative events. Representative examples of research in the areas of gender and communication (Berger; Slater), culture and communication (McCann, Ota, Giles, & Caraker; Hylmo & Buzzanell), as well as ethnicity and communication (Jiang Bresnahan, Ohashi, Nebashi, Wen Ying, Shearman; Murray-Johnson) use quantitative methodologies to determine trends and patterns of communicative behavior for various groups. While these trends and patterns cannot be applied to all people, in all contexts, at all times, they help us understand what variables play a role in influencing the ways we communicate.
While quantitative methods can show us numerical patterns, what about our personal lived experiences? How do we go about researching them, and what can they tell us about the ways we communicate? Qualitative methods have been established to get at the “essence” of our lived experiences, as we subjectively understand them.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.05%3A_Quantitative_Methods.txt |
Qualitative research methodologies draw much of their approach from the social sciences, particularly the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, and Social-Psychology. If you’ve ever wished you could truly capture and describe the essence of an experience you have had, you understand the goal of qualitative research methods. Rather than statistically analyzing data, or evaluating and critiquing messages, qualitative researchers are interested in understanding the subjective lived-experience of those they study. In other words, how can we come to a more rich understanding of how people communicate?
Steps for Doing Qualitative Research
Qualitative approaches break from traditional research ideals developed in the physical sciences. As a result, the steps for conducting qualitative research vary from the seven basic steps outlined above.
1. Planning is the first step for qualitative research. (Lindlof 176). You might want to study the communication of registered nurses. Obviously, the topic “the communication of registered nurses” is too large so careful planning in regards to who should be the focus of study, in what context, what research questions should be asked, etc. are all part of the initial planning of research.
2. Getting in is the second step of qualitative research (Lindlof). Because qualitative research usually focuses on human communication in real-world settings, researchers must gain access to the people and contexts they wish to study. For example, would you want an audio or video recording of your interaction with a physician as you tell him/her your medical problems (DiMatteo, Robinson, Heritage, Tabbarah, & Fox; Barry)?
3. Observing and learning make up the third step of qualitative research. For example, researchers must decide whether or not to reveal themselves to those they are studying. A researcher may choose to conduct interviews, look at communication artifacts, observe communication as it occurs, write field-notes, and/or audio or video record communication. Each of these choices has an impact on the outcomes of the research.
4. Analyze what you have observed. There are exhaustive methods for examining and analyzing qualitative data. Issues of right versus wrong ways of analysis can be addressed by recognizing that the goal of qualitative research is not to generalize findings to everyone, but to share the lived experiences of those who are researched.
5. Share conclusions of the research. Again, research should be shared with others so they can gain a greater understanding of the lived-experience of those researched.
In an attempt to define qualitative methods Thomas Lindlof states that qualitative research examines the “form and content of human behavior…to analyze its qualities, rather than subject it to mathematical or other formal transformations” (21). Anderson and Meyer state that qualitative methods, “do not rest their evidence on the logic of mathematics, the principle of numbers, or the methods of statistical analysis” (247). Dabbs says that qualitative research looks at the quality of phenomena while quantitative methods measure quantities and/or amounts. In qualitative research researchers are interested in the, “what, how, when, and where of a thing….[looking for] the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things” (Berg 2-3). Data collection comes in the form of words or pictures (Neuman 28). As Kaplan provides a very simple way of defining qualitative research when he says, “if you can measure it, that ain’t it” (206).
Types of Qualitative Methods
While qualitative research sounds simple, it can be a “messy” process because things do not always go as planned. One way to make qualitative research “cleaner” is to be familiar with, and follow, the various established qualitative methods available for studying human communication.
• Ethnography. Ethnography is arguably the most recognized and common method of qualitative research in Communication. Ethnography “places researchers in the midst of whatever it is they study. From this vantage, researchers can examine various phenomena as perceived by participants and represent these observations” to others (Berg 148). Ethnographers try to understand the communicative acts of people as they occur in their actual communicative environments. One way to think of this is the idea of learning about a new culture by immersing oneself in that culture. While there are many strategies for conducting ethnography, the idea is that a researcher must enter the environment of those under study to observe and understand their communication.
• Focus Group Interviewing. Researchers who use focus group interviewing meet with groups of people to understand their communication characteristics. (Berg). These interviews foster an environment for participants to discuss particular topics of interest to the group and/or researcher. While we are all familiar with the numbers that we encounter in political polls, every so often television news organizations will conduct focus group interviews to find out how particular groups actually feel about, and experience, the political process as a citizen. This is an applied version of focus group research techniques and provides insight into the ways various groups understand and enact their realities.
• Action Research. A qualitative method whose intended outcome is social change is action research. Action research seeks to create positive social change through “a highly reflective, experiential, and participatory mode of research in which all individuals involved in the study, researcher and subject alike, are deliberate and contributing actors in the research enterprise” (Berg 196; Wadsworth). The goal of action research is to provide information that is useful to a particular group of people that will empower the members of that group to create change as a result of the research (Berg). An example of action research might be when researchers study the teaching strategies of teachers in the classroom. Typically, teachers involve themselves in the research and then use the findings to improve their teaching methods. If you’ve ever had a professor who had unique styles of teaching, it is likely that he/she may have been involved in research that examined new approaches to teaching students.
• Unobtrusive Research. Another method for conducting qualitative research is unobtrusive research. As Berg points out, “to some extent, all the unobtrusive strategies amount to examining and assessing human traces” (209). We can learn a great deal about the behavior of others by examining the traces humans leave behind as they live their lives. In a research class offered at our university, for instance, students investigated the content of graffiti written in university bathrooms. Because our campus has an environmentally conscious culture, much of the graffiti in bathrooms reflects this culture with slogans written on paper towel dispensers that read, “Paper towels=trees.” The students who conducted this research were using unobtrusive strategies to determine dimensions of student culture in the graffiti that was left behind in bathrooms.
• Historiography. Historiography is a method of qualitative research “for discovering, from records and accounts, what happened during some past period” (Berg 233). Rather than simply putting together a series of facts, research from this perspective seeks to gain an understanding of the communication in a past social group or context. For example, the timelines in the history chapter of this text are an attempt to chronologically put together the story of the discipline of Communication. While there is no “true” story, your authors have tried to piece together, from their own research, the important pieces that make up what we believe is the story of the formation of Communication study.
• Case Studies. Case studies involve gathering significant information about particular people, contexts, or phenomena to understand a particular case under investigation. This approach uses many methods for data collection but focuses on a particular case to gain “holistic description and explanation” (Berg 251). Those who use case study approaches may look at organizations, groups within those organizations, specific people, etc. The idea is to gain a broad understanding of the phenomena and draw conclusions from them. For example, a case study may examine a specific teaching method as a possible solution to increase graduation rates while improving student information retention (Foss et al.). Examining specific cases may help some teachers rethink their current teaching method and offer some alternatives to the standardized teaching paradigms.
While there are other qualitative research methodologies, the methods one chooses to examine communication are most often decided by the researcher’s intended outcomes, resources available, and the research question(s) of focus. There are no hard rules for qualitative research. Instead, researchers must make many choices as they engage in this process.
Outcomes of Qualitative Methodologies
What can we learn by using qualitative research methods for studying communication? Qualitative Communication researchers often believe that quantitative methods do not capture the essence of our lived experience. In other words, it is difficult to quantify everything about our lives and therefore, we need different strategies for understanding our world. Think of the various ways you experience and communicate in your relationships? It’s highly unlikely that you spend the bulk of your communication quantifying your daily experiences. However, through methods like observation, interviewing, journaling, etc., we might be able to get a better understanding of the ways people experience and communicate their feelings.
Communication Research and You
Qualitative Methods In Actions
Developing the ability to perform research is becoming a necessary skill in both the world of academia as well as in today’s competitive workforce. With the move from the industrial age to the information age, many jobs center around the creation and dissemination of information. With so many online options for retrieving information, it is more important to have skills in gathering information rather than memorizing facts and data. As it is vital to be able to access proper information when needed, many universities require a specific amount of research hours for both undergraduate and masters degree programs. A variety of career opportunities require research experience such as marketing agencies or health industries.
Another value of qualitative research is that it resonates with readers who are able to identify with the lived-experiences represented in the research (Neuman). Statistical studies often seem detached from how we experience life. However, qualitative studies contain “rich description, colorful detail, and unusual characters; they give the reader a feel for social settings (Neuman 317). This rich description allows us to identify with the communication experiences of others, and learn through this identification.
Over the years, female scholars have demonstrated a greater frequency in the use of qualitative approaches (Grant, Ward & Rong; Ward & Grant), producing significant contributions to our understanding of human communication using these methods. From understanding to social change, feminist scholars demonstrate the importance of qualitative inquiry for strengthening the body of scholarship in our discipline. While researchers who use quantitative approaches tend to value prediction and control as potential outcomes of their research, those who use qualitative approaches seek greater understanding of human communication phenomena, or evaluate current pragmatic uses of human communication to help identify and change oppressive power structures.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/06%3A_Communication_Research/6.06%3A_Qualitative_Methods.txt |
Summary
Communication research is important because it focuses on a common goal—to enhance our interactions with others. In this chapter we highlighted how research is done and the basic steps that guide most research projects—identify the topic, write a research question, define key terms, select a methodology, establish a sample, gather and analyze the data, and finally, interpret and share the results. When conducting research, three factors motivate the choices we make: our intended outcomes, theoretical preferences, and methodological preferences. Depending on these factors, research may lead us to greater understanding, allow us to predict or control a communication situation, or create cultural change.
Conceptualizing Communication research can be done more easily by understanding the three broad methodological approaches/paradigms for conducting Communication research: Rhetorical Methodologies, Quantitative Methodologies, and Qualitative Methodologies. The rhetorical approach evaluates messages in various contexts such as political discourse, art, and popular culture. A variety of methods are available such as neo-aristotelian, fantasy theme, narrative, pentadic, feminist, and ideological criticism. Quantitative methods are characterized by counting phenomena and are useful for predicting communication outcomes or comparing cultures and populations. They include experimental research, surveys, content analysis, and meta-analysis. Qualitative methods offer the opportunity to understand human communication as it occurs in a “natural” context rather than a laboratory setting. This is accomplished through ethnography, focus groups, action research, unobtrusive research, historiography, and case studies. While these approaches share similarities, their focus and specific methods are quite different and produce different outcomes. No research methodology or method is better than another. Instead, approaches to Communication research simply reveal different aspects of human communication in action.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. If you were going to conduct communication research, what topic(s) would be most interesting to you? What specific questions would you want to ask and answer? How would you go about doing this?
2. Of the three broad research methodologies, do you find yourself having a preference for one of them? If so, what specific type of research method would you want to use within the area you have a preference for?
3. If you were going to conduct research, what outcome would you want to gain from your research? Are you more interested in understanding, prediction/control, or creating social change? What is the value of each of these approaches?
KEY TERMS
• action research
• case studies
• content analysis
• continuum of intended outcomes
• control group
• critical/cultural change
• ethnography
• data
• experimental group
• experimental research
• fantasy theme
• feminist
• focus group interviewing
• historiography
• ideological
• key terms
• meta-analysis
• methodological preferences
• methodology
• narrative
• neo-Aristotelian
• pentadic
• prediction/control
• qualitative methodologies
• quantitative methodologies
• research
• research focus
• research questions
• rhetorical methodologies
• sample
• survey research
• theoretical preferences
• understanding
• unobtrusive research
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
6.08: Communication Research References
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Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice (3rd ed.). Waveland Press Prospect Heights, IL, 2004. Print.
Foss, Karen A., Sonja K. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin. Feminist Rhetorical Theories. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pub., 1999. Print.
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Hall, J. A., and R. Rosenthal. “Interpreting and Evaluating MetaAnalysis.” Evaluation & the Health Professions 18.4 (1995): 393407. Web.
Harmon, Molly. “Broadcasting Blackness: A Content Analysis of Movies Aired by Black Entertainment Television (BET) Before and After Viacom’s Ownership.” (2012): 125. Web. 4 Dec. 2014. <https://www.saintmarys.edu/files/Harmon%20Pap_0.pdf>.
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Murray-Johnson, Lisa, Sampson, Joe, Kim Witte, Kelly Morrison, WenYing Liu, Anne P. Hubbell. “Addressing Cultural Orientations in Fear Appeals: Promoting AIDSProtective Behaviors among Mexican Immigrant and African American Adolescents and American and Taiwanese College Students.” Journal of Health Communication 6.4 (2001): 335–358. Taylor and Francis+NEJM. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Define rhetoric.
• Identify key features of classical rhetorical theory.
• Identify the challenges that contemporary theorists are making to the study of rhetoric.
• Define rhetorical criticism.
• Explain the purpose and uses of rhetorical criticism.
• Explain the different models of rhetorical criticism.
• Understand how rhetorical theory and criticism are a current part of the communication discipline.
In this chapter devoted to rhetorical theory and criticism, we will explore both of these separate but related fields of inquiry, briefly map out their history, discuss some of the major rhetorical theories and methods of doing rhetorical criticism, and finally, explain how this specialization contributes to the larger discipline of Communication. But, before going any further, let’s begin by highlighting the definitional and historical debate so we may begin with a common understanding of the term, “rhetoric.” Remember from Chapter 5 that we are defining rhetoric as “any kind of symbol use that functions in any realm” (Foss, Foss, and Griffin 7).
• 7.1: Rhetorical Criticism Overview
• 7.2: Rhetoric In Ancient Times
• 7.3: Understanding Rhetorical Criticism
In the second half of this chapter we would like to discuss a close associate to rhetorical theory—rhetorical criticism. To explain this exciting subdiscipline we will discuss the scope of rhetorical criticism, the purpose of this method, the kinds of knowledge produced, and the relationship between rhetorical theory and criticism. We will conclude with examples of how rhetorical criticism seeks to answer contemporary socio and political concerns.
• 7.4: Current Uses of Rhetorical Theory and Criticism
By now you should have a clear understanding of what rhetorical theory and criticism are and the uses they serve for the discipline as well as the world outside academia. We would like to conclude this chapter by detailing some of the current issues and questions occupying rhetorical scholars. As the examples are numerous, we will speak to three specific content areas: the study of social movements, political and campaign rhetoric, and studies of popular culture.
• 7.5: Rhetorical Criticism Summary
• 7.6: Rhetorical Criticism References
Thumbnail: Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition. (Public Domain)
07: Rhetorical Criticism
What do you think of when you hear the word “rhetoric”? Do you have a positive association with the word? Perhaps it feels difficult to define. We often hear that rhetoric is connected to politics, or specifically, the speeches made by politicians, as in, “That campaign speech was just a bunch of empty rhetoric.” Sound familiar? As is often the case, the popular media has distorted the meaning of this word thus, making it difficult to understand. Another problem is that “rhetoric is not a content area that contains a definite body of knowledge, like physics; instead, rhetoric might be understood as the study and practice of shaping content” (Covino and Jolliffe 4). A third source of difficulty when it comes to defining this concept is that scholars themselves have been debating this term for thousands of years!
One would think that after thousands of years people would finally come to an agreement about what rhetoric means. But as is the way with all symbols (words in this case) their meaning can and does change over time to reflect the ever-changing social, political, religious, and cultural context in which they operate. More specifically, they change to reflect the needs, attitudes and beliefs of the people living and communicating within a particular context. Let us take a trip around the world and through time to explore the origin and meaning of rhetoric. As we tour the origins and various definitions of rhetoric we will also highlight the view or scope allowed by each, for “a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” (Burke 49).
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/07%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism/7.01%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism_Overview.txt |
We will begin our tour in Ancient Greece with the “first four”—Aspasia of Miletus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—who have come to be regarded as the foremother and forefathers of rhetoric and the Communication discipline as a whole. Although little is known about her because she vanished from history circa 401 BCE, Aspasia of Miletus was perhaps the foremother of classical rhetoric as she is rumored to have taught rhetoric and home economics to Socrates. Her social position was that of a hetaera, or companion who was “more educated than respectable women, and [was] expected to accompany men on occasions where conversation with a woman was appreciated, but wives were not welcome” (Carlson 30). Her specialty was philosophy and politics and she became the only female member of the elite Periclean circle that included the most prominent Sophists of the day. In the circle she made both friends and enemies as a result of her political savvy and public speaking ability.
As a student of Socrates (469-399 BCE), Plato (429-347 BCE) wrote about rhetoric in the form of dialogues wherein the main character is Socrates. Through this form the dialectic was born. While this term has been debated since its inception, Plato conceptualized it as a process of questions and answers that would lead to the ultimate truth and understanding. Think for a moment about contemporary situations wherein this process is utilized. What about an in-class discussion wherein the professor questions the students about an interpretation or meaning of a poem? Or the role that a therapist takes by asking a series of questions to a patient to bring greater clarity in understanding one’s own thoughts, motives, and behavioral patterns? These are just two examples of the dialectic at work. What others can you think of? Ironic is the fact that while Plato contributed a great deal to classical rhetorical theory he was also very critical of it. In Georgias, for example, Plato argued that because rhetoric does not require a unique body of knowledge it is a false rather than true art.
While Plato condemned the art of rhetoric, his student, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) believed in the possibility of rhetoric as a means of creating community. The dialectical, or give and take approach, allows people to share and test ideas with one another with the goal of a more prosperous city-state. He defined rhetoric as the ability to see, in each particular case, the available means of persuasion. Two parts of this definition are particularly significant: the terms “in each particular case” and “persuasion.” The former suggests that Aristotle recognized the importance of context and audience; that a specific situation with a particular audience might direct the speaker, or rhetor, to create a message in a form that might look different in another context with another audience. He recognized the importance of audience analysis: that different things appeal to different people. To put it in contemporary terms, let us look at an example from the marketing and advertising world. Mattel, the company who makes Barbie has long been interested in selling the doll as well as her friends and accessories worldwide. (Currently, a Barbie is sold somewhere in the world every 2 seconds!) Researching the Japanese doll market, advertisers found that Japanese girls do not play with their dolls in the same way as American girls–dressing them, fixing their hair, and role-playing with them. Instead, Japanese girls might place the dolls on a shelf and admire them. To sell Barbie in Japan meant that Mattel must also “teach” Japanese girls how to play and use Barbie like American kids do. As a result, their Japanese television commercials are explicit in the verbal messages as well as the images of playing with (not looking at) Barbie. Mattel has taken the same message—sell Barbie—and constructed it differently depending on the context and their audience. This would be an example of creating the necessary appeals to persuade kids (to buy Barbie) in each particular case (America versus Japan).
The second part of his definition dealing with persuasion suggests that Aristotle conceptualized a very specific and limited scope for rhetoric. Rhetoric exists in contexts where a person or a group of people is engaged in the process of communicating for the purpose of changing another in some way. Change may come in the form of trying to influence a prospective voter in an upcoming election or convincing a jury on the guilt or innocence of a defendant in a murder trial. As we will discuss later in this chapter, the sole focus on persuasion is one of the critiques that contemporary theorists have when assessing rhetorical theory.
While much of the classical theorists were men and dealt with traditionally male roles, Pan Chao (c. 45 CE-115 CE) provides historical insight into Eastern rhetoric and the role of women in rhetoric. A strong believer in the benefits of education, she was one of the first people to argue for the education of girls and women. Writing on the four qualifications of womanhood (virtue, words, bearing, and work), she said of womanly words, they “need be neither clever in debate nor keen in conversation,” but women should “…choose words with care; to avoid vulgar language; to speak at appropriate times; and to not weary others (with much conversation), [these] may be called the characteristics of womanly words” (Pan Chao 417). The role of women and other nondominant groups is another concern of contemporary theorists that will be discussed later in more detail.
Articulating a Classical Rhetorical Theory
Two other key figures in classical rhetoric are Cicero (106-43 BCE) and Quintillian (c. 35-95). They deserve recognition for combining much of what was known from the Greeks and Romans into more complete theoretical systems. Many of the concepts to emerge from this time are still relevant today, although they may have been transformed in some way to reflect a more contemporary context. You may, for example, recognize them in the setting of a public speaking course. In the classical system there were three types of public speeches—legal, political, and ceremonial. Eventually the genre of rhetorical discourse would include poetry, sermons, letters, songs; and with the advent of the technology, mass mediated discourse such as television, radio, and film.
Another major contribution was the formation of the five canons: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. All of these should be easily recognizable as the stages of speech preparation. First, the speechwriter must invent and formulate the arguments based on logos– rational appeal or logic. Next, the speech is organized in the most effective manner. Aristotle thought the logical appeals should go in the main part or body of the speech and the appeals to ethos and pathos should fall in the introduction and conclusion. After the proper arrangement of the information, the writer must think about style—the particular language choices that will enhance the enjoyment, and thus acceptability of the argument, on the part of the audience. The forth step, memory, was vital in the classical period but is rarely a requirement in today’s public speaking contexts. Notes, cue cards, and, teleprompters are all devices that have replaced this original forth canon. The final element, delivery, consists of the use of nonverbal gestures, eye contact and vocal variations when presenting the speech to an audience. Think back to the evaluation form that your professor used to evaluate your speeches in class; chances are you were evaluated in some manner on your ability to perform the five canons.
Rhetoric Loses Its Status, Then Rises Again
As the Roman Empire fell and the historical period known as the Middle Ages (400-1400) dominated, rhetoric fell from grace. It was no longer a valued and honored skill but instead was thought of as a pagan art. This view coincided with the Christian domination of the period as, “Christians believed that the rhetorical ideas formulated by the pagans of classical Greece and Rome should not be studied and that possession of Christian truth was accompanied by an automatic ability to communicate the truth effectively” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 8). Ironically, it was a Christian, Augustine, who recognized and articulated the role for rhetoric in the church. Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric, thus, he knew skills in oratory and that the ability to move an audience was consistent with the duties of a preacher. As the world grew bigger, people needed a form of communication that would travel across distance—thus letter writing became popular and was now considered within the scope of rhetoric.
As the Middle Ages ended, the Renaissance took its place from 1400-1600. During this period two intellectual trends—humanism and rationalism—shaped the study of rhetoric. Humanism is the study of history, moral philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric of classical antiquity. These thinkers believed that the word was to be known and understood through language, rather that the natural or physical. Rationalism, however, privileged scientific and objective answers to life’s questions and as such had little use for rhetoric. In the modern period that followed three trends in rhetoric emerged—the epistemological, belletristic, and elocutionist.
Challenges To The Canon
While much of the classical rhetorical theories arose from the closely related context of public speaking, much of the theorizing that contributes to contemporary rhetoric comes from outside this context and, to some extent, outside the Communication discipline. While Aristotle and Augustine were chiefly concerned with questions of persuasive ability, contemporary theorists are concerned with relationships between power, knowledge, and discourse. Hopefully, you can see that this is a much broader set of questions and in turn the scope of rhetoric has also expanded. Below, we will discuss this expansion and the contributors.
Rhetoric In Contemporary Times
In addition to the broader set of concerns on the part of contemporary theorists, they specifically challenged certain assumptions and biases of the canon—that of rationalism and voice. Responding to the rational bias are social constructionism and postmodernism. Social Constructionism often associated with Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty, questions the premise that scientific or philosophical knowledge can be assumed as fundamentally true. This perspective “discounts the possibility that truth/reality/knowledge exists in an a priori state.” [Instead,] it emphasizes what cultures regard as knowledge or truth” (Covino and Jolliffe 83). Meaning, that the “truth” is not “out there” (as X Files would have us believe). Rather, the truth is determined by our own personal and cultural experiences and how language is used to understand and explain those experiences.
In any discussion of Postmodernism the difficulty of defining the term is invariably part of the discussion. Part of that problem can be located the etymology of the word itself. Modern refers to just now (from modo in Latin) and post means after. Thus, this term translates into “after just now”—an idea difficult to wrap our heads around you might say. How do you, for example, point to or mark the period after just now? (Covino and Jolliffe 76). Some qualities that describe postmodernism are that of fragmentation, nonlinearity, and instability. The film, Moulin Rouge, is an excellent example of a postmodern text as it exemplifies these qualities. The story is told not in a traditionally linear (or modern) form, but instead the dialogue is made up of a patchwork of pop songs from Elton John to Madonna to weave the tale of a 19th century romance.
The second major challenge to the rhetorical canon and to a rational paradigm has been that of voice; who gets to speak and whose rhetoric is considered significant (or even gets labeled as rhetoric). Going back to the classical period, you remember that public oratory was considered the scope of rhetoric. And you also know who traditionally hold positions of power that would grant them access to the public speaking contexts—primarily white, wealthy men. This obviously left out a lot of people: they had no voice. An Afrocentric and feminist perspective offer two responses to this challenge. An Afrocentric position seeks to include linguistic elements from African languages as well as the Black experience in America into the scope and understanding of rhetorical processes. A feminist perspective looks at the ways in which women and other groups have been similarly left of the scope of rhetorical discourse and attempts to uncover the patriarchal biases in language and restore them with more egalitarian principles.
Case In Point: Contemporary Rhetorical Theorists
Here is a list of contemporary theorists who have all challenged the canon in some way. To further your understanding of rhetorical theory explore the works of one or more of these rhetorical scholars to learn about their unique and important contributions.
• Michael Bakhtin
• Kenneth Burke
• Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
• Helene Cixous
• Mary Daly
• Jacques Derrida
• Sonja K.Foss
• Karen A. Foss
• Michel Foucault
• Sally Miller Gearhart
• Julia Kristeva
• Malcom X
• Chaïm Perlman and Lucie Olbrects-Tyteca
• I.A Richards
• Stephen Toulmin
• Virginia Woolf
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/07%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism/7.02%3A_Rhetoric_In_Ancient_Times.txt |
In the second half of this chapter we would like to discuss a close associate to rhetorical theory—rhetorical criticism. To explain this exciting subdiscipline we will discuss the scope of rhetorical criticism, the purpose of this method, the kinds of knowledge produced, and the relationship between rhetorical theory and criticism. We will conclude with examples of how rhetorical criticism seeks to answer contemporary socio and political concerns.
Rhetorical criticism is an epistemology or way of knowing many scholars find effective in coming to an understanding about the communication process and the artifact under study. (An artifact or text is simply the thing that the critic wants to learn about. Artifacts can be, for example, speeches, songs, sermons, films or works of art.) Think about a speech you have heard that was very moving and inspirational. At its conclusion perhaps you wondered, “I know that was a great speech, but why”? Or perhaps a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. inspired the question, “How did the artist take a controversial subject (the war) and memorialize it in a way that diffuses the controversy”? Or maybe you are a fan of the show South Park. You recognize that there are jokes that make fun of particular groups of people such as ethnic and racial minorities that could be labeled “racist.” Yet, you do not believe that the overall point or message of this program is to espouse a racist agenda. So, what is going on with this show that allows it to contain some of its racial message? These are the types of questions that rhetorical criticism can answer.
Scope
While there is general agreement among rhetorical scholars that criticism is an appropriate method of study, there are differing opinions about why and how it contributes to an overall understanding of rhetoric. Depending on the rhetorical critic, the assumptions about rhetorical criticism vary. As a way of uncovering some of the various assumptions scholars bring to this method of inquiry, we will look at the various definitions of criticism and rhetoric and what is considered within the scope of rhetorical criticism.
To Persuade?
We can begin to see the relationship between rhetorical theory and criticism when we examine the beginnings of criticism. Pay attention to the shared qualities and assumptions. In an early (1925) essay on rhetorical criticism, the study of rhetoric was limited to that of speakers and speeches, and included a number of points to which the critic should attend: speaker’s personality, speaker’s public character, audience, speaker’s leading ideas, motives, topics, proofs, judgment of human nature, questions considered, textual authenticity, arrangement, mode of expression preparation, delivery, style, effect on audience, influence on the time (Wichelns). With this broad agenda for critics, Wichelns failed to provide them with a method to accomplish these goals. His essay was influential in that it lead to an exclusive focus and assumption that criticism was to be centered on oral rhetoric. Hopefully, you can see how this parallels the focus of rhetoric in the classical period.
Other scholars tried to fill in some of the gaps of this early essay. Ewbank tried to broaden the scope in 1931 by performing “case studies” where the critic wrote from personal experience derived from witnessing the speech. He looked at the audience’s immediate reactions and the effect of the speech on them. Hunt (1935) said the critic should be focused more on values and less on performance of a work. He wanted critics to make value judgments but gave no definition of such. Bryant (1937) was the first person to question the exclusive focus on “great” individuals. He wanted a focus on social forces or movements and thought forces and figures should be studied together. Booth expanded rhetoric to include novels, plays, editorials and songs.
Of the more recent critics, Cathcart says “rhetoric is used . . . to refer to a communicator’s intentional use of language and other symbols to influence or persuade selected receivers to act, believe, or feel the way the communicator desires in problematic situations” (2). Of criticism he says it is “that special form of communication which examines how communication is accomplished and whether it is worthwhile. . . Criticism is thus the counterpart of creativity” (3). Imbedded in these definitions are Cathcart’s assumptions that only messages that are intended are within the scope of study. Such messages are designed to change the listener or the situation in some way, presumably to solve the problematic situation. This implies that the rhetor knows how to solve the problem and believes that he or she has the best solution. The requirement of a “problematic situation” narrows the scope considerably as does Cathcart’s examples of rhetoric—public discourse such as speeches, essays, interviews, and slogans (2). Thus, for Cathcart, a rhetor comes to the problematic speaking situation with his or her solution based on what he or she believes the audience needs to resolve the conflict. Criticism is used to assess whether the rhetor was successful in persuading the audience to accept the solution and the strategies used to gain such acceptance.
Black in Rhetorical Criticism, defines rhetoric as, “discourse that aims to influence” (17). Criticism then, “is a discipline that, through the investigation and appraisal of the activities and products of men, seeks as its end the understanding of man himself. . . .rhetorical criticism is the criticism of rhetorical discourse” (9, 10). Here, Black offers and suggests a broader scope than Cathcart. Rhetoric is not limited to solely problematic situations; thus, it does not assume that the rhetor has a solution for the audience. Like Cathcart, he assumes the rhetorical goal is to influence and persuade and is concerned with the strategies that are most effective; scholars look at “what he says and how he says it” (17).
Many other critics assume the intent to persuade as the natural goal of rhetoric and focus on the strategies for doing so. Stewart says rhetorical criticism is “the study of man’s past attempt to change the behavior of fellow man, primarily through verbal symbols” (1). Brock and Scott claim rhetoric may be defined as the human effort to induce cooperation through the use of symbols” (6). By reading about the various definitions and assumptions of rhetorical criticism we hope you can begin to see a relationship between some of the early definitions of rhetorical theory (as persuasion) and how that impacted the development of rhetorical criticism.
Or Not to Persuade?
The definitions offered by Foss, however, suggest at least two different assumptions. She defines rhetoric as “the action humans perform when they use symbols for the purpose of communication with one another” (4). Like other theorists and critics, Foss is concerned with symbolic action, however, she does not assume that the sole propose of those symbols is to persuade others. Rhetoric may be intended to persuade, but it may also be “an invitation to understanding”: an offer to others to see our world the way we do, not in the hope that they will change, but that they will understand (5). At other times rhetoric may be used for self-discovery, to bring people together, or entertainment. With the focus on communication as understanding rather than persuasion, Foss offers critics a broad scope for the study of rhetorical discourse.
Foss defines criticism as “the process of systematically investigating and explaining symbolic acts and artifacts for the purpose of understanding rhetorical processes” (7). Like other critics she wants to understand strategies or processes, but she does not assume that she can understand “man,” rather she wants to understand rhetoric and how humans use it. From her definitions, we see that Foss approaches rhetorical criticism with two assumptions that differ from other scholars. First, she does not assume that the role of the rhetorical critic is to judge the effectiveness of the speaker or discourse: their purpose is to understand. Second, she does not believe that the critic must possess knowledge of the motives of the communicator. In her perspective, this is not necessary because, regardless of intent, a message has been transmitted and produces an effect upon the audience. The goal is to uncover the meanings that are produced, not necessarily the intended meaning.
Purpose
While scholars debate the purpose of rhetorical criticism, the arguments fall into one of two categories: judgment and understanding. While, this may be an oversimplification in some cases, it is useful for our purpose here. Those who see rhetorical criticism as a means of judgment are concerned with articulating the effectiveness of a text or artifact and the strategies that contributed or detracted from its overall success. How effective was President Bush, for example, in persuading the American people and the world that we should go to war with Iraq in his Sate of the Union address in January 2003?
Those concerned with understanding may be concerned with comprehension and appreciation of the artifact itself and how that knowledge contributes to an understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical processes. A critic interested in this sort of project might ask a question such as, Does the 2003 film, Charlie’s Angels II: Full Throttle, offer an empowering feminist voice or does it reinscribe a traditionally feminine image? Both questions can be answered by rhetorical criticism: they are just different kinds of questions.
Currently, the collective opinion seems to be moving in the direction of understanding as the purpose of rhetorical criticism. We see that Foss is less concerned with judgment as she is with comprehension as suggested in her above definitions of rhetoric and criticism. She sees a direct and explicit correlation between the criticism of an artifact and an understanding of rhetorical theory: “the critic is interested in discovering what the artifact teaches us about the nature of rhetoric” (8). The overall goal is to contribute to our effectiveness as communicators. When we know and understand how rhetoric works we are able to critique the rhetorical choices of others and make effective rhetorical choices for our own communication. The aim for the individual is to be rhetorically effective in a given situation by understanding the communicative options available to him or her.
Other specific purposes can include artistic, analytic, and ideological. Leff describes the artistic critic as one who sees the text as art and wants to foster an appreciation in the reader (224). The purpose is for the reader to understand and therefore, appreciate the art form. The analytic critic sees the text, (such as advertisements or political campaigns) as an object of study and seeks the means to comprehend. Wanderer talks of the ideological or advocate critic as looking at how a text may be oppressive, suppress the readers’ interpretations, closes off other readings or possibilities (social protests, minorities.) Feminist and ideological criticism seek the emancipation of all human potential and exposes how that potential is being silenced by the existing ideologies.
What Can We Learn?
The value of rhetorical criticism comes from the insights it can provide about rhetorical communication and the artifact we study. Through these methodological process critics come to a greater awareness about the variety of communication options open to us in a given situation. This awareness helps us to be effective communicators. Conversely, discovering what is ineffective in a discourse teaches us what not to do when we communicate with others. By uncovering hidden meanings in a text we learn how various messages are produced and their effects. This can help us decipher how we may want to respond in a given situation: “The value of both critical theory and textual criticism derives from the extent to which they inform discursive practice and advance our understanding of rhetorical communication” (Henry 220-221). Criticism also helps us learn about a specific text. When we can identify a text with pervasive effects, rhetorical criticism can inform us as to how and why that text is so effective. Thus, rhetorical criticism enables scholars to learn more about their own communication strategies, the study of rhetoric, and the specific artifacts that interest us.
The Relationship Between Theory and Criticism
Many critics are concerned with the relationship between theory and practice and how an understanding of one contributes to the other. In this way theory and criticism are mutually interdependent: the purpose for criticism is to unite theory and practice. Criticism must be informed by method so others can see why and how we reason about quality i.e. we need theory for criticism and criticism for theory (Farrell 4). Campbell says the purpose of criticism is to contribute to the modification and application of theory (18). Criticism helps us see gaps in theory and the limits of knowledge so we may ascertain social significance of discourse. If there is a gap in theory criticism helps us create a new one. Hart, however, claims that critics do not have to choose between studying texts and contributing to theory; productive criticism can do both, regardless of the critic’s intention. If you remember back to the chapter on theory at the beginning of the text we talked about theory as an idea of how something works. The “something” in this case is language or discourse; rhetorical theories provide models for how language functions as part of the human experience and rhetorical criticism is a way of testing and revising the particular theory with a real life case study.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/07%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism/7.03%3A_Understanding_Rhetorical_Criticism.txt |
By now you should have a clear understanding of what rhetorical theory and criticism are and the uses they serve for the discipline as well as the world outside academia. We would like to conclude this chapter by detailing some of the current issues and questions occupying rhetorical scholars. As the examples are numerous, we will speak to three specific content areas: the study of social movements, political and campaign rhetoric, and studies of popular culture.
Social Movements
One of the exciting things about Communication is that is it has always been interested in the large sociopolitical issues facing society. Social change as it occurs through social movements is one such area of research. Think back to your history lessons concerning minority populations in the United States. Has the political status of women; African Americans; Asians; gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgendered individuals always been what it is today? (We are not suggesting here that there is finally equality among people of various races, ethnicities, genders, or sexual orientations; only that it has been much worse.) How have those changes come about? Certainly laws and customs have changed in an attempt to provide more equal access to resources and opportunities. But prior to such legislative changes a change in attitude was necessary. Here is where social movement rhetoric played a vital role in changes our nation’s history. The rhetoric of leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caesar Chavez have all been influential in changing attitudes. Scholars interested in these issues study the discourse of the leaders (i.e. their speeches) as well as the rhetorical vision they create for their audience. Moreover, they also attempt to learn from the past about what sort of rhetorical strategies will be successful in contemporary and future movements. As Bowers, Ochs, and Jensen explain, “one of the goals of studying social movements is to make predictions” (141).
Public Address
Another area of research that falls within the scope of rhetorical theory and criticism is that of public address. This area is concerned with politics and political oratory. Some students of rhetoric may go onto careers in speech writing and campaign design on the behalf of political candidates. In this context they are able to utilize their skills in rhetoric and persuasion to answer the challenge of, how can I get people to vote for a particular candidate. Kathleen Hall Jamison is an example of such a person. She worked on the Dukakis presidential campaign and has authored several books in this area. Similarly, one might be in the business of analyzing political speeches and offering suggestions about what is effective and ineffective in a politician’s rhetoric.
Popular Culture
The study and critique of popular culture is something that most, if not all, of us participate in at some level. Do you ever watch music videos with your friends and comment on the use of some of the images? Do you look forward to the commercials during the Super Bowl to see the latest and innovative advertising techniques? As you watch, critique, and analyze these images, you are beginning the process of rhetorical criticism. The only difference between you and the professional critic (beside lots of schooling) is that the professional critic has decided to make his or her analysis systematic. This is accomplished by employing one of the formal methods discussed earlier, such as the pentad or a feminist critique. As most people participate in some form of popular culture such as television, films, music, sports, or fashion, you can see the potential impact that popular culture messages and images have on a society. Thus, scholars of popular culture feel it is important to pay critical attention to them rather than dismiss them as trivial. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/07%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism/7.04%3A_Current_Uses_of_Rhetorical_Theory_and_Criticism.txt |
Summary
By now you have a more complex understanding of the term rhetoric and realize the distinction between the use of the term in the popular press and its meaning within the context of the Communication discipline. At a very basic level, you know that it refers to the process in which humans use symbols to communicate with one another. Moreover, you should know the contributions of classical and well as contemporary theorists to understanding human symbol use. As a way of knowing, rhetorical criticism provides scholars with a unique methodological tool for understanding communication. Through the contributions and paradigm shifts from classical to contemporary scholars, the scope of rhetorical criticism has been widened to include a variety of social events, acts, and artifacts that we encounter in our daily life. This method has a direct impact on our lives by informing us about the communicative options available to us when communicating with others in cultural, professional, personal and political contexts.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What specific contributions did classical theorists make to the study of rhetoric?
2. How have contemporary rhetorical theorists challenged the canon?
3. Compare and contrast classical rhetorical theories versus contemporary ones.
4. What idea has been at the center of most definitions of rhetoric? Do you think rhetoric should refer only to persuasion? What are the limits and advantages to such an approach?
5. What role do you think the study of rhetoric can play in today’s social world? The political context?
6. What are some examples of the use of classical rhetorical theory in contemporary rhetorical discourse?
7. What sort of research question would you, as a scholar interested in the rhetoric of popular culture, ask?
8. What might some of the limitations of rhetorical criticism as a method?
9. What are the elements of Burke’s pentad? Give an example of how you would apply it to the study of a particular body of discourse.
10. What kind of research question would you want to ask using the method of feminist criticism?
KEY TERMS
• Afrocentric
• Aristotle
• Artifact
• Aspasia of Miletus
• Audience analysis
• Canons
• Cicero
• Dialectic
• Ethos
• Fantasy Theme Criticism
• Feminist Criticism
• Humanism
• Ideological Criticism
• Logos
• Narrative Criticism
• Neo-Aristotelian Criticism
• Pan Chao
• Pathos
• Pentadic Criticism
• Persuasion
• Plato
• Postmodernism
• Public Address
• Quintillian
• Rationalism
• Rhetoric
• Rhetorical Criticism
• Social Constructionism
• Socrates
• Types of speeches
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
7.06: Rhetorical Criticism References
Black, Edwin. Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method. 2 ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1978.
Bormann, Ernest G. “How to Make a Fantasy Theme Analysis.”. 4.
Bowers, John W., Donovan J. Ochs, and Richard J. Jensen. The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control. Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1993.
Brock, Bernard L., Robert L. Scott, and James W. Cheseboro. “Introduction.” Methods in Rhetorical Criticism. Ed. Bernard L. Brock, Robert L. Scott, and James W. Cheseboro. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1989. 9-22.
Bryant, Donald C. “Some Problems Eith Scope and Method in Rhetorical Criticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 23 (1937): 182-89.
Burke, Kenneth. Permanence and Change. 1935. 3 ed. Berleley: University of California, 1984.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. The Rhetorical Act. 2 ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1996.
Carlson, A. Cheree. “Aspasia of Miletus: How One Woman Disappeared from the History of Rhetoric.” Women’s Studies in Communication 17.1 (1994): 26-44.
Cathcart, Robert S. Post-Communication: Rhetorical Analysis and Evaluation. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1991.
Chao, Pan. “Lessons for Women.” Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, and Boundaries. Ed. William A. Covino and David A. jolliffe. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 415-18.
Covino, A William and David A. Jolliffe, ed. Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
Ewbank, Henry L. “Four Approaches to the Study of Speech Style.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 18 (1931): 458-65.
Farrell, Thomas B. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin. Feminist Rhetorical Theories. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999.
Foss, Sonja K., Foss, Karen A. and Robert Trapp. Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric. 3rd ed. Prspect Heights: Waveland, 2002.
Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. 2nd ed. Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1996.
Hart, Roderick P. “Contemporary Scholarship in Public Address: A Research Editorial.” Western Journal of Speech Communication 50 (1986): 282-89.
Henry, David. “Test and Theory in Critical Practice.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 219-22.
Hunt, Everett Lee. “Rhetoric and Literary Criticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 21 (1935): 564-68.
Leff, Michael. “Things Made by Words: Reflections on Textual Criticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 223-31. Mohtmann, and Donovan J. Ochs. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973. 1-31.
Stewart, Charles J. “Historical Survey: Rhetorical Criticism in Twentieth Century America.” Explorations in Rhetorical Criticism. Ed. Charles J. Stewart G.P.
Wichelns, Herbert. “The Literary Criticism of Oratory.” Rhetoric and Public Speaking in Honor of James A. Winans. Ed. A.M. Drummand. New York: Century, 1935.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/07%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism/7.05%3A_Rhetorical_Criticism_Summary.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Define mass communication.
• Identify key functions of mass communication.
• Understand prominent theories of mass communication.
• Understand the role that media plays in your life.
• Describe pop culture.
• Identify several key elements of media literacy.
• Recognize your role in the global community.
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08: Mass Communication
You’re sitting in a classroom checking twitter while listening to your favorite music when the clock hits the top of the hour. You take out your headphones and put the phone down when you hear the instructor begin talking. She is referring to a web page projected on the screen in front of class. She welcomes everyone to the start of the school year, but stops to wait for the guy next to you to put down his phone that he’s reading. She explains that she will only provide an electronic version of the syllabus, pointing to the course web page. Everyone in the class is to go online and read the syllabus before the next class meeting. She explains that, besides lecture and discussion, you will need to watch CNN, read the Wall Street Journal, and watch several clips she’s listed on YouTube to demonstrate and learn key concepts. Suddenly, from the back of the class a cell phone begins ringing. The instructor stops mid-sentence and explains the class policy about turning off cell phones during class. Your classmate never answers the phone but reaches into his pocket and looks at the phone screen. The instructor explains that you will need to read chapter one of the textbook by next week. Included with your textbook is a pass-code that allows you to connect to an online database so you can access articles for your semester project. After she answers student questions, class is over.
As you head out the door you hear music coming from the building sound system playing the student-run FM radio station. You walk to the student union to grab lunch and watch whatever they’re playing on the large screen television. On your drive home, you turn on the radio to listen to the broadcast of your favorite baseball team. While driving, you notice the new billboard advertising Ford trucks. When you get home, you sit down in front of your computer. You check a class web page to see if you have homework, check the day’s current events and sporting scores, then check your email. You read several messages, delete the spam, and get irritated at the pop-up advertisements that keep jumping on your screen. After shutting down your computer you sit on the couch to watch a movie streaming through Netflix. As you lean back on the couch, you clear away a stack of magazines to set down your drink.
The above example is representative of the amount of mass communication we are exposed to daily. In the U.S. we witness and understand a great deal of our world through mass communication. Remember that in the early part of the 20th century, communication scholars began to ask questions about the impact of media as more and more mass communication outlets were developed. Questions then and now include: To what degree does mass communication affect us? How do we use or access mass communication? How does each medium influence how we interpret messages? Do we play an active or passive role when we interact with media? This chapter explores these questions by examining the concept of mass communication, its evolution, its functions, its theories, and its place in society.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.01%3A_Mass_Communication_Overview.txt |
Littlejohn and Foss define mass communication as “the process whereby media organizations produce and transmit messages to large publics and the process by which those messages are sought, used, understood, and influenced by audience” (333). McQuail states that mass communication is, “only one of the processes of communication operating at the society-wide level, readily identified by its institutional characteristics” (7). Simply put, mass communication is the public transfer of messages through media or technology-driven channels to a large number of recipients from an entity, usually involving some type of cost or fee (advertising) for the user. “The sender often is a person in some large media organization, the messages are public, and the audience tends to be large and varied” (Berger 121). However, with the advent of outlets like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and text messaging, these definitions do not account for the increased opportunities individuals now have to send messages to large audiences through mediated channels.
Nevertheless, most mass communication comes from large organizations that influence culture on a large scale. Schramm refers to this as a “working group organizer” (115). Today the working groups that control most mass communication are large conglomerates such as Viacom, NewsCorp, Disney, ComCast, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2012, these conglomerates controlled 90% of American Media and mergers continue to consolidate ownership even more. An example of an attempt at such a takeover of power occurred throughout 2014 with Comcast and Time Warner pursuing a merger for \$45 billion. If successful, this will be one of the biggest mergers in history.
Remember our definition of communication study: “who says what, through what channels (media) of communication, to whom, [and] what will be the results” (Smith, Lasswell & Casey 121)? When examining mass communication, we are interested in who has control over what content, for what audience, using what medium, and what are the results? Media critic Robert McChesney said we should be worried about the increasingly concentrated control of mass communication that results when just a handful of large organizations control most mass communication, “The implications for political democracy, by any standard, are troubling” (23). When interviewed, Ben Bagdikian, media critic and former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, cautiously pointed out that over the past two decades, major media outlets went from being owned by 50 corporations to just five (WGBH/Frontline). Both McChesney and Bagdikian warn about the implications of having so few organizations controlling the majority of our information and communication. Perhaps this is the reason new media outlets like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook have consistently grown in popularity as they offer alternative voices to the large corporations that control most mass communication.
To understand mass communication one must first be aware of some of the key factors that distinguish it from other forms of communication. First, is the dependence on a media channel to convey a message to a large audience. Second, the audience tends to be distant, diverse, and varies in size depending on the medium and message. Third, mass communication is most often profit driven, and feedback is limited. Fourth, because of the impersonal nature of mass communication, participants are not equally present during the process.
Mass communication continues to become more integrated into our lives at an increasingly rapid pace. This “metamorphosis” is representative by the convergence occurring (Fidler) between ourselves and technology, where we are not as distanced from mass communication as in the past. Increasingly, we have more opportunities to use mediated communication to fulfill interpersonal and social needs. O’Sullivan refers to this new use of mass communication to foster our personal lives as “masspersonal communication” where (a) traditional mass communication channels are used for interpersonal communication, (b) traditionally interpersonal communication channels are used for mass communication, and (c) traditional mass communication and traditional interpersonal communication occur simultaneously.” Over time, more and more overlap occurs. “Innovations in communication technologies have begun to make the barriers between mass and interpersonal communication theory more permeable than ever” (O’Sullivan). Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and Instagram are great examples of new mass communication platforms we use to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships.
As more mass communication mediums develop, Marshall McLuhan states that we can understand media as either hot or cold depending on the amount of information available to the user, as well as the degree of participation. A hot medium“extends one single sense in high definition” (McCluhan 22). Examples of hot media include photographs or radio because the message is mostly interpreted using one sense and requires little participation by participants. An audience is more passive with hot media because there is less to filter. Television is considered a cold medium because of the large amount of multisensory information. Berg Nellis states “Virtual reality, the simulation of actual environment complete with tactile sensory input, might be the extreme in cold media…This and other cutting edge technologies seem to point to increasingly cold media as we move into the digital communication future” (256). Think about online video games, such as the military sci-fi game, Halo. Games like this can be played in teams but the players do not necessarily have to be in close proximity. Simply by logging onto the server gamers can connect, interact, communicate through microphones and play as a team. These games have become so involved and realistic that they represent cold mediums because of the vast amount of sensory input and participation they require.
Perhaps we are turning into a “global village” through our interdependence with mass communication. Suddenly, “across the ocean” has become “around the corner.” McLuhan predicted this would happen because of mass communication’s ability to unify people around the globe. Are you a player in what Hagermas calls the “public sphere” that mass communication creates by posting information about yourself on public sites? If so, be careful about what you post about yourself, or allow others to “tag” you in, as many employers are googling potential employees to look into their personal lives before making decisions about hiring them. As we continue our discussion of mass communication we want to note that mass communication does not include every communication technology. As our definition states, mass communication is communication that potentially reaches large audiences.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Mass Communication definition. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Masscomm.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Mass Communications Now. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corporationsownmedia.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.02%3A_Defining_Mass_Communication.txt |
Societies have long had a desire to find effective ways to report environmental dangers and opportunities; circulate opinions, facts, and ideas; pass along knowledge, heritage, and lore; communicate expectations to new members; entertain in an expansive manner; and broaden commerce and trade (Schramm). The primary challenge has been to find ways to communicate messages to as many people as possible. Our need-to-know prompted innovative ways to get messages to the masses.
Before writing, humans relied on oral traditions to pass on information. “It was only in the 1920s-according to the Oxford English Dictionary-that people began to speak of ‘the media’ and a generation later, in the 1950s, of a ‘communication revolution’, but a concern with the means of communication is very much older than that” (Briggs & Burke 1). Oral and written communication played a major role in ancient cultures. These oral cultures used stories to document the past and impart cultural standards, traditions, and knowledge. With the development of alphabets around the world over 5000 years ago, written language with ideogrammatic (picture-based) alphabets like hieroglyphics started to change how cultures communicated.
Still, written communication remained ambiguous and did not reach the masses until the Greeks and Romans resolved this by establishing a syllable alphabet representing sounds. But, without something to write on, written language was inefficient. Eventually, paper making processes were perfected in China, which spread throughout Europe via trade routes (Baran). Mass communication was not quick, but it was far-reaching (Briggs & Burke). This forever altered how cultures saved and transmitted cultural knowledge and values. Any political or social movement throughout the ages can be traced to the development and impact of the printing press and movable metal type (Steinberg). With his technique, Guttenberg could print more than a single page of specific text. By making written communication more available to larger numbers of people, mass printing became responsible for giving voice to the masses and making information available to common folks (McLuhan & Fiore). McLuhan argued that Gutenberg’s evolution of the printing press as a form of mass communication had profound and lasting effects on culture, perhaps the most significant invention in human history.
Mass Communication Study Then
In 1949, Carl I. Hovland, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, and Fred D. Sheffield wrote the book Experiments on Mass Communication. They looked at two kinds of films the Army used to train soldiers. First, they examined orientation and training films such as the “Why We Fight” that were intended to teach facts to the soldiers, as well as generate a positive response from them for going to war. The studies determined that significant learning did take place by the soldiers from the films, but primarily with factual items. The Army was disappointed with the results that showed that the orientation films did not do an effective job in generating the kind of positive responses they desired from the soldiers. Imagine, people were not excited about going to war.
With the transition to the industrial age in the 18th century, large populations headed to urban areas, creating mass audiences of all economic classes seeking information and entertainment. Printing technology was at the heart of modernization WHICH led to magazines, newspapers, the telegraph, and the telephone. At the turn of the century (1900), pioneers like Thomas Edison, Theodore Puskas, and Nikola Tesla literally electrified the world and mass communication. With the addition of motion pictures and radio in the early 1900s, and television in the 40s and 50s, the world increasingly embraced the foundations of today’s mass communication. In the 1970s cable started challenging over-the-air broadcasting and traditional program distribution making the United States a wired nation. In 2014, there was an estimated 116.3 million homes in America that own a TV (Nielson, 2014 Advance National TV Household Universe Estimate). While traditionally these televisions would display only the programs that are chosen to be broadcast by cable providers, more and more households have chosen to become more conscious media consumers and actively choose what they watch through alternative viewing options like streaming video.
Today, smart T.V.’s and streaming devices have taken over the market and they are expected to be in 43% of households by 2016. These new forms of broadcasting have created a digital revolution. Thanks to Netflix and other streaming services we are no longer subjected to advertisements during our shows. Similarly, streaming services like Hulu provide the most recent episodes as they appear on cable that viewers can watch any time. These services provide instant access to entire seasons of shows (which can result in binge watching).
The Information Age eventually began to replace the ideals of the industrial age. In 1983 Time Magazine named the PC the first “Machine of the Year.” Just over a decade later, PCs outsold televisions. Then, in 2006, Time Magazine named “you” as the person of the year for your use of technology to broaden communication. “You” took advantage of changes in global media. Chances are that you, your friends, and family spend hours engaged in data-mediated communication such as emailing, texting, or participating in various form of social media. Romero points out that, “The Net has transformed the way we work, the way we get in contact with others, our access to information, our levels of privacy and indeed notions as basic and deeply rooted in our culture as those of time and space” (88). Social media has also had a large impact in social movements across the globe in recent years by providing the average person with the tools to reach wide audiences around the world for the first time history.
If you’re reading this for a college class, you may belong to the millennial generation. Free wifi, apps, alternative news sources, Facebook, and Twitter have become a way of life. Can you imagine a world without communication technology? How would you find out the name of that song stuck in your head? If you wanted to spontaneously meet up with a friend for lunch, how would you let them know? Mass communication has become such an integral part of our daily lives, most people probably could not function through the day without it. What started as email quickly progressed to chat rooms and basic blogs, such as LiveJournal. From there, we saw the rise and fall of the first widely used social media platform, Myspace. Though now just a shadow of the social media powerhouse it once was, Myspace paved the way for social media to enter the mainstream in forms of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Instagram. Facebook has evolved into a global social media site. It’s available in 37 languages and has over 500 million users. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2005 while studying at Harvard University, and it has universally changed the way we communicate, interact, and share our lives with friends, family, and acquaintances. Many people argue about the good and bad qualities of having a Facebook profile, it can be looked at as your “digital footprint” in social media. Profiles log status updates, timelines photos and videos, and archives messages between members. Here’s a short YouTube video from rapper/poet Prince Ea about Facebook and the effects of social media on society.
A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: pb.libretexts.org/introductiontocommunication/?p=156
Another example of mainstream social media is Twitter. Twitter allows for quick 140 character or less status updates (called tweets) for registered users. Tweets can be sent from any device with access to internet in a fast simple way and connects with a number of people, whether they be family, friends or followers. Twitter’s microblogging format allows for people to share their daily thoughts and experiences on a broad and sometimes public stage. The simplicity of Twitter allows it to be used as a tool for entertainment and blogging, but also as a way of organizing social movements and sharing breaking news.
Snapchat is a newer social media platform used by more and more people every day. The function of Snapchat allows the user to send a photo (with the option of text) that expires after a few seconds. It can be looked at like a digital self-destructing note you would see in an old spy movie. Unlike its competitors, Snapchat is used in a less professional manner, emphasizing humor and spontaneity over information efficiency. Contrary to Facebook, there is no pressure to pose, or display your life. Rather, it is more spontaneous. It’s like the stranger you wink at in the street or a hilarious conversation with a best friend.
Mass Communication Study Now
With new forms of communication emerging rapidly, it is important to note the corresponding changes to formal language and slang terms. UrbanDictionary.com is a famous site that can introduce any newbie to the slang world by presenting them various definitions for a term they don’t recognize, describe its background, and provide examples for how it’s used in context. For example, one of the most popular definitions claims that the word ‘hella’ is said to originate from the streets of San Francisco in the Hunters Point neighborhood. “It is commonly used in place of ‘really’ or ‘very’ when describing something.”
In this age of information overload, multiple news sources, high-speed connections, and social networking, life seems unimaginable without mass communication. Can you relate to your parents’ stories about writing letters to friends, family, or their significant others? Today, when trying to connect with someone we have a variety ways of contacting them; we can call, text, email, Facebook message, tweet, and/or Snapchat; the options are almost endless and ever-changing. Society today is in the midst of a technological revolution. Only a few years ago families were arguing over landline internet cable use and the constant disruptions from incoming phone calls. Now, we have the ability to browse the web anytime on smart phones. Since the printing press, mass communication has literally changed the ways we think and interact as humans. We take so much for granted as “new technologies are assimilated so rapidly in U.S. culture that historic perspectives are often lost in the process” (Fidler 1). With all of this talk and research about mass communication, what functions does it serve for us?
Contributions and Affiliations
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• Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?. Authored by: Prince Ea. Located at: youtu.be/dRl8EIhrQjQ. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.03%3A_Evolution_of_Mass_Communication.txt |
Mass communication doesn’t exist for a single purpose. With its evolution, more and more uses have developed and the role it plays in our lives has increased greatly. Wright characterizes seven functions of mass communication that offer insight into its role in our lives.
• Surveillance. The first function of mass communication is to serve as the eyes and ears for those seeking information about the world. The internet, televisions, and newspapers are the main sources for finding out what’s going around you. Society relies on mass communication for news and information about our daily lives, it reports the weather, current issues, the latest celebrity gossip and even start times for games. Do you remember the Boston Marathon Bombing that happened in 2013? How did you hear about it? Thanks to the internet and smart phones instant access to information is at the users fingertips. News apps have made mass communication surveillance instantly accessible by sending notifications to smartphones with the latest news.
• Correlation. Correlation addresses how the media presents facts that we use to move through the world. The information received through mass communication is not objective and without bias. People ironically state “it must be true if it’s on the internet.” However, we don’t think that in generations past people must have without a doubt stated it “has to be true” because it was on the radio. This statement begs the question, how credible are the media? Can we consume media without questioning motive and agenda? Someone selects, arranges, interprets, edits, and critiques the information used in the media. If you ask anyone who works for a major reality TV show if what we see if a fair representation of what really happens, the person would probably tell you “no.”
• Sensationalization. There is an old saying in the news industry “if it bleeds, it leads,” which highlights the idea of Sensationalization. Sensationalization is when the media puts forward the most sensational messages to titillate consumers. Elliot observes, “Media managers think in terms of consumers rather than citizens. Good journalism sells, but unfortunately, bad journalism sells as well. And, bad journalism-stories that simply repeat government claims or that reinforce what the public wants to hear instead of offering independent reporting -is cheaper and easier to produce” (35).
• Entertainment. Media outlets such as People Magazine, TMZ, and entertainment blogs such as Perez Hilton keep us up to date on the daily comings and goings of our favorite celebrities. We use technology to watch sports, go to the movies, play video games, watch YouTube videos, and listen to iPods on a daily basis. Most mass communication simultaneously entertains and informs. People often turn to media during our leisure time to provide an escape from boredom and relief from the predictability of our everyday lives. We rely on media to take us places we could not afford to go or imagine, acquaints us with bits of culture, and make us laugh, think or cry. Entertainment can have the secondary effect of providing companionship and/or catharsis through the media we consume.
• Transmission. Mass media is a vehicle to transmit cultural norms, values, rules, and habits. Consider how you learned about what’s fashionable in clothes or music. Mass media plays a significant role in the socialization process. We look for role models to display appropriate cultural norms, but all too often, not recognizing their inappropriate or stereotypical behavior. Mainstream society starts shopping, dressing, smelling, walking, and talking like the person in the music video, commercial, or movies. Why would soft drink companies pay Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift millions of dollars to sell their products? Have you ever bought a pair of shoes or changed your hairstyle because of something you encountered in the media? Obviously, culture, age, type of media, and other cultural variables factor into how mass communication influences how we learn and perceive our culture.
• Mobilization. Mass communication functions to mobilize people during times of crisis (McQuail, 1994). Think back to the Boston Marathon Bombing. Regardless of your association to the incident, Americans felt the attack as a nation and people followed the news until they found the perpetrators. With instant access to media and information, we can collectively witness the same events taking place in real time somewhere else, thus mobilizing a large population of people around a particular event. The online community Reddit.com is a key example of the internet’s proactivity. While the FBI was investigating the bombing, the Reddit community was posting witness’s photos and trying to help identify the culprits. People felt they were making a difference.
• Validation. Mass communication functions to validate the status and norms of particular individuals, movements, organizations, or products. The validation of particular people or groups serves to enforce social norms (Lazarsfeld & Merton). If you think about most television dramas and sitcoms, who are the primary characters? What gender and ethnicity are the majority of the stars? What gender and ethnicity are those that play criminals or those considered abnormal? The media validates particular cultural norms while diminishing differences and variations from those norms. A great deal of criticism focuses on how certain groups are promoted, and others marginalized by how they are portrayed in mass media.
Functions of media
Given the power of the various functions of mass communication, we need to be reflective about its presence in our lives (McLuhan & Fiore). We will now turn our attention to the study of mass communication by looking at what mass communication scholars study, and how they study it. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.04%3A_Functions_of_Mass_Communication.txt |
Continuing with the theme of this book, studying the role of mass communication heightens our awareness, helping us become media literate and strengthen our “ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages” (Baran 374). Look around you. Mass communication’s influence in contemporary society is pervasive, as we are all interlaced with it in our daily lives.
Mass Communication and Popular Culture
Culture is comprised of shared behaviors, values, beliefs, and attitudes that are learned through socialization. As Brummett explains, “popular culture are those systems or artifacts that most people share or know about”(27). Using Brummett’s ideas, in order for mass communication to be popular all forms do not have to be consumed or used by everyone. Instead, its place in culture is so pervasive that we at least have some familiarity with it. You may not watch the shows like The Walking Dead, Big Bang Theory, or Modern Family, but chances are you know something about them.
In contrast to popular culture, high culture consists of those media that are generally not produced for the masses, require a certain knowledge base, and typically require an investment of time and money to experience them. Examples of high culture include opera, poetry, theater, classical music, and the arts. While we generally do not use the term low culture, “Pop culture refers to mass-mediated kinds of ‘low’ art such as television commercials, television programs, most films, genre works of literature, and popular music” (Berger 118).
Case In Point
In 2002, a general manager at CNN Headline News instructed writers to insert slang words like “fly” (a sexually attractive person) into their televised graphics to resonate with younger viewers (Gordon; Sanders). Irvine points out that advertisers have been doing this for years. Abbreviations to speed up writing such as “lol” (laugh out loud) from chat rooms and e-mail are now becoming popular in daily conversation, and are even included in cell phone commercials advertising text messaging plans. Also, as new television genres replaced older ones, shows like Survivor, Dancing with the Stars and American Idol demonstrated that viewers like watching people in “real” situations. Does media shape our culture or does our culture shape media? Which one reflects the other, or is it possible to tell which one came first? These questions point to the importance of, and need for, media theories to provide the answers.
Keep in mind that popular culture does not necessarily mean poor quality. Popular is not always bad and is often relative to the times. For example, think about baby boomers. Their parents said rock-n-roll music was going to ruin their generation. However, today that very same music is considered classic. In the 1950’s it was said that comic books would corrupt children, and jazz was sinful. It seems like every generation has the opinion that the current pop culture of the time will destroy the moral fiber of young people. But it’s often the case that those cultural references become our most revered and loved cultural icons of the time period. Regardless of how mass communication is perceived, it implants words, behaviors, trends, icons, and patterns of behaviors that show up in our culture. Or, as some ask, is it the other way around?
Mass communication influences all aspects of society, including the language we use (Spitulnik). For example, in the 1980’s, Wendy’s aired the popular television commercial “where’s the beef?” In the 1990s, Jerry Seinfeld’s television show got us saying, “yada, yada, yada.” Saturday Night Live popularized the phrase, “I need more cow bell.” And Who Wants to Be a Millionaire coined the term “phone a friend.” It is common for us to personalize words or phrases, especially if they’re funny, and integrate them into our lives relative to our social contexts. The Seattle Times News Service reported that the 2003 version of the Oxford Dictionary of English now contains the catch phrase made famous by the HBO show The Sopranos–“bada bing”–meaning an exclamation to emphasize that something will effortlessly and predictably happen. This dictionary now contains words implanted by popular culture such as “counterterrorism” and “bootylicious.” Certain words become a part of our shared understanding through media exposure. Think about other acronyms and language that are now commonplace that were not just a few years ago: iphone, Instagram, Selfie, Hashtag, Google and Skype (as verbs), sexting, etc.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of child watching television. Authored by: oddharmonic. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2405784549_264fe67e22_z_copy.jpg. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.05%3A_The_Study_of_Mass_Communication.txt |
Almost forty years ago Osmo Wiio argued that mass communication does not accurately portray reality. Interesting that all this time later we now have a large number of “reality tv” shows that continue to blur the lines of reality and fiction. Are you always able to tell the difference between fiction and reality in mass communication? Most people tend to rationalize that others are more affected by mass communication than they are (Paul, Salwen, & Dupagne). However, we are all susceptible to the influence of mass communication.
As we discussed in Chapter 5, theories are our best representations of the world around us. “Mass communication theories are explanations and predictions of social phenomena that attempt to relate mass communication to various aspects of our personal and cultural lives or social systems” (Baran 374). We need to be discerning as we examine mass communication (Baran). “The beginning of the television age in the 1950s brought in visual communication as well as stimulated the rise of an interdisciplinary theory of the media. Contributions were made from economics, history, literature, art, political science, psychology, sociology and anthropology, and led to the emergence of academic departments of communication and cultural studies” (Briggs & Burke 2). Mass communication theories explore explanations for how we interact with mass communication, its role in our lives, and the effects it has on us.
Let’s look at five fundamental theories of mass communication: 1) the magic bullet theory, 2) two-step flow theory, 3) multi-step flow theory, 4) uses and gratification theory, and 5) cultivation theory.
• Magic Bullet Theory. The magic bullet theory (also called the hypodermic needle theory) suggests that mass communication is like a gun firing bullets of information at a passive audience. “Communication was seen as a magic bullet that transferred ideas or feelings or knowledge or motivations almost automatically from one mind to another” (Schramm 8). This theory has been largely discredited by academics because of its suggestion that all members of an audience interpret messages in the same way, and are largely passive receptors of messages. This theory does not take into account intervening cultural and demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, gender, personality, or education that cause us to react differently to the media messages we encounter. However, many people hold the assumption that media, like television news outlets, simply release information that doesn’t encourage audience engagement and critical thinking. Rather than give a story with an unbiased message, that would allow a consumer create an opinion for themselves, media news outlets present stories to audiences that are attractive to them. Those who believe reality television shows actually portray reality hold some assumptions of the magic bullet theory.
Mass Communication Study Now
One of the things that has occurred in mass communication during the Iraq war is the absence of images and coverage of American soldiers killed in action. The American government has asked that the media refrain from using these images in their publications. As we have talked about how individuals now have the ability to engage in mass communication, Paul Mcleary (2008) wrote an article for the Columbia Journalism Review entitled “Blogging the Long War.” In it, he examines the rise of independent reporters using blogs to report events occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan that people may not be able to see in mainstream media. As a result of access to outlets like blogs, individuals, such as soldiers can do their own reporting, and others are able to access alternative sources of information. How do you think these new outlets impact our world view?
Take a few minutes to view this Hypodermic Needle Theory Video that further summarizes and explains the theory.
A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: pb.libretexts.org/introductiontocommunication/?p=162
• Two-Step Flow Theory. After World War II, researchers began noticing that not all audiences react in the same ways to mass communication. Media had less power and relatively less affect than previously assumed (Klapper). The two-step flow theory suggests that mass communication messages do not move directly from a sender to the receiver (Katz & Lazarsfeld). Instead, a small group of people, gatekeepers, screen media messages, reshape these messages, and control their transmission to the masses. Opinion leaders initially consume “media content on topics of particular interest to them” and make sense of it based upon their own values and beliefs (Baran). In the second step, the opinion leaders filter and interpret the messages before they pass them along to individuals with shared ideologies who have less contact with the media, opinion followers. An example of this theory occurs during political campaigns. Research has shown that during an election, media influence your voting preferences (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet) through the information they choose to show about a candidate. This research can still be applied to current political campaigns. Pope Francis has over 4 million followers on twitter and is one of the most re-tweeted social leaders. He uses social media to engage and influence his followers about what’s going on in the world. Also, President Obama’s use of social media is highly credit as a key factor in the 2008 election. Conservatives often argue that they are marginalized by the “liberal media,” while liberals argue that they are marginalized because wealthy conservatives own and control the media. Either way, research reveals that media dependency becomes increasingly important for the public especially during political campaigns (Jeffries). You can watch a short video on the Two-Step Flow Theory.
A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: pb.libretexts.org/introductiontocommunication/?p=162
• Multi-step Flow Theory. This theory suggests that there is a reciprocal nature of sharing information and influencing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Troldahl; Troldahl & Van Dam). The idea is that opinion leaders might create media messages, but opinion followers might be able to sway opinion leaders. Thus, the relationship to media becomes much more complex. Some believe that the role of the opinion leader in our changing culture is diminishing (Baran; Kang) particularly with the ability for average people to reach potentially millions of people through social media. You’ve likely heard the term “going viral” which is something that could not have happened even ten-fifteen years ago. This mediated diffusion de-bunks the notion of an all powerful media but still recognizes that media have some effect on the audience.
• Uses and Gratification Theory. The uses and gratification theory suggests that audience members actively pursue particular media to satisfy their own needs. “Researchers focus their attention, then, on how audiences use the media rather than how the media affect audiences” (Berger 127). The reciprocal nature of the mass communication process no longer sees the media user as an inactive, unknowing participant but as an active, sense-making participant that chooses content and makes informed media choices. We tend to avoid media that do not agree with our values, attitudes, beliefs, or pocketbooks. Schramm argued that we make media choices by determining how gratified we will be from consuming a particular media. Is it easier for you to read a newspaper or would you rather watch television or listen to the radio? Even with all the information on the internet, there are still some people who consider it too time consuming and complex. Yet, many of our students do not have television sets, but instead watch all television, movies, and videos online. Streaming shows online helps us avoid commercials and media content in which we choose not to participate. Netflix, for example, requires a monthly fee in order for you to be commercial free during your shows, but usually you have to wait a season to watch shows. Whereas, Hulu charges under \$5 for their services and share 2-5 commercials per episode, but you can watch the shows during the original season they are aired. These new ways of watching television have allowed the consumer to make active choices about what media the use and consume.
Mass Communication Study and You
Do you do most of your research using search engines like Google or Yahoo? There had been an assumption that today’s younger generation is the most web-literate. However, a study carried out by the CIBER research team at the University College London states today’s youth “rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.” The same study showed that people of all ages who use the internet have a low tolerance for any delay in obtaining information. These researchers called on libraries and educational institutions to keep up with the digital age in order to provide people with quick access to information. They also stress the importance of having good research skills, rather than doing quick and simple google searches, without thinking critically about the information and its sources. Does your campus require an sort of “information literacy” training for you to graduate?
-The British Library
• Cultivation Theory. Cultivation theory questions how active we actually are when we consume mass communication. For example, the average American views between three and five hours of television a day for an average of 21 hours per week (Hinckly). According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, by age 18, the average American child will have watched 200,000 acts of violence on television. This statistic does not even take into account the violence a child has access through YouTube videos, Instagram, Facebook, music videos or any other media distribution. When violence is shown on television, rarely are the negative consequences of it acknowledged-47% of victims show no evidence of harm and 73% of perpetrators were not held accountable for their violent actions (Huston et al.).
What kind of impact does all of this have? Is it possible to tell when the average viewer becomes desensitized to violent content, or does it serve as an outlet for normal aggression? Why doesn’t all violent content affect every viewer in the same manner? Does too much consumption of violent media cause violent behavior from viewers? People who consume a lot of media see the world as a more violent and scary place because of the high levels of violence they see (Gerbner).
The theory has been extended to address the more general influences of media on human social life and personal beliefs (Lowery; DeFleur). Media present cultural realities such as fear of victimization (Sparks & Ogles), body image, promiscuity, religion, families, attitudes toward racism (Allen & Hatchett), sex roles, and drug use. Kilbourne states, “Advertising doesn’t cause eating problems, of course, any more than it causes alcoholism. [However,] Advertising does promote abusive and abnormal attitudes about eating, drinking, and thinness” (261). Gerbner developed the three B’s which state that media blurs people’s traditional distinctions of reality, blends people’s realities into one common cultural mainstream, and bends the mainstream to fit its institutional interests and the interests of its sponsors.
Mass communication theories are outlined into three categories:(1) theories about culture and society, (2) theories of influence and persuasion and (3) media use theories (Littlejohn and Foss). Understanding a few of the theories on mass communication, let’s look at some skills that will help you become a better and more critical consumer of mass communication.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
All rights reserved content
• The Hypodermic Needle Theory | Media in Minutes | Episode 1. Authored by: Brett Lamb. Located at: youtu.be/Qt5MjBlvGcY?list=PL2cSVcRHXciTp_afPmF9qIyRYeMLZxWf0. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
• The Two-Step Flow Theory | Media in Minutes | Episode 2. Authored by: Brett Lamb. Located at: youtu.be/csGHExeP3uA?list=PL2cSVcRHXciTp_afPmF9qIyRYeMLZxWf0. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.06%3A_Grounding_Theories_of_Mass_Communication.txt |
Studying how we use and consume mass communication allows us to scrutinize the conflicts, contradictions, problems, or even positive outcomes in our use of mass communication. With so much to learn about mass communication, how informed are you? Our consciousness of our media consumption is vital to understanding its effects on us as members of society. Media literacy is our awareness regarding our mediated environment or consumption of mass communication. It is our ability to responsibly comprehend, access, and use mass communication in our personal and professional lives. Potter states that we should maintain cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and moral awareness as we interact with media. Baran suggests a number of skills we can develop in order to be media literate.
• Understand and respect the power of mass communication messages. An important skill for media literacy is to acknowledge just how dominant mass communication is in our lives and around the globe. Through mass communication, media shape, entertain, inform, represent, reflect, create, move, educate, and affect our behaviors, attitudes, values, and habits in direct and indirect ways. Virtually everyone in the world has been touched in some way by mass communication, and has made personal and professional decisions largely based on representations of reality portrayed though mass communication. We must understand and respect the power media have in our lives and understand how we make sense of certain meanings.
• Understand content by paying attention and filtering out noise. As we learned in Chapter 1, anything that hinders communication is noise. Much of the noise in mass communication originates with our consumption behaviors. How often do you do something other than pay complete attention to the media that you’re accessing? Do you listen to the radio while you drive, watch television while you eat, or text message a friend while you’re in class? When it comes to mass communication we tend to multitask, an act that acts as noise and impacts the quality of the messages and our understanding of their meanings. We often turn ourselves into passive consumers, not really paying attention to the messages we receive as we perform other tasks while consuming media.
• Understand emotional versus reasoned reactions to mass communication content in order to act accordingly. A great deal of mass communication content is intended to touch us on an emotional level. Therefore, it’s important to understand our emotional reactions to mass communication. Advertising often appeals to our emotions in order to sell products (Jhally). “Sex sells” is an old advertising adage, but one that highlights how often we make decisions based on emotional reactions, versus reasoned actions. Glance through magazines like Maxim or Glamour and you’ll quickly realize how the emotions associated with sex are used to sell products of all kinds. Reasoned actions require us to think critically about the mass communication we consume before we come to conclusions simply based on our emotional responses.
• Develop heightened expectations of mass communication content. Would you consider yourself an informed consumer of mass communication? Do you expect a lot from mass communication? You may like a mystery novel because it’s “fun,” or a movie might take your mind off of reality for a few hours. However, Baran challenges us to require more from the media we consume. “When we expect little from the content before us, we tend to give meaning making little effort and attention” (57). It depends upon you what you’re willing to accept as quality. Some people may watch fewer and fewer mainstream movies because they think the current movies in theaters are low culture or are aimed at less educated audiences. They may begin to look for more foreign films, independent films, and documentaries rather than go to see the popular movies released by Hollywood. We’ve even seen a backlash against television programming in general. With the rise of services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon On-Demand, many media consumers have chosen to become what’s known as “cord cutters” and cancel their cable subscriptions. These new services often offer popular tv shows and sometimes even the most current episodes available to watch at your own leisure.
• Understand genre conventions and recognize when they are being mixed. All media have their own unique characteristics or “certain distinctive, standardized style elements” that mark them as a category or genre (Baran 57). We expect certain things from different forms of mass communication. Most of us believe, for example, that we are able to tell the difference between news and entertainment. But, are we? Television news shows often recreate parts of a story to fill in missing video of an event. Do you always catch the “re-enactment” disclaimer? Shows such as The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight effectively blurred the lines between comedy and news, and both became recognized as credible sources for news information. Even eighty years ago, Walter Lippmann recognized that media are so invasive in our lives that we might have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is manipulated by the media. The “reality TV” genre is now blurring these lines even more. Another example is the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. He, and others, often refer to him as the “governator,” a blurring of his fictional role as the Terminator and his real role as California’s governor.
• Think critically about mass communication messages, no matter how credible their source. It is essential that we critically consider the source of all mass communication messages. No matter how credible a media source, we can’t always believe everything we see or hear because all mass communication is motivated by political, profit, or personal factors. Publicists, editors, and publishers present the information from their perspective–informed by their experiences and agendas. Even if the motive is pure or the spin is minimal, we tend to selectively interpret meanings based on our own lived experiences. Audiences do not always hold similar perceptions regarding mediated messages.
• Understand the internal language of mass communication to understand its effects, no matter how complex. This skill requires us to develop sensitivity to what is going on in the media. This doesn’t just refer to whether you can program a DVR or surf the internet. This means being familiar with the intent or motivation behind the action or message. “Each medium has its own specific internal language. This language is expressed in production values–the choice of lighting, editing, special effects, music, camera angle, location on the page, and size and placement of headline. To be able to read a media text, you must understand its language” (Baran 58). What effect do these have on your interpretive or sense making abilities? Most news coverage of the Iraq war included background symbols of American flags, eagles, as well as words like “Freedom,” and “Liberation.” What is the impact of using these symbols in “objective” coverage of something like war? Shows like Scandal makes editorial choices to glamorize and demoralize politics while making it appear provocatively thrilling. On the surface, we might not realize the amount of effort that goes into dealing with political scandals, but shows like Scandal shed a light on these unspoken issues.
Case In Point
The Tao of Media Literacy
How do media affect us? Are we media literate? Werner Heisenberg in The Physicist’s Conception of Nature relates a timeless, allegorical story about the role of technology in our lives and questions if our interactions are mindful or thoughtless in regards to change. In Heisenberg’s analogy, the wise old, Chinese sage warns us about the delicate balance between humans, nature, and technology.
In this connection it has often been said that the far-reaching changes in our environment and in our way of life wrought by this technical age have also changed dangerously our ways of thinking, and that here lie the roots of the crises, which have shaken our times and which, for instance, are also expressed in modern art. True, this objection’s much older than modern technology and science, the use of implements going back to our earliest beginnings. Thus, two and a half thousand years ago, the Chinese sage Chuang-Tzu spoke of the danger of the machine when he said: As Tzu-Gung was [traveling] through the regions north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into the well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very [meager]. Tzu-Gung said, “There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?” Then the gardener stood up, looked at him and said, “And what would that be?” Tzu-Gung replied, “You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well.” Then anger rose up on the old man’s face, and he said, “I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things: I am ashamed to use them.”
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of graffiti. Authored by: ElAlispruz. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Talkingheadtv.jpg. License: CC BY: Attribution | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.07%3A_Media_Literacy.txt |
Summary
Societies have always needed effective and efficient means to transmit information. Mass communication is the outgrowth of this need. If you remember our definition of mass communication as the public transfer of messages through media or technology driven channels to a large number of recipients, you can easily identify the multiple forms of mass communication you rely on in your personal, academic, and professional lives. These encompass print, auditory, visual, interactive media, and social media forms. A relatively recent mass communication phenomenon known as mass-personal communication combines mass communication channels with interpersonal communication and relationships, where individuals are now gaining access to technology that allows them to reach large audiences.
While mass communication is vital to the success of social movements and political participation it has seven basic functions. The first of which is surveillance, or the “watch dog” role. Correlation occurs when an audience receives facts and usable information from mass media sources. When the most outrageous or fantastic stories are presented we are witnessing the sensationalization function of media. Needing an escape from routines or stress we turn to media for its entertainment value. As a cultural institution, mass communication transmits cultural values, norms and behaviors, mobilizes audiences, and validates dominant cultural values.
As media technology has evolved, so have the scholarly theories for understanding them. The five theories we discussed are different primarily in the degree of passivity versus activity they grant the audience. The magic-bullet theory assumes a passive audience while the two-step-flow and multi-step-flow theories suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between the audience and the message. The theory of uses and gratification suggests that audiences pick and choose media to satisfy their individual needs. Gerbner’s cultivation theory takes a long-term perspective by suggesting that media is one of many cultural institutions responsible for shaping or cultivating attitudes.
Because of mass communication’s unquestionable role in our lives, media literacy skills are vital for any responsible consumer and citizen. Specifically, we can become media literate by understanding and respecting the power of mass communication messages, understanding media content by paying attention, understanding emotional versus reasoned responses to mass communication, developing heightened expectations of mass communication content, understanding genre conventions and recognizing when they’re mixed, understanding the internal language of mass communication, and above all—thinking critically!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What is the role of the oral tradition in today’s society?
2. Does media directly influence individuals?
3. What determines what media an individual will use?
4. Is it the form of the media or its content that most deeply influences us?
5. Which mass communication theory do you feel most accurately portrays your media experiences? Why?
6. With constantly changing technology, what do you see as the future of mass communication?
7. How involved should the government be in protecting us from media effects? Where do you draw the line between free speech and indecency? Is censorship ever warranted?
8. How many social media sites are you apart of and actively participate in? Does one site take priority over the other?
KEY TERMS
• cold media
• correlation
• cultivation theory
• entertainment
• gatekeepers
• global village
• hot media
• magic bullet theory
• mass communication
• masspersonal communication
• media literacy
• mobilization
• multi-step flow theory
• opinion followers
• opinion leaders
• popular culture
• sensationalization
• surveillance
• youth
• transmission
• two-step flow theory
• uses and gratification theory
• validations | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.08%3A_Mass_Communication_Summary.txt |
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Wright, Charles R. “Functional Analysis and Mass Communication.” Public Opinion Quarterly 24.4 (1960): 605-20. Print.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/08%3A_Mass_Communication/8.09%3A_Mass_Communication_References.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Define interpersonal communication.
• Explain self-disclosure.
• Understand the role of communication climate on interpersonal communication.
• Be aware of the role of dialectical tensions in interpersonal communication.
• Understand the unique dynamics of friendship.
• Understand the unique dynamics of romantic relationships.
• Understand the unique dynamics of family.
• Understand the various ways of interpreting and responding to conflict in interpersonal communication.
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/romance-l...woman-1934204/
09: Interpersonal Communication
Think about your relationships in the last few years. You may have just transitioned from high school to a community college or university. Perhaps you and your friends from high school went to different colleges and are now living far apart from each other. If you have recently been separated by distance from friends or family, you have noticed that it is more difficult to stay connected and share all of the little things that go on in your day. As you continue to grow and change in college, it is likely that you will create relationships along the way. Being away from your family, you will probably notice changes to your relationships with them. All of these dynamics, and many more, fall under the scope of interpersonal communication.
Before going any further, let us define interpersonal communication. “Inter” means between, among, mutually, or together. The second part of the word, “personal” refers to a specific individual or particular role that an individual may occupy. Thus, interpersonal communication is communication between individual people. We often engage in interpersonal communication in dyads, which means between two people. It may also occur in small groups such as you and your housemates trying to figure out a system for household chores.
Important to know, is that the definition of interpersonal communication is not simply a quantitative one. What this means is that you cannot define it by merely counting the number of people involved. Instead, Communication scholars view interpersonal communication qualitatively; meaning that it occurs when people communicate with each other as unique individuals. Thus, interpersonal communication is a process of exchange where there is desire and motivation on the part of those involved to get to know each other as individuals. We will use this definition of interpersonal communication to explore the three primary types of relationships in our lives—friendships, romantic, and family. Given that conflict is a natural part of interpersonal communication, we will also discuss multiple ways of understanding and managing conflict. But before we go into detail about specific interpersonal relationships, let’s examine two important aspects of interpersonal communication: self-disclosure and climate.
9.02: Self Disclosure
Interpersonal Communication Now
Melanie Booth and Self-disclosure in the Classroom
One emerging area of interest in the arena of interpersonal communication is self-disclosure in a classroom setting and the challenges that teachers face dealing with personal boundaries. Melanie Booth wrote an article discussing this issue, incorporating her personal experiences. Even though self-disclosure challenges boundaries between teacher-student or student-student, she states that it can offer “transformative” learning opportunities that allow students to apply what they have learned to their life in a deeper more meaningful way. She concludes that the “potential boundary challenges associated with student self-disclosure can be proactively managed and retroactively addressed with careful thought and action and with empathy, respect, and ethical responses toward our students” (Booth).
Because interpersonal communication is the primary means by which we get to know others as unique individuals, it is important to understand the role of self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is the process of revealing information about yourself to others that is not readily known by them—you have to disclose it. In face-to-face interactions, telling someone “I am a white woman” would not be self-disclosure because that person can perceive that about you without being told. However, revealing, “I am an avid surfer” or “My favorite kind of music is “electronic trance” would be examples of self-disclosure because these are pieces of personal information others do not know unless you tell them. Given that our definition of interpersonal communication requires people to “build knowledge of one another” to get to know them as unique individuals, the necessity for self-disclosure should be obvious.
There are degrees of self-disclosure, ranging from relatively safe (revealing your hobbies or musical preferences), to more personal topics (illuminating fears, dreams for the future, or fantasies). Typically, as relationships deepen and trust is established, self-disclosure increases in both breadth and depth. We tend to disclose facts about ourselves first (I am a Biology major), then move towards opinions (I feel the war is wrong), and finally disclose feelings (I’m sad that you said that). An important aspect of self-disclosure is the rule of reciprocity. This rule states that self-disclosure between two people works best in a back and forth fashion. When you tell someone something personal, you probably expect them to do the same. When one person reveals more than another, there can be an imbalance in the relationship because the one who self discloses more may feel vulnerable as a result of sharing more personal information.
One way to visualize self-disclosure is the Johari Window which comes from combining the first names of the window’s creators, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. The window is divided into four quadrants: the arena, the blind spot, the facade, and the unknown (Luft).
The arena area contains information that is known to us and to others, such as our height, hair color, occupation, or major. In general, we are comfortable discussing or revealing these topics with most people. Information in the blind spot includes those things that may be apparent to others, yet we are unaware of it in ourselves. The habit of playing with your hair when nervous may be a habit that others have observed but you have not. The third area, the façade, contains information that is hidden from others but is known to you. Previous mistakes or failures, embarrassing moments, or family history are topics we typically hold close and reveal only in the context of safe, long-term relationships. Finally, the unknown area contains information that neither others, nor we, know about. We cannot know how we will react when a parent dies or just what we will do after graduation until the experience occurs. Knowing about ourselves, especially our blind and unknown areas, enables us to have a healthy, well-rounded self-concept. As we make choices to self-disclose to others, we are engaging in negotiating relational dialectics.
Relational Dialectics
One way we can better understand our personal relationships is by understanding the notion of relational dialectics. Baxter describes three relational dialectics that are constantly at play in interpersonal relationships. Essentially, they are a continuum of needs for each participant in a relationship that must be negotiated by those involved. Let’s take a closer look at the three primary
relational dialectics that are at work in all interpersonal relationships.
• Autonomy-Connection refers to our need to have close connection with others as well as our need to have our own space and identity. We may miss our romantic partner when they are away but simultaneously enjoy and cherish that alone time. When you first enter a romantic relationship, you probably want to be around the other person as much as possible. As the relationship grows, you likely begin to desire fulfilling your need for autonomy, or alone time. In every relationship, each person must balance how much time to spend with the other, versus how much time to spend alone.
• Novelty-Predictability is the idea that we desire predictability as well as spontaneity in our relationships. In every relationship, we take comfort in a certain level of routine as a way of knowing what we can count on the other person in the relationship. Such predictability provides a sense of comfort and security. However, it requires balance with novelty to avoid boredom. An example of balance balance might be friends who get together every Saturday for brunch, but make a commitment to always try new restaurants each week.
• Openness-Closedness refers to the desire to be open and honest with others while at the same time not wanting to reveal every thing about yourself to someone else. One’s desire for privacy does not mean they are shutting out others. It is a normal human need. We tend to disclose the most personal information to those with whom we have the closest relationships. However, even these people do not know everything about us. As the old saying goes, “We all have skeletons in our closet,” and that’s okay.
How We Handle Relational Dialectics
Understanding that these three dialectical tensions are at play in all relationships is a first step in understanding how our relationships work. However, awareness alone is not enough. Couples, friends, or family members have strategies for managing these tensions in an attempt to meet the needs of each person. Baxter identifies four ways we can handle dialectical tensions.
The first option is to neutralize the extremes of the dialectical tensions. Here, individuals compromise, creating a solution where neither person’s need (such as novelty or predictability) is fully satisfied. Individual needs may be different, and never fully realized. For example, if one person seeks a great deal of autonomy, and the other person in the relationship seeks a great deal of connection, neutralization would not make it possible for either person to have their desires met. Instead, each person might feel like they are not getting quite enough of their particular need met.
The second option is separation. This is when someone favors one end of the dialectical continuum and ignores the other, or alternates between the extremes. For example, a couple in a commuter relationship in which each person works in a different city may decide to live apart during the week (autonomy) and be together on the weekends (connection). In this sense, they are alternating between the extremes by being completely alone during the week, yet completely together on the weekends.
When people decide to divide their lives into spheres they are practicing segmentation. For example, your extended family may be very close and choose to spend religious holidays together. However, members of your extended family might reserve other special days such as birthdays for celebrating with friends. This approach divides needs according to the different segments of your life.
The final option for dealing with these tensions is reframing. This strategy requires creativity not only in managing the tensions, but understanding how they work in the relationship. For example, the two ends of the dialectic are not viewed as opposing or contradictory at all. Instead, they are understood as supporting the other need, as well as the relationship itself. A couple who does not live together, for example, may agree to spend two nights of the week alone or with friends as a sign of their autonomy. The time spent alone or with others gives each person the opportunity to develop themselves and their own interests so that they are better able to share themselves with their partner and enhance their connection.
In general, there is no one right way to understand and manage dialectical tensions since every relationship is unique. However, to always satisfy one need and ignore the other may be a sign of trouble in the relationship (Baxter). It is important to remember that relational dialectics are a natural part of our relationships and that we have a lot of choice, freedom, and creativity in how we work them out with our relational partners. It is also important to remember that dialectical tensions are negotiated differently in each relationship. The ways we self disclose and manage dialectical tensions contributes greatly to what we call the communication climate in relationships.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Known Table. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johari_window.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of autonomy triangle. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autonomy.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of 4 Ways to Handle Dialectical Tension. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dialectics.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.01%3A_Interpersonal_Communication_Overview.txt |
Interpersonal Communication Now
“Sticks and Stones Can Beak my Bones But Words Can Hurt Me Too”
In a study published in the journal Science, researchers reported that the sickening feeling we get when we are socially rejected (being ignored at a party or passed over when picking teams) is real. When researchers measured brain responses to social stress they found a pattern similar to what occurs in the brain when our body experiences physical pain. Specifically, “the area affected is the anterior cingulated cortex, a part of the brain known to be involved in the emotional response to pain” (Fox). The doctor who conducted the study, Matt Lieberman, a social psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, “It makes sense for humans to be programmed this way. . .Social interaction is important to survival.”
Do you feel organized, or confined, in a clean workspace? Are you more productive when the sun is shining than when it’s gray and cloudy outside? Just as factors like weather and physical space impact us, communication climate influences our interpersonal interactions. Communication climate is the “overall feeling or emotional mood between people” (Wood 245). If you dread going to visit your family during the holidays because of tension between you and your sister, or you look forward to dinner with a particular set of friends because they make you laugh, you are responding to the communication climate—the overall mood that is created because of the people involved and the type of communication they bring to the interaction. Let’s look at two different types of communication climates: Confirming and Disconfirming climates.
Confirming and Disconfirming Climates
Positive and negative climates can be understood along three dimensions—recognition, acknowledgement, and endorsement. We experience Confirming Climates when we receive messages that demonstrate our value and worth from those with whom we have a relationship. Conversely, we experience Disconfirming Climates when we receive messages that suggest we are devalued and unimportant. Obviously, most of us like to be in confirming climates because they foster emotional safety as well as personal and relational growth. However, it is likely that your relationships fall somewhere between the two extremes. Let’s look at three types of messages that create confirming and disconfirming climates.
• Recognition Messages: Recognition messages either confirm or deny another person’s existence. For example, if a friend enters your home and you smile, hug him, and say, “I’m so glad to see you” you are confirming his existence. If you say “good morning” to a colleague and she ignores you by walking out of the room without saying anything, she is creating a disconfirming climate by not recognizing you as a unique individual.
• Acknowledgement Messages: Acknowledgement messages go beyond recognizing another’s existence by confirming what they say or how they feel. Nodding our head while listening, or laughing appropriately at a funny story, are nonverbal acknowledgement messages. When a friend tells you she had a really bad day at work and you respond with, “Yeah, that does sound hard, do you want to go somewhere quiet and talk?”, you are acknowledging and responding to her feelings. In contrast, if you were to respond to your friend’s frustrations with a comment like, “That’s nothing. Listen to what happened to me today,” you would be ignoring her experience and presenting yours as more important.
• Endorsement Messages: Endorsement messages go one step further by recognizing a person’s feelings as valid. Suppose a friend comes to you upset after a fight with his girlfriend. If you respond with, “Yeah, I can see why you would be upset” you are endorsing his right to feel upset. However, if you said, “Get over it. At least you have a girlfriend” you would be sending messages that deny his right to feel frustrated in that moment. While it is difficult to see people we care about in emotional pain, people are responsible for their own emotions. When we let people own their emotions and do not tell them how to feel, we are creating supportive climates that provide a safe environment for them to work though their problems.
Now that you understand that we must self-disclose to form interpersonal relationships, and that self-disclosure takes place in communication climates, we want to spend the rest of the chapter briefly highlighting some of the characteristics of the three primary interpersonal relationships in which we engage: Friendships, Romantic Relationships, and Family Relationships.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of 3 Types of Messages. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Climates.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.03%3A_Communication_Climate.txt |
A common need we have as people is the need to feel connected with others. We experience great joy, adventure, and learning through our connection and interactions with others. The feeling of wanting to be part of a group and liked by others is natural. One way we meet our need for connection is through our friendships. Friendship means different things to different people depending on age, gender, and cultural background. Common among all friendships is the fact that they are interpersonal relationships of choice. Throughout your life, you will engage in an ongoing process of developing friendships. Rawlins suggests that we develop our friendships through a series of six steps. While we may not follow these six steps in exact order in all of our relationships, these steps help us understand how we develop friendships.
The first step in building friendships occurs through Role-Limited Interaction. In this step, we interact with others based on our social roles. For example, when you meet a new person in class, your interaction centers around your role as “student.” The communication is characterized by a focus on superficial, rather than personal topics. In this step we engage in limited self-disclosure, and rely on scripts and stereotypes. When two first-time freshmen met in an introductory course, they struck up a conversation and interacted according to the roles they played in the context of their initial communication. They began a conversation because they sit near each other in class and discussed how much they liked or disliked aspects of the course.
The second step in developing friendships is called Friendly Relations. This stage is characterized by communication that moves beyond initial roles as the participants begin to interact with one another to see of there are common interests, as well as an interest to continue getting to know one another. As the students spend more time together and have casual conversations, they may realize a wealth of shared interests. They realize that both were traveling from far distances to go to school and understood each other’s struggle with missing their families. Each of them also love athletics, especially playing basketball. The development of this friendship occurred as they identified with each other as more than classmates. They saw each other as women of the same age, with similar goals, ambitions, and interests. Moreover, as one of them studied Communication and the other Psychology, they appreciated the differences as well as similarities in their collegiate pursuits.
The third step in developing friendships is called Moving Toward Friendship. In this stage, participants make moves to foster a more personalized friendship. They may begin meeting outside of the setting in which the relationship started, and begin increasing the levels of self-disclosure. Self-disclosure enables the new friends to form bonds of trust. When the students entered this stage it was right before one joined the basketball club on their college campus. As she started practices and meetings, she realized this would be something fun for her and her classmate to do together so she invited her classmate along.
The fourth step in developing friendships is called Nascent Friendship. In this stage individuals commit to spending more time together. They also may start using the term “friend” to refer to each other as opposed to “a person in my history class” or “this guy I work with.” The interactions extend beyond the initial roles as participants work out their own private communication rules and norms. For example, they may start calling or texting on a regular basis or reserving certain times and activities for each other such as going on evening runs together. As time went on, the students started texting each other more frequently just to tell each other a funny story that happened during the day, to make plans for going out to eat, or to plan for meeting at the gym to work out.
The fifth step in developing friendships is Stabilized Friendship. In this stage, friends take each other for granted as friends, but not in a negative way. Because the friendship is solid, they assume each other will be in their lives. There is an assumption of continuity. The communication in this stage is also characterized by a sense of trust as levels of self-disclosure increase and each person feels more comfortable revealing parts of him or herself to the other. This stage can continue indefinitely throughout a lifetime. When the women became friends, they were freshmen in college. After finishing school some years later, they moved to separate regions for graduate school. While they were sad to move away from one another, they knew the friendship would continue. To this day they continue to be best friends.
The final step in friendship development is Waning Friendship. As you know, friendships do not always have a happy ending. Many friendships come to an end. Friendships may not simply come to an abrupt end. Many times there are stages that show a decline of a friendship, but in Rawlin’s model, the ending of a friendship is summed up by this step. Perhaps the relationship is too difficult to sustain over large geographic distances. Or, sometimes people change and grow in different directions and have little in common with old friends. Sometimes friendship rules are violated to a degree beyond repair. We spoke earlier of trust as a component of friendships. One common rule of trust is that if we tell friends a secret, they are expected to keep it a secret. If that rule is broken, and a friend continually breaks your trust by telling your secrets to others, you are likely to stop thinking of them as your friend.
Challenges for Friendships
While the above steps are a general pathway toward friendship, they are not always smooth. As with any relationship, challenges exist in friendships that can strain their development. Three of the more common challenges to friendships are gender, cultural diversity, and sexual attraction. Important to remember, is that each of these constructs comes with its own conflicts of power and privilege because of the the cultural norms and the values we give to certain characteristics. These are challenges to relationships since studies show that people tend to associate with others that are similar to themselves (Echols & Graham). Take a look at the pair on the side of the page, they identify as different genders, ethnicities, cultures, and are even attracted to different sexes. Their friendship not only offers an opportunity to learn about differences through each other, but also offers challenges because of these differences. As we emphasize throughout the book, factors such as our gender identities and cultural backgrounds always play a role in our interactions with others.
• Gender: Research suggests that both women and men value trust and intimacy in their friendships and value their time spent with friends (Mathews, Derlega & Morrow; Bell & Coleman; Monsour & Rawlins). However, there are some differences in the interactions that take place within women’s and men’s friendships (Burleson, Jones & Holmstrom; Coates; Harriman). Quite common among female friends, is to get together simply to talk and catch up with one another. When calling her close friend, Antoinette might say, “Why don’t you come over to my place so we can talk?” The need to connect through verbal communication is explicitly stated and forms the basis for the relationship. In contrast, among male friends a more common approach to interaction is an invitation to engage in an activity as a means of facilitating conversation. For example, John might say to his friend, “Hey, Mike, let’s get out surfing this weekend.” The explicit request is to engage in an activity (surfing), but John and Mike understand that as they engage in the activity, they will talk, joke around, and reinforce their friendship ties.
While we have often looked at gender as male and female, culture is changing in which gender is viewed as a spectrum rather than the male/female binary. Monsour & Rawlins explain the new waves of research into different types of gender communities. More recent research is more inclusive to gender definitions that extend beyond the male/female binary. This research may be cutting edge in its field, but as society becomes more accepting of difference, new ideas of relationship rules will emerge.
• Culture: Cultural values shape how we understand our friendships. In most Western societies that emphasize individualism (as opposed to collectivism), friendships are seen as voluntary in that we get to choose who we want in our friendship circle. If we do not like someone we do not have to be friends with him/her. Contrast this to the workplace, or school, where we may be forced to get along with colleagues or classmates even though we may not like them. In many collectivist cultures, such as Japan and China, friendships carry certain obligations that are understood by all parties (Carrier; Kim & Markman). These may include gift giving, employment and economic opportunities, and cutting through so-called ‘bureaucratic red tape.’ Although these sorts of connections, particularly in business and politics, may be frowned upon in the United States because they contradict our valuing of individualism, they are a natural, normal, and logical result of friendships in collectivist cultures.
• Sexual Attraction: The classic film, When Harry Met Sally, highlights how sexual attraction can complicate friendships. In the movie, Harry quotes the line, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex always gets in the way.” Levels of sexual attraction or sexual tension may challenge friendships between heterosexual men and women, gay men, and lesbian women. This may arise from an internal desire of one of the friends to explore a sexual relationship, or if someone in the relationship indicates that he/she wants to be “more than friends.” These situations might place strain on the friendship and require the individuals to address the situation if they want the friendship to continue. One approach has been the recent definition of friendships called, “Friends with Benefits.” This term implies an understanding that two people will identify their relationship as a friendship, but will be open to engaging in sexual activity without committing to the other characteristics common in romantic relationships.
Friendships Now
Take a moment to reflect on how many friends you have in your everyday life. Is that number equivalent or more than the number you have on social media accounts like Facebook? Chances are, those numbers are very different. To those of us who have access to social media, it is changing the ways we develop and maintain friendships. When you make a friend in physical life, the other person has to be in close enough proximity to communicate with on a regular basis to have a face-to-face interaction. That concept is almost nonexistent in the world of social media. Rawlin’s first step in developing friendships, Role-Limited Interaction, can be bypassed and moved right into Friendly Relations with the click of a button.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Friendship Model. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friendshipmodel.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of 2 friends. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friendshipschallenge.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.04%3A_Developing_and_Maintaining_Friendships.txt |
Like other relationships in our lives, romantic relationships play an important role in fulfilling our needs for intimacy, social connection, and sexual relations. Like friendships, romantic relationships also follow general stages of creation and deterioration. Before we explore these stages, let’s look at our definition of romantic relationships.
In many Western cultures, romantic relationships are voluntary. We are free to decide whom to date and form life-long romantic relationships. In some Eastern cultures these decisions may be made by parents, or elders in the community, based on what is good for the family or social group. Even in Western societies, not everyone holds the same amount of freedom and power to determine their relational partners. Parents or society may discourage interracial, interfaith, or interclass relationships. While it is now legale for same-sex couples to marry, many same-sex couples still suffer political and social restrictions when making choices about marrying and having children. Much of the research on how romantic relationships develop is based on relationships in the West. In this context, romantic relationships can be viewed as voluntary relationships between individuals who have intentions that each person will be a significant part of their ongoing lives.
Think about your own romantic relationships for a moment. To whom are you attracted? Chances are they are people with whom you share common interests and encounter in your everyday routines such as going to school, work, or participation in hobbies or sports. In other words, self-identity, similarity, and proximity are three powerful influences when it comes to whom we select as romantic partners. We often select others that we deem appropriate for us as they fit our self-identity; heterosexuals pair up with other heterosexuals, lesbian women with other lesbian women, and so forth. Social class, religious preference, and ethnic or racial identity are also great influences as people are more likely to pair up with others of similar backgrounds. Logically speaking, it is difficult (although not impossible with the prevalence of social media and online dating services) to meet people outside of our immediate geographic area. In other words, if we do not have the opportunity to meet and interact with someone at least a little, how do we know if they are a person with whom we would like to explore a relationship? We cannot meet, or maintain a long-term relationship, without sharing some sense of proximity.
Interpersonal Communication and You
How Do You Love?
Love can come in many different forms. There is a love between a mother and her child. The love between two brothers. The love between a dog and its human companions. These different types of love have many similarities yet have phenomenal differences. Love can be sexual, but it is definitely contextual. The Greeks had six distinct words for love depending on the context, whereas we often use the single term “love” to describe many things. I love pizza. I love my mother. I love my dog. Look at the table below to see what Greek word for love you would use in these sentences.
Type of Love Definition
Eros Passion and Commitment
Ludus Game Playing
Storge Love and Friendship
Pragma Pragmatic Love
Mania Emotional Intensity
Agape Selfless Caring
We are certainly not suggesting that we only have romantic relationships with carbon copies of ourselves. Over the last few decades, there have been some dramatic shifts when it comes to numbers and perceptions of interracial marriage. It is more and more common to see a wide variety of people that make up married couples.
Just like the steps we examined for developing friendships, there are general stages we follow in the development and maintenance of romantic relationships. Let’s look at these six stages of growth in romantic relationships.
The first stage in the development of romantic relationships is No Interaction. As the name suggests, the initial stage of a romantic relationship occurs when two people have not interacted. For example, you may see someone you are attracted to on the first day of class and think to yourself, “I really want to meet her.” Our attraction for someone may motivate us to move beyond the no interaction stage to see if there is a possibility of developing a romantic relationship.
The second stage for developing romantic relationships is Invitational Communication. When we are attracted to someone, we may signal or invite them to interact with us. For example, you can do this by asking them to dinner, to dance at a club, or even, “I really liked that movie. What did you think?” The significance here is in the relational level (how the people feel about each other) rather than the content level (the topic) of the message. As the poet, Maya Angelou, explains, “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” The ‘shades of deeper meaning’ are the relational level messages that invite others to continue exploring a possible romantic relationship. Quite often, we strategize how we might go about inviting people into communication with us so we can explore potential romantic development.
Interpersonal Communication and You
Take a Chance
Chances are that there is someone who has caught your eye somewhere on campus. Quite possibly, there is a person in your class right now that you find attractive (maybe someone is even attracted to you at this very moment) and you would like to get to know them better. How would you go about moving from the “No Interaction” stage to the “Invitational Communication” stage? Take a chance and go introduce yourself. Hopefully things will turn out magical between the two of you. If nothing else, maybe you’ll meet a new friend.
The third stage of developing romantic relationships is Explorational Communication. When individuals respond favorably to our invitational communication we then engage in explorational communication. In this stage, we share information about ourselves while looking for mutual interests, shared political or religious views, and similarities in family background. Self-disclosure increases so we can give and receive personal information in a way that fosters trust and intimacy. Common dating activities in this stage include going to parties or other publicly structured events, such as movies or a concert, that foster interaction and self-disclosure.
The fourth stage of romantic relationships is Intensifying Communication. If we continue to be attracted (mentally, emotionally, and physically) to one another, we begin engaging in intensifying communication. This is the happy stage (the “relationship high”) where we cannot bear to be away from the other person. It is here that you might plan all of your free time together, and begin to create a private relational culture. Going out to parties and socializing with friends takes a back seat to more private activities such as cooking dinner together at home or taking long walks on the beach. Self-disclosure continues to increase as each person has a strong desire to know and understand the other. In this stage, we tend to idealize one another in that we downplay faults (or don’t see them at all), seeing only the positive qualities of the other person.
The fifth stage of romantic relationship development is Revising Communication. When the “relational high” begins to wear off, couples begin to have a more realistic perspective of one another, and the relationship as a whole. Here, people may recognize the faults of the other person that they so idealized in the previous stage. Also, couples must again make decisions about where to go with the relationship—do they stay together and work toward long-term goals, or define it as a short-term relationship? A couple may be deeply in love and also make the decision to break off the relationship for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps one person wants to join the Peace Corps after graduation and plans to travel the world, while the other wants to settle down in their hometown. Their individual needs and goals may not be compatible to sustain a long-term commitment.
Commitment is the sixth stage in developing romantic relationships. This occurs when a couple makes the decision to make the relationship a permanent part of their lives. In this stage, the participants assume they will be in each other’s lives forever and make joint decisions about the future. While marriage is an obvious sign of commitment it is not the only signifier of this stage. Some may mark their intention of staying together in a commitment ceremony, or by registering as domestic partners. Likewise, not all couples planning a future together legally marry. Some may lose economic benefits if they marry, such as the loss of Social Security for seniors or others may oppose the institution (and its inequality) of marriage.
Obviously, simply committing is not enough to maintain a relationship through tough times that occur as couples grow and change. Like a ship set on a destination, a couple must learn to steer though rough waves as well as calm waters. A couple can accomplish this by learning to communicate through the good and the bad.Navigating is when a couple continues to revise their communication and ways of interacting to reflect the changing needs of each person. Done well, life’s changes are more easily enjoyed when viewed as a natural part of the life cycle. The original patterns for managing dialectical tensions when a couple began dating, may not work when they are managing two careers, children, and a mortgage payment. Outside pressures such as children, professional duties, and financial responsibilities put added pressure on relationships that require attention and negotiation. If a couple neglects to practice effective communication with one another, coping with change becomes increasingly stressful and puts the relationship in jeopardy.
Not only do romantic couples progress through a series of stages of growth, they also experience stages of deterioration. Deterioration does not necessarily mean that a couple’s relationship will end. Instead, couples may move back and forth from deterioration stages to growth stages throughout the course of their relationship.
Case In Point
Legal Marriage for Same-Sex Couples
The Netherlands became the first country (4/1/01), and Belgium the second (1/30/03), to offer legal marriage to same sex couples. Since then Canada (6/28/05) and Spain (6/29/05) have also removed their country’s ban against same-sex marriage. The state of Massachusetts (5/17/04) was the first U.S. state to do so and since then, many more states have followed. As of 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the right marriage for both heterosexual and gay couples.
Domestic Partnerships
The status of domestic partner along with benefits for same-sex couples is recognized in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and in parts of the United States.
For more on Marriage Traditions in Various Times and Cultures, see www.buddybuddy.com/mar-trad.html
The first stage of deterioration, Dyadic Breakdown, occurs when romantic partners begin to neglect the small details that have always bound them together. For example, they may stop cuddling on the couch when they rent a movie and sit in opposite chairs. Taken in isolation this example does not mean a relationship is in trouble. However, when intimacy continues to decrease, and the partners feel dissatisfied, this dissatisfaction can lead to worrying about the relationship.
The second stage of deterioration, the Intrapsychic Phase, occurs when partners worry that they do not connect with one another in ways they used to, or that they no longer do fun things together. When this happens they may begin to imagine their life without the relationship. Rather than seeing the relationship as a given, the couple may begin to wonder what life would be like not being in the partnership.
The third stage of deterioration, the Dyadic Phase, occurs when partners make the choice to talk about their problems. In this stage, they discuss how to resolve the issues and may seek outside help such as a therapist to help them work through the reasons they are growing apart. This could also be the stage where couples begin initial discussions about how to divide up shared resources such as property, money, or children.
The fourth stage of deterioration, Social Support, occurs when termination is inevitable and the partners begin to look outside the relationship for social support. In this stage couples will make the news public by telling friends, family, or children that the relationship is ending. As family members listen to problems, or friends offer invitations to go out and keep busy, they provide social support. The couple needs social support from outside individuals in the process of letting go of the relationship and coming to terms with its termination.
The fifth stage of deterioration, Grave Dressing, occurs when couples reach closure in a relationship and move on with life. Like a literal death, a relationship that has ended should be mourned. People need time to go through this process in order to fully understand the meaning of the relationship, why it ended, and what they can learn from the experience. Going through this stage in a healthy way helps us learn to navigate future relationships more successfully.
You can probably recognize many of these stages from your own relationships or from relationships you’ve observed. Experience will tell you that we do not always follow these stages in a linear way. A couple, for example, may enter counseling during the dyadic phase, work out their problems, and enter a second term of intensifying communication, revising, and so forth. Other couples may skip some stages all together. Whatever the case, these models are valuable because they provide us with a way to recognize general communicative patterns and options we have at each stage of our relationships. Knowing what our choices are, and their potential consequences, gives us greater tools to build the kind of relationships we desire in our personal lives.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of romantic stages. Authored by: Spaynton. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romanticstages.png. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
All rights reserved content
• How to Get Over A Crush. Authored by: Videojug. Located at: youtu.be/Isw4qF_xU8s. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
• How to Have A Long Distance Relationship. Authored by: Videojug. Located at: youtu.be/oBYs_taeiyM. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.05%3A_Developing_and_Maintaining_Romantic_Relationships.txt |
The third primary type of interpersonal relationship we engage in is that of family. What is family? Is family created by legal ties, or the bond of sharing common blood? Or, can a family be considered people who share commitment to one another? In an effort to recognize the diversity of families we define family as an arranged group, usually related by blood or some binding factor of commonality, where individual roles and relationships modify over time. Family relations are typically long term and generally have a period in which common space is shared.
Pearson suggests that families share similar characteristics as they tend to be, organized, a relational transactional group, sharing a living space for prolonged periods of time and a mixture of interpersonal images that evolve through the exchange of meaning over time. Let’s take a few moments to unpack this definition.
• Families Are Organized. All of us occupy and play fairly predictable roles (parent, child, older sibling) in our family relationships. Similarly, communication in these relationships can be fairly predictable. For example, your younger brother may act as the family peacemaker, while your older sister always initiates fights with her siblings.
• Families Are a Relational Transactional Group. Not only is a family made up of the individual members, it is largely defined by the relationships between the members. Think back to our discussion of Systems Theory in Chapter Five. A family that consists of two opposite-sex parents, an older sister, her husband and three kids, a younger brother, his new wife, and two kids from a first marriage is largely defined by the relationships among the family members. All of these people have a role in the family and interact with others in fairly consistent ways according to their roles.
• Families Usually Occupy a Common Living Space Over an Extended Period of Time. One consistent theme when defining family is recognizing that family members typically live under the same roof for an extended period of time. We certainly include extended family within our definition, but for the most part, our notions of family include those people with whom we share, or have shared, common space over a period of time. Even though you may have moved away to college, a large part of your definition of your family is the fact that you spent a great deal of your life sharing a home with those you call your family.
• Families Possess a Mixture of Interpersonal Images that Evolve Through the Exchange of Meaning Over Time. From our families, we learn important values concerning intimacy, spirituality, communication, and respect. Parents and other family members model behaviors that shape how we interact with others. As a result, we continually form images of what it means to be a family, and try to maintain that image of family in our lives. You may define family as your immediate family, consisting of your parents and a sibling. However, your romantic partner may see family as consisting of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Each of you perform different communication behaviors to maintain your image of family.
Many families have children as part of their makeup. Olson and McCubbin discuss seven stages that families with children go through as they progress through life. Families without children will not follow all of these stages, and blended families, where one parent does not have primary custody of children, may experience less extreme shifts between stages.
The first stage of family development is Establishing a Family. In this stage couples settle into committed or married life and make necessary changes in acknowledgement of their new legal, relational, and social status. If they did not live together prior to marriage they may need to work out details of sharing space, money, and time. Often, this stage involved establishing a first home together as a couple.
The second stage of family development is Enlarging a Family. In this stage a couple decides to expand their family with the addition of children. While a time of joy and celebration, this is also a period of great stress and change for parents as they figure out new roles as parents. Time for friends, work, and one another is often decreased as the demands of a new child become the primary concern and focus of the couple’s attention and resources. In this stage, the relationship is no longer defined in terms of two people, but includes the children that are now part of the family.
The third stage of family development is Developing a Family. As children grow, their needs change from primarily physical (feeding, changing diapers, and sleep) to more cognitive and emotional ones. Parents become the primary source of instilling cultural and spiritual values, as well as fostering a child’s individual personality. This period takes a tremendous amount of time and commitment from parents as the children remain the focus of daily interactions. Think of the family that runs around taking children to soccer, baseball, piano lessons, church, and guiding their educational development. In this stage, the personal development of children is of high importance to the family.
The fourth stage of family development is Encouraging Independence. Around the teen years children begin the process of naturally pulling away from their parents as a means of establishing and securing an independent identity. You might recall that this period contained periods of stress and frustration for your parents, as well as you. Children may feel their parents are being overly protective or nosy about their friends and activities, while parents may feel abandoned and concerned for their child’s safety as they spend more time away from home. These are often referred to as the rebellious years in which children engage in behaviors for the purpose of establishing independence from their parents.
The fifth stage of family development is Launching Children. Over the course of raising children couples experience a relationship with one another where children are often the central focus rather than each other. In the Launching Children stage, each member of the couple must now relearn his/her roles as the grown children eventually leave home for college, a career, or their own marriage and family. If one of the parents gave up a career to raise children he/she may wonder what to do with the free time. While the empty nest syndrome can be stressful it is also a chance for new possibilities as parents have more time, money, freedom, and energy to spend on each other, hobbies, travel, and friends. Many experience excitement about being able to focus on each other as a couple after years of raising children in the home.
The sixth stage of family development is Post-Launching of Children. Depending on how a couple handles stage five, the post-launching of children can be filled with renewed love, or can produce great strain on the marriage as a couple learns that they do not know how to relate with one another outside the context of raising children. Some couples fall in love all over again and may renew their wedding vows as a signal of this new phase in their relationship. Some parents who may have decided to stay in a marriage for the sake of the children may decide to terminate the relationship after the children have left the family home. For some couples, with no “birds left in the nest” the family dog becomes the new center of attention and inadvertently takes on the role as one of the offspring and continues to regulate and restrict the couple’s actions as the dog demands rearing. Some parents pick up new hobbies, travel around the world, and maintain multiple “date days” each week.
The seventh stage of family development is Retirement. Similar to the launching of children, freedom from work can be an opportunity for growth and exploration of new relationships and activities. Simply having more time in the day can facilitate travel, volunteer work, or continuing education. Conversely, people in this stage might experience a reduction in income and the loss of identity that came with membership in a profession. The family may also experience new growth during this stage as grown children bring their own relational partners and grandchildren in as new members of the family.
Communication patterns within the family, and between a couple, are continually changed and revised as a family progresses through the above stages. The fact that a couple generally spends less time together during stages two and three, and more time together in stages five through eight, requires that they continually manage dialectical tensions such as autonomy/connection. Management of these tensions may manifest itself as conflict. All relationships have conflict. Conflict is natural. How we think about and manage conflict is what is important. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.06%3A_Family_Relationships.txt |
When you hear the word “conflict,” do you have a positive or negative reaction? Are you someone who thinks conflict should be avoided at all costs? While conflict may be uncomfortable and challenging it doesn’t have to be negative. Think about the social and political changes that came about from the conflict of the civil rights movement during the 1960’s. There is no doubt that this conflict was painful and even deadly for some civil rights activists, but the conflict resulted in the elimination of many discriminatory practices and helped create a more egalitarian social system in the United States. Let’s look at two distinct orientations to conflict, as well as options for how to respond to conflict in our interpersonal relationships.
Conflict as Destructive
When we shy away from conflict in our interpersonal relationships we may do so because we conceptualize it as destructive to our relationships. As with many of our beliefs and attitudes, they are not always well-grounded and lead to destructive behaviors. Augsburger outlined four assumptions of viewing conflict as destructive.
1. Conflict is a destructive disturbance of the peace.
2. The social system should not be adjusted to meet the needs of members; rather, members should adapt to the established values.
3. Confrontations are destructive and ineffective.
4. Disputants should be punished.
When we view conflict this way, we believe that it is a threat to the established order of the relationship. Think about sports as an analogy of how we view conflict as destructive. In the U.S. we like sports that have winners and losers. Sports and games where a tie is an option often seem confusing to us. How can neither team win or lose? When we apply this to our relationships, it’s understandable why we would be resistant to engaging in conflict. I don’t want to lose, and I don’t want to see my relational partner lose. So, an option is to avoid conflict so that neither person has to face that result.
Conflict as Productive
In contrast to seeing conflict as destructive, also possible, even healthy, is to view conflict as a productive natural outgrowth and component of human relationships. Augsburger described four assumptions of viewing conflict as productive.
1. Conflict is a normal, useful process.
2. All issues are subject to change through negotiation.
3. Direct confrontation and conciliation are valued.
4. Conflict is a necessary renegotiation of an implied contract—a redistribution of opportunity, release of tensions, and renewal of relationships.
From this perspective, conflict provides an opportunity for strengthening relationships, not harming them. Conflict is a chance for relational partners to find ways to meet the needs of one another, even when these needs conflict. Think back to our discussion of dialectical tensions. While you may not explicitly argue with your relational partners about these tensions, the fact that you are negotiating them points to your ability to use conflict in productive ways for the relationship as a whole, and the needs of the individuals in the relationship.
Types of Conflict
Understanding the different ways of valuing conflict is a first step toward engaging in productive conflict interactions. Likewise, knowing the various types of conflict that occur in interpersonal relationships also helps us to identify appropriate strategies for managing certain types of conflict. Cole states that there are five types of conflict in interpersonal relationships: Affective, Conflict of Interest, Value, Cognitive, and Goal.
• Affective conflict. Affective conflict arises when we have incompatible feelings with another person. For example, if a couple has been dating for a while, one of the partners may want to marry as a sign of love while the other decides they want to see other people. What do they do? The differences in feelings for one another are the source of affective conflict.
• Conflict of Interest. This type of conflict arises when people disagree about a plan of action or what to do in a given circumstance. For example, Julie, a Christian Scientist, does not believe in seeking medical intervention, but believes that prayer can cure illness. Jeff, a Catholic, does believe in seeking conventional medical attention as treatment for illness. What happens when Julie and Jeff decide to have children? Do they honor Jeff’s beliefs and take the kids to the doctor when they are ill, or respect and practice Julie’s religion? This is a conflict of interest.
• Value Conflict. A difference in ideologies or values between relational partners is called value conflict. In the example of Julie and Jeff, a conflict of interest about what to do concerning their children’s medical needs results from differing religious values. Many people engage in conflict about religion and politics. Remember the old saying, “Never talk about religion and politics with your family.”
• Cognitive Conflict. Cognitive conflict is the difference in thought process, interpretation of events, and perceptions. Marsha and Victoria, a long-term couple, are both invited to a party. Victoria declines because she has a big presentation at work the next morning and wants to be well rested. At the party, their mutual friends Michael and Lisa notice Marsha spending the entire evening with Karen. Lisa suspects Marsha may be flirting and cheating on Victoria, but Michael disagrees and says Marsha and Karen are just close friends catching up. Michael and Lisa are observing the same interaction but have a disagreement about what it means. This is an example of cognitive conflict.
• Goal Conflict. Goal conflict occurs when people disagree about a final outcome. Jesse and Maria are getting ready to buy their first house. Maria wants something that has long-term investment potential while Jesse wants a house to suit their needs for a few years and then plans to move into a larger house. Maria has long-term goals for the house purchase and Jesse is thinking in more immediate terms. These two have two different goals in regards to purchasing a home.
Strategies for Managing Conflict
When we ask our students what they want to do when they experience conflict, most of the time they say “resolve it.” While this is understandable, also important to understand is that conflict is ongoing in all relationships, and our approach to conflict should be to “manage it” instead of always trying to “resolve it.”
One way to understand options for managing conflict is by knowing five major strategies for managing conflict in relationships. While most of us probably favor one strategy over another, we all have multiple options for managing conflict in our relationships. Having a variety of options available gives us flexibility in our interactions with others. Five strategies for managing interpersonal conflict include dominating, integrating, compromising, obliging, and avoiding (Rahim; Rahim & Magner; Thomas & Kilmann). One way to think about these strategies, and your decision to select one over another, is to think about whose needs will be met in the conflict situation. You can conceptualize this idea according to the degree of concern for the self and the degree of concern for others.
When people select the dominating strategy, or win-lose approach, they exhibit high concern for the self and low concern for the other person. The goal here is to win the conflict. This approach is often characterized by loud, forceful, and interrupting communication. Again, this is analogous to sports. Too often, we avoid conflict because we believe the only other alternative is to try to dominate the other person. In relationships where we care about others, it’s no wonder this strategy can seem unappealing.
The obliging style shows a moderate degree of concern for self and others, and a high degree of concern for the relationship itself. In this approach, the individuals are less important than the relationship as a whole. Here, a person may minimize the differences or a specific issue in order to emphasize the commonalities. The comment, “The fact that we disagree about politics isn’t a big deal since we share the same ethical and moral beliefs,” exemplifies an obliging style.
The compromising style is evident when both parties are willing to give up something in order to gain something else. When environmental activist, Julia Butterfly Hill agreed to end her two-year long tree sit in Luna as a protest against the logging practices of Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO), and pay them \$50,000 in exchange for their promise to protect Luna and not cut within a 20-foot buffer zone, she and PALCO reached a compromise. If one of the parties feels the compromise is unequal they may be less likely to stick to it long term. When conflict is unavoidable, many times people will opt for compromise. One of the problems with compromise is that neither party fully gets their needs met. If you want Mexican food and your friend wants pizza, you might agree to compromise and go someplace that serves Mexican pizza. While this may seem like a good idea, you may have really been craving a burrito and your friend may have really been craving a pepperoni pizza. In this case, while the compromise brought together two food genres, neither person got their desire met.
When one avoids a conflict they may suppress feelings of frustration or walk away from a situation. While this is often regarded as expressing a low concern for self and others because problems are not dealt with, the opposite may be true in some contexts. Take, for example, a heated argument between Ginny and Pat. Pat is about to make a hurtful remark out of frustration. Instead, she decides that she needs to avoid this argument right now until she and Ginny can come back and discuss things in a more calm fashion. In this case, temporarily avoiding the conflict can be beneficial. However, conflict avoidance over the long term generally has negative consequences for a relationship because neither person is willing to participate in the conflict management process.
Finally, integrating demonstrates a high level of concern for both self and others. Using this strategy, individuals agree to share information, feelings, and creativity to try to reach a mutually acceptable solution that meets both of their needs. In our food example above, one strategy would be for both people to get the food they want, then take it on a picnic in the park. This way, both people are getting their needs met fully, and in a way that extends beyond original notions of win-lose approaches for managing the conflict. The downside to this strategy is that it is very time consuming and requires high levels of trust. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.07%3A_Thinking_About_Conflict.txt |
Summary
Interpersonal communication is communication between individuals that view one another as unique. Quite often, interpersonal communication occurs in dyads. In order for interpersonal communication to occur, participants must engage in self-disclosure, which is the revealing of information about oneself to others that is not known by them. As we self-disclose, we manage our relationships by negotiating dialectical tensions, which are opposing needs in interpersonal relationships. We use a variety of strategies for navigating these tensions, including neutralization, separation, segmentation, and reframing.
As we navigate our interpersonal relationships, we create communication climates, which are the overall feelings and moods people have for one another and the relationship. When we engage in disconfirming messages, we produce a negative relational climate, while confirming messages can help build a positive relational climate by recognizing the uniqueness and importance of another person.
The three primary types of interpersonal relationships we engage in are friendships, romantic relationships, and family relationships. Each of these relationships develop through a series of stages of growth and deterioration. Friendships and romantic relationships differ from family relationships in that they are relationships of choice. Each of these relationships requires commitment from participants to continuously navigate relational dynamics in order to maintain and grow the relationship.
Finally, all relationships experience conflict. Conflict is often perceived as an indicator that there is a problem in a relationship. However, conflict is a natural and ongoing part of all relationships. The goal for conflict is not to eliminate it, but to manage it. There are five primary approaches to managing conflict which include dominating, obliging, compromising, avoiding, and integrating.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Select an important person in your life and pay attention to your communication climate. How do you and this other person demonstrate recognition, acknowledgement, and endorsement?
2. Reflect on one of your important friendships and trace its development through Rawlins’ six stages. How was it affected by important transitions in your life, sexual attraction, and diversity?
3. Reflect on a current or past romantic relationship. How did you communicate attraction, or needs for connection and separateness?
4. Does Pearson’s definition of family fit your own? Why? Why not?
5. Interview one or both of your parents about how their communication has changed as they have moved along the family life cycle. How did their relational culture change? How did they manage relational dialectics?
6. How was conflict managed in your family while growing up? Was it viewed as positive or negative? How did those early messages and lessons about conflict shape your current attitudes?
KEY TERMS
• committed romantic relationships
• conflict
• content level of message
• domestic partners
• dyad
• dyadic breakdown
• dyadic phase
• family
• family life cycle
• grave dressing
• intrapsychic phase
• interracial marriage
• proximity
• relational culture
• relational level of message
• self-disclosure
• self-identity
• similarity
• social support
9.09: Interpersonal Communication References
Augsburger, David W. Conflict Mediation across Cultures: Pathways and Patterns. Louisville, KY:Westminster/John Knox, 1992. Print.
Baxter, L.A. “Dialectical Contradictions in Relational Development.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 7 (1990): 69-88. Web.
Bell, Sandra, and Simon Coleman. “The Anthropology of Friendship: Enduring Themes and Future Possibilities.” The Anthropology of Friendship. Oxford, UK: Berg, 1999. 1-20. Print.
Booth, Melanie. “Boundaries And Student Self-Disclosure In Authentic, Integrated Learning Activities And Assignments.” New Directions For Teaching & Learning2012.131 (2012): 5-14. Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.
Burleson , Brant R., Amanda J. Holmstrom, and Susanne M. Jones. “Some Consequences for Helpers Who Deliver “Cold Comfort”: Why It’s Worse for Women than Men to Be Inept When Providing Emotional Support.” Sex Roles 53.3-4 (2005): 153-72. Web.
Carrier, J. G. “People Who Can Be Friends: Selves and Social Relationships.” The Anthropology of Friendship. Ed. Sandra Bell and Simon Coleman. Oxford, UK: Berg, 1999. 21-28. Print.
Coates, Jennifer. Women, Men, and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Sex Differences in Language. London: Longman, 1986. Print.
Cole, Mark. Interpersonal Conflict Communication in Japanese Cultural Contexts. N.p.: n.p., 1996. Print.
Echols, Leslie, and Sandra Graham. “Birds of a Different Feather: How Do Cross-Ethnic Friends Flock Together?.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 59.4 (2013): 461-488.
Harriman, Ann. Women/men/management. New York: Praeger, 1985. Print.
Kim, Kyungil, and Arthur Markman. “Individual Differences, Cultural Differences, and Dialectic Conflict Description and Resolution.” International Journal of Psychology, 48.5 (2013): 797-808.
Luft, Joseph. Of Human Interaction. Palo Alto, CA: National, 1969. Print.
Mathews, Alicia, Valerian J. Derlega, and Jennifer Morrow. “What Is Highly Personal Information and How Is It Related to Self-Disclosure Decision-Making? The Perspective of College Students.” Communication Research Reports 23.2 (2006): 85-92. Web.
Monsour, Mike, and William K. Rawlins. “Transitional Identities And Postmodern Cross-Gender Friendships: An Exploratory Investigation.” Women & Language37.1 (2014): 11-39. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
Nishina, Adrienne, Jaana Juvonen, and Melissa R. Witkow. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will make me feel sick: The psychosocial, somatic, and scholastic consequences of peer harassment.” Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 34.1 (2005): 37-48.
Olson, David, and H. McCubbin. Families: What Makes Them Work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1983. Print.
Özad, Bahire Efe, and Gülen Uygarer. “Attachment Needs and Social Networking Sites.” Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal 42.1 (2014): 43-52. Web.
Pearson, Judy C. Communication in the Family: Seeking Satisfaction in Changing times. Vol. 2. New York: Harper & Row, 1992. Print.
Rahim, M. Afzalur. Managing conflict in organizations. Transaction Publishers, 2015.
Rahim, M. Afzalur, and Nace R. Magner. “Confirmatory factor analysis of the styles of handling interpersonal conflict: first-order factor model and its invariance across groups.” Journal of applied psychology 80.1 (1995): 122.
Rawlins, W. K. (1981). Friendship as a communicative achievement. Temple University.
Thomas, Kenneth Wayne, and Ralph H. Kilmann. Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. Tuxedo, NY: XICOM, 1974. Print.
Wood, Julia T. Interpersonal Communication in Everyday Encounters. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999. Print.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/09%3A_Interpersonal_Communication/9.08%3A_Interpersonal_Communication_Summary.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Define what constitutes a group and team.
• Understand cultural influences on groups.
• Explain how groups and teams form.
• Identify group roles and norms.
• Understand different styles of leadership in groups.
• Recognize style and options for decision making in groups.
• Explain the impact of technology on group communication.
Thumbnail: pixabay.com/photos/workplace-team-business-meeting-1245776/
10: Group Communication
Have you ever had this happen to you in a college class? At the beginning of the semester your professor hands out the syllabus and explains that a group project is part of the course requirements. You, and others in the class, groan at the idea of this project because you have experienced the difficulties and frustrations of working in a group, especially when your grade depends on the work of others. Does this sound familiar? Why do you think so many students react negatively to these types of assignments? Group work can be fraught with complications. But, the reality is, many companies are promoting groups as the model working environment (Forbes).
Chances are that a class assignment is not your first and only experience with groups. Most likely, you have already spent, and will continue to spend, a great deal of your time working in groups. You may be involved with school athletics in which you are part of a specialized group called a team. You may be part of a work or professional group. Many of you participate in social, religious, and/or political groups. The family in which you were raised, regardless of the configuration, is also a group. No matter what the specific focus—sports, profession, politics, or family—all groups share some common features.
While group communication is growing in popularity and emphasis, both at the academic and corporate levels, it is not a new area of study. The emergence of group communication study came about in the mid 1950s, following World War II, and has been a focus of study ever since. Group communication is often closely aligned with interpersonal communication and organizational communication which is why we have placed it as a chapter in between these two areas of specialization. In your personal, civic, professional lives, you will engage in group communication. Let’s take a look at what constitutes a group or team.
10.02: Defining Groups and Teams
To understand group and team communication, we must first understand the definition of a group. Many people think that a group is simply a collection of people, but that is only part of it. If you walk out your front door and pull together the first ten people you see, do you have a group? No! According to Wilson and Hanna, groups are defined as, “a collection of three or more individuals who interact about some common problem or interdependent goal and can exert mutual influence over one another” (14). They goes on to say that the three key components of groups are, “size, goal orientation, and mutual influence” (14). Interpersonal communication is often thought about in terms of dyads, or pairs. Organizational communication might be thought of as a group that is larger than 12 people. While there are exceptions, for the most part, group size is often thought of in terms of 3-12 people.
Case In Point
Astronaut Jim Lovell’s words during the Apollo 13 lunar mission, “Houston, we have a problem,” launched a remarkable tale of effective teamwork and creative problem solving by NASA engineers working to try to save the lives of the jeopardized crew when two oxygen tanks exploded en route to the moon. Details of the dramatic and successful resolution to the problem became widely known in the motion picture Apollo 13, but it’s not just during dramatic moments when the importance of good teamwork is needed or recognized. In fact, some form of team-oriented work is encouraged in most, if not all, organizations today (Hughes, Jones). So if you feel this is unimportant to know, remember that group communication and teamwork skills are critical for your success later in life.
For example, Joseph Bonito, a communication professor at University of Arizona, allows no more than five people in a group to ensure that everyone’s opinions are reflected equally in a discussion. (Baughman and Everett-Haynes). According to Bonito, if there are too many people in a group it’s possible that some individuals will remain silent without anyone noticing. He suggests using smaller groups when equal participation is desirable. So, if the ten people you gathered outside of your front door were all neighbors working together as part of a “neighborhood watch” to create safety in the community, then you would indeed have a group.
For those of you who have participated on athletic teams you’ll notice that these definitions also apply to a team. While all of the qualities of groups hold true for teams, teams have additional qualities not necessarily present for all groups. We like to define a team as a specialized group with a strong sense of belonging and commitment to each other that shapes an overall collective identity. Members of a team each have their own part, or role, to fulfill in order to achieve the team’s greater goals. One member’s strengths can be other member’s weaknesses, so working in a team is beneficial when balancing individual input. While all members of an athletic team share some athletic ability and special appreciation for a particular sport, for example, members of a football team, for example, have highly specialized skills as indicated in the various positions on the team—quarterback, receiver, and running back. In addition to athletic teams, work and professional teams also share these qualities. Now that you know how to define groups and teams, let’s look at characteristics of groups and teams, as well as the different types of groups and teams.
Characteristics of Groups
• Interdependence. Groups cannot be defined simply as three or more people talking to each other or meeting together. Instead, a primary characteristic of groups is that members of a group are dependent on the others for the group to maintain its existence and achieve its goals. In essence, interdependence is the recognition by those in a group of their need for the others in the group (Lewin; Cragon, Wright& Kasch; Sherblom). Imagine playing in a basketball game as an individual against the five members of another team. Even if you’re considered the best basketball player in the world, it’s highly unlikely you could win a game against five other people. You must rely on four other teammates to make it a successful game.
• Interaction. It probably seems obvious to you that there must be interaction for groups to exist. However, what kind of interaction must exist? Since we all communicate every day, there must be something that distinguishes the interaction in groups from other forms of communication. Cragon, Wright and Kasch state that the primary defining characteristic of group interaction is that it is purposeful. They go on to break down purposeful interaction into four types: problem solving, role playing, team building, and trust building (7). Without purposeful interaction a true group does not exist. Roles, norms, and relationships between members are created through interaction. If you’re put into a group for a class assignment, for example, your first interaction probably centers around exchanging contact information, settings times to meet, and starting to focus on the task at hand. It’s purposeful interaction in order to achieve a goal.
Group Communication Then
The first study that was published on group communication in the New School era of communication study was credited to Edwin Black in 1955. He studied the breakdowns in group interactions by looking at communication sequences in groups. However, it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that a large number of studies in group communication began to appear. Between 1970 and 1978 114 articles were published on group communication and 89 more were published by 1990 (Stacks & Salwen 360). Study in group communication is still important over a decade later as more and more organizations focus on group work for achieving their goals.
• Synergy. One advantage of working in groups and teams is that they allow us to accomplish things we wouldn’t be able to accomplish on our own. Remember back to our discussion of Systems Theory in Chapter 5. Systems Theory suggests that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is the very idea of synergy (Sherblom). In an orchestra or band, each person is there to perform in order to help the larger unit make music in a way that cannot be accomplished without each member working together.
• Common Goals. Having interaction and synergy would be relatively pointless in groups without a common goal. People who comprise groups are brought together for a reason or a purpose. While most members of a group have individual goals, a group is largely defined by the common goals of the group. Think of the example at the beginning of the chapter: Your common goal in a class group is to learn, complete an assignment, and earn a grade. While there may be differences regarding individual goals in the group (what final grade is acceptable for example), or how to achieve the common goals, the group is largely defined by the common goals it shares.
• Shared Norms. Because people come together for a specific purpose, they develop shared norms to help them achieve their goals. Even with a goal in place, random interaction does not define a group. Group interaction is generally guided by norms a group has established for acceptable behavior. Norms are essentially expectations of the group members, established by the group and can be conscious and formal, or unconscious and informal. A couple of examples of group norms include the expectation that all members show up at group meeting times, the expectation that all group members focus on the group instead of personal matters (for example, turning cell phones and other distractions off), and the expectation that group members finish their part of the work by the established due date. When members of the group violate group norms, other members of the group get frustrated and the group’s overall goal may be affected.
• Cohesiveness. One way that members understand of the idea of communicating in groups and teams is when they experience a sense of cohesiveness with other members of the group. When we feel like we are part of something larger, we experience a sense of cohesion or wholeness, and may find a purpose that is bigger than our own individual desires and goals. It is the sense of connection and participation that characterizes the interaction in a group as different from the defined interaction among loosely connected individuals. If you’ve ever participated in a group that achieved its goal successfully, you are probably able to reflect back on your feelings of connections with the other members of that group.
You may be asking yourself, what about teams? We have focused primarily on groups, but it’s critical to remember the importance of team communication characteristics as well as group communication characteristics. Check out this article that breaks down team characteristics and skills that ensure team success (we bet you’ll find similarities to the group characteristics that we have just explained).
Types of Groups
Not all groups are the same or brought together for the same reasons. Brilhart and Galanes categorize groups “on the basis of the reason they were formed and the human needs they serve” (9). Let’s take a look!
• Primary Groups. Primary groups are ones we form to help us realize our human needs like inclusion and affection. They are not generally formed to accomplish a task, but rather, to help us meet our fundamental needs as relational beings like acceptance, love, and affection. These groups are generally longer term than other groups and include family, roommates, and other relationships that meet as groups on a regular basis (Brilhart & Galanes). These special people in your life constituate primary groups because they offer love and support for the long run, and given this, primary groups are typically more meaningful than secondary groups.
• Secondary Groups. Unlike primary groups, we form secondary groups to accomplish work, perform a task, solve problems, and make decisions (Brilhart & Galanes; Sherblom; Cragan, Wright & Kasch). Larson and LaFasto state that secondary groups have “a specific performance objective or recognizable goal to be attained; and coordination of activity among the members of the team is required for attainment of the team goal or objective” (19).
• Activity Groups. Activity Groups are ones we form for the purpose of participating in activities. I’m sure your campus has many clubs that are organized for the sole purpose of doing activities. On our campus, for example, a popular club on our campus is the Surf Club, in which members meet for the purpose of scheduling surfing times, arranging rides, and choosing where to surf.
• Personal Growth Groups. We form Personal Growth Groups to obtain support and feedback from others, as well as to grow as a person. Personal Growth Groups may be thought of as therapy groups. An example that is probably familiar to you is Alcoholics Anonymous, where alcoholics can share their stories and struggles and get support from others affected by alcohol. There are many personal growth groups available for helping us develop as people through group interaction with others, such as book clubs, weight watchers, and spiritual groups.
• Learning Groups. Learning Groups focus mainly on obtaining new information and gaining knowledge. If you have ever been assigned to a group in a college class, it most likely was a learning group with the purpose of interacting in ways that can help those in the group learn new things about the course content.
• Problem-Solving Groups. These groups are created for the express purpose of solving a specific problem. The very nature of organizing people into this type of group is to get them to collectively figure out effective solutions to the problem they have before them. Committees are an excellent example of people who are brought together to solve problems.
After looking at the various types of groups, it’s probably easy for you to recognize just how much of your daily interaction occurs within the contexts of groups. The reality is, we spend a great deal of time in groups, and understanding the types of groups you’re in, as well as their purpose, goes a long way toward helping you function as a productive member. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.01%3A_Group_Communication_Overview.txt |
One of the reasons communication scholars study groups and teams is because of the overwhelming amount of time we spend interacting in groups in professional contexts. More and more professional organizations are turning to groups and teams as an essential way of conducting business and getting things done. Even professions that are seemingly independent, such as being a college professor, are heavily laden with group work. The process of writing this book was a group effort as the authors and their students worked in groups to bring the book to you. Each of us had specific roles and tasks to perform.
Another vital area of group communication concerns the study of social change or social movement organizations. Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Organization of Women (NOW) are all groups bound together by a shared social and political commitment—-to promote the rights of nonhuman animals, African-Americans, and women respectively. While individuals can be committed to these ideas, the social, political, and legal rights afforded to groups like these would not have been possible through individual action alone. It was when groups of like-minded people came together with shared commitments and goals, pooling their skills and resources, that change occurred. Just about any Interest Group you can think of has a presence in Washington D.C. and spends money to maintain that presence. Visit here for more information on Interest Groups.
The study of social movements reveals the importance of groups for accomplishing goals. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen and Schulz, in The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control, explain seven progressive and cumulative strategies through which movements progress as they move toward success. Three of the seven strategies focus explicitly on group communication—-promulgation, solidification, and polarization. Promulgation refers to the “a strategy where agitators publicly proclaim their goals and it includes tactics designed to win public support” (23). Without a sufficient group the actions of individual protestors are likely to be dismissed. The strategy of solidification“occurs mainly inside the agitating group” and is “primarily used to unite followers” (29). The point is to unite group members and provide sufficient motivation and support. The communication that occurs through the collective action of singing songs or chanting slogans serves to unite group members. Because the success of social movements depends in part on the ability to attract a large number of followers, most employ the strategy of polarization, which is designed to persuade neutral individuals or “fence sitters” to join a group (40). The essence of this strategy is captured in the quote from Eldridge Cleaver, “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.” Taken together these three strategies stress that the key to group success is the sustained effort of group members working together through communication.
Not only do Communication scholars focus on work and social movements, we are also interested in the role that one’s cultural identity and membership plays in our communicative choices, and how we interpret the communication of others. This focus sheds interesting insights when we examine membership and communication in groups and teams. One reason for this is that different cultures emphasize the role of individuals while other cultures emphasize the importance of the group. For example, collectivist cultures are ones that place high value on group work because they understand that outcomes of our communication impact all members of the community and the community as a whole, not just the individuals in the group. Conversely, individualistic cultures are ones that place high value on the individual person above the needs of the group. Thus, whether we view group work as favorable or unfavorable may stem from our cultural background. The U.S. is considered an individualistic culture in that we value the work and accomplishments of the individual through ideals such as being able to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” and create success for yourself.
Case In Point
The Historic Number of Women in the 113th Congress
This Congress has 102 female members, including 20 female Senators, the most ever in the history of America. This was also an historic election for women of color. More than half of Asian Americans elected to the 113th Congress are women– including Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who is only the second woman of color and the only Asian American woman ever elected to the Senate. In the House, Grace Meng (D) will become New York’s first Asian American member of Congress, and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) the first American Samoan elected as a voting member of Congress. They will both join Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a Thai-born, double amputee war hero. Among Latinas, Congresswoman-elect Michele Lujan Grisham became the first Hispanic woman elected representative from New Mexico.
The Women’s Caucus
The Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues (CCWI) is a Congressional Member Organization (CMO) registered with the House Organization (CMO) registered with the House Administration Committee; its membership includes the women members of the House of Representatives. CCWI is not formally affiliated with Women’s Policy, Inc.; however, the two organizations share similar goals. This relates to our collectivistic culture in organizational groups.
WPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose sole focus is to help ensure that the most informed decisions on key women’s issues are made by policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. Audiences include elected officials, regulators, women’s groups, labor groups, academia, the business community, the media, and the general public.
WPI achieves and shares its rare quality of insight into relevant issues by researching and producing the best available information in the form of compelling and unbiased legislative analyses, issue summaries, impact assessments, and educational briefings. This ensures that policy decisions affecting women and their families have the benefit of input from the most objective sources possible.
For more info on The Women’s Caucus visit http://www.womenspolicy.org/
Power in Groups
Given the complexity of group interaction, it’s short-sighted to try to understand group communication without looking at notions of power (think back to Critical Theories and Research Methods). Power influences how we interpret the messages of others and determines the extent to which we feel we have the right to speak up and voice our concerns and opinions to others. Take a moment to reflect on the different ways you think about power. What images come to mind for you when you think of power? Are there different kinds of power? Are some people inherently more powerful than others? Do you consider yourself to be a powerful person? We highlight three ways to understand power as it relates to group and team communication. The word “power” literally means “to be able” and has many implications.
If you associate power with control or dominance, this refers to the notion of power as power-over. According to Starhawk, “power-over enables one individual or group to make the decisions that affect others, and to enforce control” (9). Control can and does take many forms in society. Starhawk explains that,
This power is wielded from the workplace, in the schools, in the courts, in the doctor’s office. It may rule with weapons that are physical or by controlling the resources we need to live: money, food, medical care; or by controlling more subtle resources: information, approval, love. We are so accustomed to power-over, so steeped in its language and its implicit threats, that we often become aware of its functioning only when we see its extreme manifestations. (9)
When we are in group situations and someone dominates the conversation, makes all of the decisions, or controls the resources of the group such as money or equipment, this is power-over.
Power-from-within refers to a more personal sense of strength or agency. Power-from-within manifests itself when we can stand, walk, and speak “words that convey our needs and thoughts” (Starhawk 10). In groups, this type of power “arises from our sense of connection, our bonding with other human beings, and with the environment” (10). As Heider explains in The Tao of Leadership, “Since all creation is a whole, separateness is an illusion. Like it or not, we are team players. Power comes through cooperation, independence through service, and a greater self through selflessness” (77). If you think about your role in groups, how have you influenced other group members? Your strategies indicate your sense of power-from-within.
Finally, groups manifest power-with, which is “the power of a strong individual in a group of equals, the power not to command, but to suggest and be listened to, to begin something and see it happen” (Starhawk 10). For this to be effective in a group or team, at least two qualities must be present among members: 1) All group members must communicate respect and equality for one another, and 2) The leader must not abuse power-with and attempt to turn it into power-over. Have you ever been involved in a group where people did not treat each others as equals or with respect? How did you feel about the group? What was the outcome? Could you have done anything to change that dynamic?
Obviously, communication is the central activity of every group because it is how we organize and maintain groups. While we can all tell positive and negative stories about being in groups, how are they formed in the first place? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.03%3A_The_Importance_of_Studying_Communication_in_Groups_and_Teams.txt |
Sometimes we join a group because we want to. Other times, we might be assigned to work in groups in a class or at work. Either way, Lumsden, Lumsden and Wiethoff give three reasons why we form groups. First, we may join groups because we share similar interests or attractions with other group members. If you are a certain major in college, chances are you share some of the same interests as others in your class groups. Also, you might find yourself attracted to others in your group for romantic, friendship, political, religious or professional reasons. On our campus, our majors have formed the Communication Club to bring together students in the major. A second reason we join groups is called drive reduction. Essentially, we join groups so our work with others reduces the drive to fulfill our needs by spreading out involvement. As Maslow explains, we have drives for physiological needs like security, love, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Working with others helps us achieve these needs thereby reducing our obligation to meet these needs ourselves (Maslow; Paulson). If you accomplished a task successfully for a group, your group members likely complimented your work, thus fulfilling some of your self-esteem needs. If you had done the same work only for yourself, the building up of your self-esteem may not have occurred. A third reason we join groups is for reinforcement. We are often motivated to do things for the rewards they bring. Participating in groups provides reinforcement from others in the pursuit of our goals and rewards.
Much like interpersonal relationships, groups go through a series of stages as they come together. These stages are called forming, storming, norming, and performing (Tuckman; Fisher; Sherblom; Benson; Rose, Hopthrow & Crisp). Groups that form to achieve a task often go through a fifth stage called termination that occurs after a group accomplishes its goal. Let’s look at each of the stages of group formation and termination.
• Forming. Obviously, for a group to exist and work together its members must first form the group. During the forming stage, group members begin to set the parameters of the group by establishing what characteristics identify the members of the group as a group. During this stage, the group’s goals are made generally clear to members, initial questions and concerns are addressed, and initial role assignments may develop. This is the stage when group norms begin to be negotiated and established. Essentially, norms are a code of conduct which may be explicit or assumed and dictate acceptable and expected behavior of the group.
• Storming. The storming stage might be considered comparable to the “first fight” of a romantic couple. After the initial politeness passes in the forming stage, group members begin to feel more comfortable expressing their opinions about how the group should operate and the participation of other members in the group. Given the complexity of meeting both individual goals as well as group goals, there is constant negotiation among group members regarding participation and how a group should operate. Imagine being assigned to a group for class and you discover that all the members of the group are content with getting a C grade, but you want an A. If you confront your group members to challenge them to have higher expectations, you are in the storming stage.
• Norming. Back to our romantic couple example, if the couple can survive the first fight, they often emerge on the other side of the conflict feeling stronger and more cohesive. The same is true in groups. If a group is able to work through the initial conflict of the storming stage, there is the opportunity to really solidify the group’s norms and get to the task at hand as a cohesive group. Norming signifies that the members of a group are willing to abide by group rules and values to achieve the group’s goals.
• Performing. Performing is the stage we most often associate as the defining characteristic of groups. This stage is marked by a decrease in tensions, less conscious attention to norm establishment, and greater focus on the actual work at hand in order to accomplish the group’s goals. While there still may be episodes of negotiating conflict and re-establishing norms, performing is about getting to the business at hand. When you are in a weekly routine of meeting at the library to work on a group project, you are in the performing stage.
• Terminating. Groups that are assigned a specific goal and timeline will experience the fifth stage of group formation, termination. Think about groups you have been assigned to in college. We’re willing to bet that the group did not continue once you achieved the required assignment and earned your grade. This is not to say that we do not continue relationships with other group members. But, the defining characteristics of the group established during the forming stage have come to an end, and thus, so has the group.
Now that you understand how groups form, let’s discuss the ways in which people participate in groups. Since groups are comprised of interdependent individuals, one area of research that has emerged from studying group communication is the focus on the roles that we play in groups and teams. Having an understanding of the various roles we play in groups can help us understand how to interact with various group members.
Group Communication Now
Technology is changing so many things about the ways we communicate. This is also true in group communication. One of the great frustrations for many people in groups is simply finding a time that everyone can meet together. However, computer technology has changed these dynamics as more and more groups “meet” in the virtual world, rather than face-to-face. But, what is the impact of technology on how groups function? Dr. Kiran Bala argues that “new media has brought a sea of changes in intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, and mass communication processes and content.” With group chat available on almost all social media networks and numerous technological devices, we have a lot to learn about the ways communication technologies are changing our notions of working in groups and individual communication styles.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Public domain content | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.04%3A_Forming_Groups.txt |
Take a moment to think about the individuals in a particular group you were in and the role each of them played. You may recall that some people were extremely helpful, organized and made getting the job done easy. Others may have been more difficult to work with, or seemed to disrupt the group process. In each case, the participants were performing roles that manifest themselves in most groups. Early studies on group communication provide an overwhelming number of different types of group roles. To simplify, we provide an overview of some of the more common roles. As you study group roles, remember that we usually play more than one role at a time, and that we do not always play the same roles from group to group.
We organize group roles into four categories—task, social-emotional, procedural, and individual. Task roles are those that help or hinder a group’s ability to accomplish its goals. Social-emotional roles are those that focus on building and maintaining relationships among individuals in a group (the focus is on how people feel about being in the group). Procedural roles are concerned with how the group accomplishes its task. People occupying these roles are interested in following directions, proper procedure, and going through appropriate channels when making decisions or initiating policy. The final category, individual roles, includes any role “that detracts from group goals and emphasizes personal goals” (Jensen & Chilberg 97). When people come to a group to promote their individual agenda above the group’s agenda, they do not communicate in ways that are beneficial to the group. Let’s take a look at each of these categories in more detail.
• Task Roles. While there are many task roles a person can play in a group, we want to emphasize five common ones. The Task Leader is the person that keeps the group focused on the primary goal or task by setting agendas, controlling the participation and communication of the group’s members, and evaluating ideas and contributions of participants. Your associated students president probably performs the task leader role. Information Gatherers are those people who seek and/or provide the factual information necessary for evaluating ideas, problem solving, and reaching conclusions. This is the person who serves as the liaison with your professors about what they expect from a group project. Opinion Gatherers are those that seek out and/or provide subjective responses about ideas and suggestions. They most often take into account the values, beliefs, and attitudes of members. If you have a quiet member of your group, the opinion gatherer may ask, “What do you think?” in order to get that person’s feedback. The Devil’s Advocate is the person thatargues a contrary or opposing point of view. This may be done positively in an effort to ensure that all perspectives are considered, or negatively as the unwillingness of a single person to participate in the group’s ideas. The Energizer is the person who functions as the group’s cheer-leader, providing energy, motivation, and positive encouragement.
• Social-Emotional Roles. Group members play a variety of roles in order to build and maintain relationships in groups. The Social-Emotional Leader is the person who is concerned with maintaining and balancing the social and emotional needs of the group members and tends to play many, if not all, of the roles in this category. The Encourager practices good listening skills in order to create a safe space for others to share ideas and offer suggestions. Followers are group members that do what they are told, going along with decisions and assignments from the group. The Tension Releaser is the person that uses humor, or can skillfully change the subject in an attempt to minimize tension and avoid conflict. The Compromiser is the one who mediates disagreements or conflicts among members by encouraging others to give in on small issues for the sake of meeting the goals of the group. What role do you find yourself most likely to enact in groups? Or, do you find you switch between these roles depending on the group?
• Procedural Roles. Groups cannot function properly without having a system of rules or norms in place. Members are responsible for maintaining the norms of a group and play many roles to accomplish this. The Facilitator acts like a traffic director by managing the flow of information to keep the group on task. Gatekeepers are those group members that attempt to maintain proper communicative balance. These people also serve as the points of contact between times of official group meetings. The Recorder is the person responsible for tracking group ideas, decisions, and progress. Often, a written record is necessary, thus, this person has the responsibility for keeping, maintaining, and sharing group notes. If you’re the person who pulls out a pen and paper in order to track what the group talks about, you’re the recorder.
• Individual Roles. Because groups are made of individuals, group members often play various roles in order to achieve individual goals. The Aggressor engages in forceful or dominating communication to put others down or initiate conflict with other members. This communication style can cause some members to remain silent or passive. The Blocker is the person that fusses or complains about small procedural matters, often blocking the group’s progress by not letting them get to the task. They worry about small details that, overall, are not important to achieving the group’s desired outcome. The Self-Confessor uses the group as a setting to discuss personal or emotional matters not relevant to the group or its task. This is the person that views the group as one that is there to perform group therapy. The Playboy or Playgirlshows little interest in the group or the problem at hand and does not contribute in a meaningful way, or at all. This is the person who does essentially no work, yet still gets credit for the group’s work. The Joker or Clown uses inappropriate humor or remarks that can steer the group from its mission.
Case-in-Point
The popular sitcom Workaholics (2011-present) follows three college drop-outs who work in a telemarketing company and are notoriously terrible workers. Always working as a group in their shared cubicle, the three young men are all prime examples of group members who play Individual Roles: Anders as the Aggressor, Blake as the Self-Confessor, Adam as the Blocker, and all three of them as the joker or clown at one point or another. As you might guess, this group is very unproductive and ineffective.
While we certainly do not have the space to cover every role you might encounter in a group, we’re sure you can point to your own examples of people who have filled the roles we’ve discussed. Perhaps you can point to examples of when you have filled some of these roles yourself. Important for group members to understand, are the various roles they play in groups in order to engage in positive actions that help the group along. One dynamic that these roles contribute to in the process of group communication is leadership in groups. Let’s briefly examine how leadership functions in groups. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.05%3A_Groups_Roles.txt |
While we’ve examined roles we can play in groups, the role that often gets the most attention is that of the leader. Like defining communication, many people have an idea of what a leader is, but can’t really come up with a good definition for the term as there are many ways to conceptualize the role of leader. One way to do this is to think of leaders in terms of their leadership styles. Let’s look at three broad leadership styles to better understand the communication choices leaders can make, as well as the outcome of such choices, in a group.
First, let’s visualize leadership styles by seeing them as a continuum. The position to the left (Laissez-faire) indicates a leader who exerts little to no control over a group, while the position on the right (Authoritarian) indicates a leader who seeks complete control. The position in the middle (Democratic) is one where a leader maintains a moderate level of control or influence in a group with the group’s permission (Bass & Stogdill; Berkowitz).
• Laissez-faire is a French term that literally means “let do.” This leadership style is one in which the leader takes a laid back or hands-off approach. For a variety of reasons, leaders may choose to keep their input at a minimum and refrain from directing a group. What do you think some reasons may be for selecting this leadership style? Perhaps a person feels uncomfortable being a leader. Perhaps a person does not feel that she/he possesses the skills required to successfully lead the group. Or, perhaps the group is highly skilled, motivated, and efficient and does not require much formal direction from a leader. If the latter is the case, then a laissez-faire approach may work well. However, if a group is in need of direction then a laissez-faire style may result in frustration and inefficiency.
• An authoritarian leadership style is one in which a leader attempts to exert maximum control over a group. This may be done by making unilateral decisions rather than consulting all members, assigning members to specific tasks or duties, and generally controlling group processes. This leadership style may be beneficial when a group is in need of direction or there are significant time pressures. Authoritarian leaders may help a group stay efficient and organized in order to accomplish its goals. However, group members may be less committed to the outcomes of the group process than if they had been a part of the decision making process. One term that you may have heard on your campus is “shared-governance.” In general, faculty do not like working in groups where one person is making the decisions. Instead, most faculty prefer a system where all members of a group share in the leadership process. This can also be called the democratic style of leadership.
• The democratic style of leadership falls somewhere in the middle of laissez-faire and authoritarian styles. In these situations, the decision-making power is shared among group members, not exercised by one individual. In order for this to be effective, group members must spend considerable time sharing and listening to various positions and weighing the effects of each. Groups organized in this fashion may be more committed to the outcomes of the group, creative, and participatory. However, as each person’s ideas are taken into account, this can extend the amount of time it takes for a group to accomplish its goals.
While we’ve certainly oversimplified our coverage of the complex nature of group leaders, you should be able to recognize that there are pros and cons to each leadership style depending on context. There is not one right way to be a leader for every group. Effective leaders are able to adapt their leadership style to fit the needs of the group. Furthermore, as a group’s needs and members change over time, leadership styles can accommodate natural changes in the group’s life cycle. Take a moment to think of various group situations in which each leadership style may be the most and the least desirable. What are examples of groups where each style of leadership could be practiced effectively?
Group Norms
Every group in which we participate has a set of norms like we discussed in the “norming” stage. Each group’s rules and norms are different, and we must learn them to be effective participants. Some groups formalize their norms and rules, while others are less formal and more fluid. Norms are the recognized rules of behavior for group members. Normsinfluence the ways we communicate with other members, and ultimately, the outcome of group participation. Norms are important because, as we highlighted in the “norming” stage of group formation, they are the defining characteristics of groups.
Brilhart and Galanes divide norms into two categories. General norms“direct the behavior of the group as a whole” (130). Meeting times, how meetings run, and the division of tasks are all examples of general norms that groups form and maintain. These norms establish the generally accepted rules of behavior for all group members. The second category of norms is role-specific norms. Role-specific norms“concern individual members with particular roles, such as the designated leader” (130).
Not only are there norms that apply to all members of a group, there are norms that influence the behaviors of each role. Consider our brief discussion on leadership. If a group’s members are self-motivated, and do not need someone imposing structure, they will set a norm that the group leader should act as a laissez-faire or democratic leader rather than an authoritarian leader. Violation of this norm would most likely result in conflict if leaders try to impose their will. A violation like this will send a group back to the “storming” stage to renegotiate the acceptable norms of the group. When norms are violated, group members most often will work to correct the violation to get the group back on task and functioning properly. Have you ever been in a group in which a particular group member did not do the task that was assigned to them? What happened? How did the group handle this situation as a whole? What was the response of the person who did not complete the task? In hindsight, would you have handled it differently? If so, how?
As groups progress through the various stages, and as members engage in the various roles, the group is in a continual process of decision making. Since this is true, it makes sense to ask the question, “How is it that groups make decisions?” | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.06%3A_Leadership_In_Groups.txt |
When groups need to get a job done they should have a method in place for making decisions. The decision making process is a norm that may be decided by a group leader or by the group members as a whole. Let’s look at four common ways of making decisions in groups. To make it simple we will again use a continuum as a way to visualize the various options groups have for making decisions. On the left side are those methods that require maximum group involvement (consensus and voting). On the right are those methods that use the least amount of input from all members (compromise and authority rule).
The decision-making process that requires the most group input is called consensus. To reach consensus group members must participate in the crafting of a decision and agree to adopt it. While not all members may support the decision equally, all will agree to carry it out. In individualistic cultures like the U.S., where a great deal of value is placed on independence and freedom of choice, this option can be seen by group members as desirable, since no one is forced to go along with a policy or plan of action to which they are opposed. Even though this style of decision making has many advantages, it has its limitations as well—it requires a great deal of creativity, trust, communication, and time on the part of all group members. When groups have a hard time reaching consensus, they may opt for the next strategy which does not require buy-in from all or most of the group.
Group Communication and You
Okay, you’re a Communication major and this whole idea of working in groups really appeals to you and seems to come naturally. But perhaps you’re not a Communication major and you’re thinking to yourself that your future career isn’t really going to require group or team work. Well, you might want to think again. Forbes magazine released an article titled The Ten Skills Employers Most Want in 2015 Graduates which stated that technical knowledge related to the job is not nearly as important as effective teamwork and communications skills. In fact, the top three skills listed include, 1) ability to work in a team structure, 2) ability to make decisions and solve problems, and 3) ability to communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organization. Even non-Communication majors need to develop effective group communication skills to succeed at work.
Even non-Communication majors need to develop effective group communication skills to succeed at work.
Voting by majority may be as simple as having 51% of the vote for a particular decision, or may require a larger percentage, such as two-thirds or three-fourths, before reaching a decision. Like consensus, voting is advantageous because everyone is able to have an equal say in the decision process (as long as they vote). Unlike consensus, everyone may not be satisfied with the outcome. In a simple majority, 49% of voters may be displeased and may be resistant to abide by the majority vote. In this case the decision or policy may be difficult to carry out and implement. For example, our campus recently had a department vote on whether or not they wanted to hire a particular person to be a professor. Three faculty voted yes for the person, while two faculty voted no. Needless to say, there was a fair amount of contention among the professors who voted. Ultimately, the person being considered for the job learned about the split vote and decided that he did not want to take the job because he felt that the two people that voted no would not treat him well.
Toward the right of our continuum is compromise. This method often carries a positive connotation in the U.S. because it is perceived as fair since each member gives up something, as well as gains something. Nevertheless, this decision making process may not be as fair as it seems on the surface. The main reason for this has to do with what is being given up and obtained. There is nothing in a compromise that says these two factors must be equal (that may be the ideal, but it is often not the reality). For individuals or groups that feel they have gotten the unfair end of the bargain, they may be resentful and refuse to carry out the compromise. They may also foster ill will toward others in the group, or engage in self-doubt for going along with the compromise in the first place. However, if groups cannot make decisions through consensus or voting, compromise may be the next best alternative.
At the far right of our continuum is decision by authority rule. This decision-making process requires essentially no input from the group, although the group’s participation may be necessary for implementing the decision. The authority in question may be a member of the group who has more power than other members, such as the leader, or a person of power outside the group. While this method is obviously efficient, members are often resentful when they feel they have to follow another’s orders and feel the group process was a façade and waste of valuable time.
During the decision making process, groups must be careful not to fall victim to groupthink. Groupthink happens when a group is so focused on agreement and consensus that they do not examine all of the potential solutions available to them. Obviously, this can lead to incredibly flawed decision making and outcomes. Groupthink occurs when members strive for unanimity, resulting in self-deception, forced consent, and conformity to group values and ethics (Rose, Hopthrow & Crisp). Many people argue that groupthink is the reason behind some of history’s worst decisions, such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, The Pearl Harbor attack, The North Korea escalation, the Vietnam escalation, and the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq (Rose, Hopthrow & Crisp). Let’s think about groupthink on a smaller, less detrimental level. Imagine you are participating in a voting process during a group meeting where everyone votes yes on a particular subject, but you want to vote no. You might feel pressured to conform to the group and vote yes for the sole purpose of unanimity, even though it goes against your individual desires.
As with leadership styles, appropriate decision making processes vary from group to group depending on context, culture, and group members. There is not a “one way fits all” approach to making group decisions. When you find yourself in a task or decision-making group you should consider taking stock of the task at hand before deciding as a group the best ways to proceed.
Group Work and Time
By now you should recognize that working in groups and teams has many advantages. However, one issue that is of central importance to group work is time. When working in groups time can be both a source of frustration, as well as a reason to work together. One obvious problem is that it takes much longer to make decisions with two or more people as opposed to just one person. Another problem is that it can be difficult to coordinate meeting times when taking into account people’s busy lives of work, school, family, and other personal commitments. On the flip side, when time is limited and there are multiple tasks to accomplish, it is often more efficient to work in a group where tasks can be delegated according to resources and skills. When each member can take on certain aspects of a project, this limits the amount of work an individual would have to do if he/she were solely responsible for the project.
For example, Alex, Kellsie and Teresa all had a project to work on. The project was large and would take a full semester to complete. They had to split up the amount of work equally to each person as well as based on skills. The thought of doing all the work alone was daunting in terms of the required time and labor. Being able to delegate assignments and work together to achieve a professional result for their project indicated that the best option for them was to work together. In the end, the group’s work produced different results and views that you wouldn’t have necessarily come to working alone. On the flip side, imagine having to work in a group where you believe you could do just the same on your own. When deciding whether or not to work in groups, it is important to consider time. Is the time and effort of working in a group worth the outcome? Or, is it better to accomplish the task as an individual?
Groups and Technology and Social Media
Social media and technology are changing the ways we communicate in groups. There is no doubt that technology is rapidly changing the ways we communicate in a variety of contexts, and group communication is no exception. Many organizations use computers and cell phones as a primary way to keep groups connected given their ease of use, low cost, and asynchronous nature. In fact, it’s likely that your course web pages also have “group forums” for class groups to deal with the complexities of finding times to meet. In fact, the group that worked on this chapter used Google Docs to have live chats online, transfer documents back and forth, and form messages to achieve the group’s goals–all without ever having to meet in person. As you enter the workforce, you’ll likely find yourself participating in virtual groups with people who have been brought together from a variety of geographical locations.
Group Communication and You
Today, we know that social media has the power to bring people together and drive change. Sports fans flock to Twitter and other social media outlets to follow their favorite teams and athletes. Less than 5 percent of TV is sport, but 50 percent of what is tweeted is about sports. And if there was any thought that this phenomenon was only for Americans that is quickly debunked by the worldwide usage statistics.
“The power to create the global sports village and encourage the next generation of pro-social media sports fans is at our fingertips.” -Adam C. Earnheardt
While communication technologies can be beneficial for bringing people together and facilitating groups, they also have drawbacks. When we lack face-to-face encounters, and rely on asynchronous forms of communication, there is greater potential for information to be lost and messages to be ambiguous. The face-to-face nature of traditional group meetings provides immediate processing and feedback through the interaction of group members. When groups communicate through email, threads, discussion forums, text messaging, etc., they lose the ability to provide immediate feedback to other members. Also, using communication technologies takes a great deal more time for a group to achieve its goals due to the asynchronous nature of these channels.
Case in Point
This screen shot is from an iMessage group chat between the group that is responsible for this chapter’s content. Texting helped our group stay connected, updated, and motivated without having to meet face-to-face.
Nevertheless, technology is changing the ways we understand groups and participate in them. We have yet to work out all of the new standards for group participation introduced by technology. Used well, technology opens the door for new avenues of working in groups to achieve goals. Used poorly, technology can add to the many frustrations people often experience working in groups and teams. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.07%3A_Decision_Making_In_Groups.txt |
Summary
We participate in groups and teams at all stages and phases of our lives, from play groups, to members of an athletic team, to performing in a band, or performing in a play. We form groups based on personal and professional interests, drive reduction, and for reinforcement. Through group and team work we can save time and resources, enhance the quality of our work, succeed professionally, or accomplish socio-political change.
As you recall, a group is composed of three or more people who interact over time, depend on each other, and follow shared rules and norms. A team is a specialized group which possesses a strong sense of collective identity and compatible and complimentary resources. There are five general types of groups depending on the intended outcome. Primary groups are formed to satisfy our long-term emotive needs. Secondary groups are more performance based and concern themselves with accomplishing tasks or decision making. Personal growth groups focus on specific areas of personal problem solving while providing a supportive and emotionally positive context. Learning groups are charged with the discovery and dissemination of new ideas while problem solving groups find solutions.
Once a group comes together they go through typical stages (forming, storming, norming, performing, and terminating) to develop roles, create a leadership strategy, and determine the process for decision making. While numerous specific group roles exit, the four categories of roles include: task, social-emotional, procedural, and individual roles. It is likely that members will occupy multiple roles simultaneously as they participate in groups.
There are three broad leadership styles ranging from least to most control—laissez faire, democratic, and authoritarian. Also related to power and control are options for decision making. Consensus gives members the most say, voting and compromise may please some but not others, and authority rule gives all control to the leader. None of the options for leadership styles and decision making are inherently good or bad—the appropriate choice depends on the individual situation and context. It is important for groups not to become victims of groupthink as they make decisions.
New technologies are continually changing how we engage in group communication. The asynchronous nature of communication technologies can facilitate group processes. However, they also have the potential to slow groups down and make it more difficult to accomplish group goals.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are the differences between the terms “team” and “group?” Write down a team you have been a part of and a group you have been a part of. In what ways were they effective or not effective?
2. Review all the different types of group roles. Reflect back on a time when you worked in a group and discuss the role(s) you played. If there were any individuals in this group that prevented the group’s progress, identify their role and explain why it was problematic.
3. Thinking back to groups that you have been involved with in the past, which types of groups had the most effective leader(s) and what were the qualities of those leaders that made them so strong?
4. What are the potential strengths of group discussions? What are the potential limitations of group discussions? What are some strategies to enhance a group’s cohesion?
5. Reflect back on a time when you were working on a group project in class. Discuss each stage of development (forming, storming, norming, performing, and terminating) as it applied to this group.
6. How were/are decisions made in your family? Has the process changed over time? What kinds of communication surround the decision making?
KEY TERMS
• activity groups
• aggressor
• authoritarian
• authority rule
• blocker
• brainstorming
• climate
• cohesiveness
• collectivist
• common goals
• compromise
• consensus
• democratic
• devil’s advocate
• drive reduction
• encourager
• energizer
• facilitator
• followers
• forming
• gatekeepers
• general norms
• group
• groupthink
• individualistic
• individual roles
• information gatherers
• interaction
• interdependence
• interests/attraction
• joker/clown
• laissez-faire
• leadership
• learning groups
• norming
• norms
• opinion gatherers
• performing
• personal growth groups
• playboy/playgirl
• polarization
• power
• power-from-within
• power-over
• power-with
• primary groups
• problem solving groups
• procedural roles
• promulgation
• recorder
• reinforcement
• role-specific norms
• secondary groups
• self-confessor
• shared norms
• social-emotional roles
• social-emotional leader
• solidification
• storming
• synergy
• task leader
• task roles
• teams
• tension releasers
• terminating
• voting
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
10.09: Group Communication References
Adams, Susan. “The 10 Skills Employers Most Want In 2015 Graduates.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 12 Nov. 2014. Web.
Bala, Kiran. “Social Media and Changing Communication Patterns” Global Media Journal-Indian Edition 5.1. 2014. Web.
Bass, Bernard M., and Ralph M. Stogdill. Handbook of leadership. Vol. 11. New York: Free Press, 1990.
Baughman, Rachel & Everett-Haynes, La Monica. “Understanding the How-To Of Effective Communication in Small Groups” UANews, 2013. n. pag. Web.
Benson, Jarlath F. Working More Creatively with Groups. 3rd ed. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Berkowitz, Leonard. “Sharing leadership in small, decision-making groups.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 48.2 (1953): 231.
Bowers, John W., et al. The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control. Waveland Press, 2010.
Brilhart, J., and G. Galanes.Group discussion (1998).
Cragan, John, and David W. Wright, and Chris Kasch. Communication in Small Groups: Theory, process, and skills. Cengage Learning, 2008.
Earnheardt, Adam C., Ph.D. “On Becoming a (Pro) Social Med#a Sports Fan.” Spectra 50.3 (2014): 18-22. Print. National Communication Association
Fisher, B. Aubrey. “Decision emergence: Phases in group decision‐making.” Communications Monographs 37.1 (1970): 53-66.
Heider, John. The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age. 1st ed. Green Dragon, (2005). 178. Print.
Hughes, Richard L., and Steven K. Jones. “Developing and Assessing College Student Teamwork Skills.” New Directions For Institutional Research (2011). Wily Periodicals. Web.
Jensen, Arthur D., and Joseph C. Chilberg. Small group communication: Theory and application. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991.
Larson, Carl E., and Frank MJ LaFasto. Teamwork: What must go right/what can go wrong. Vol. 10. Sage, 1989.
Lewin, Kurt. Field Research in Social Science. New York: Harper, 1951. Print.
Lumsden, Gay, Donald Lumsden, and Carolyn Wiethoff. Communicating in groups and teams: Sharing leadership. Cengage Learning, 2009.
Maslow, Abraham Harold. Motivation and Personality. 2nd Ed. New York, London: Harper & Row, 1970. Print.
PAC, WIPP, ed. “America Turns the Page: Historic Number of Women in the 113th Congress.” (2013): 1-2. America Turns the Page: Historic Number of Women in the 113th Congress. WIPP/PAC. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
Paulson, Edward. “Group Communication and Critical Thinking Competence Development Using a Reality-Based Project.” Business Communication Quarterly74.4 (2011): 399-411.
Richards, Amy, and Jennifer Baumgardner. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminist, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000. Print.
Rose, Meleady, Hopthrow, Tim, Crisp, Richard J. “The Group Decision Effect: Integrative Processes and Suggestions for Implementation.” Personality and Social Psychology Review (2012). Sage. Web.
Sherblom, John C. Small Group and Team Communication. Allyn & Bacon, 2002.
Stacks, Don W., and Michael B. Salwen, eds. An integrated approach to communication theory and research. Routledge, 2014.
Starhawk. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power Authority, and Mystery. San Francisco: Harper, 1987. Print.
Tuckman, Bruce W. “Developmental sequence in small groups.” Psychological bulletin 63.6 (1965): 384.
Wilson, Gerald L., and Michael S. Hanna. Groups in context: Leadership and participation in small groups. McGraw-Hill, 1990.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/10%3A_Group_Communication/10.08%3A_Group_Communication_Summary.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Define organizations and organizational communication.
• Explain how the study of organizational communication developed.
• Explain the five theoretical perspectives for understanding organizational communication.
• Understand the challenges to organizational communication.
• Explain the future directions of organizational communication.
Thumbnail: www.pexels.com/photo/businesswomen-businesswoman-interview-meeting-70292/
11: Organizational Communication
If you have ever worked a part time job during the school year, worked a full time summer job, volunteered for a non-profit, or belonged to a social organization, you have experienced organizational communication. It’s likely that you’ve been a job seeker, an interviewee, a new employee, a co-worker, or maybe a manager? In each of these situations you make various choices regarding how you choose to communicate with others in an organizational context.
We participate in organizations in almost every aspect of our lives. In fact, you will spend the bulk of your waking life in the context of organizations (March & Simon). Think about it, that means you’ll spend more time with your co-workers than your family! At the center of every organization is what we’ve been studying throughout this book – Communication. Organizational communication is a broad and ever-growing specialization in the field of Communication. For the purpose of this chapter, we will provide a brief overview of the field, highlighting what organizational communication is and how it is studied.
What Is An Organization?
Before we define organizational communication let’s look at what an organization is, and how pervasive they are in today’s society. Etzioni states, “We are born in organizations, educated by organizations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organizations” (1). Simply put, from birth to death, organizations impact every aspect of our lives (Deetz).
Organizational Communication Now
Networking
The Half Moon Bay chapter of BNI (Business Network International) meets to promote local businesses and network with other businesses in the area. BNI is the largest business networking organization in the world, and each chapter acts as it’s own organization.
Stephen P. Robbins defines an organization as a “consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals” (4). Why have organizations in the first place? We organize together for common social, personal, political, or professional purposes. We organize together to achieve what we cannot accomplish individually.
When we study organizational communication our focus is primarily on corporations, manufacturing, the service industry, and for profit businesses. However, organizations also include not-for-profit companies, schools, government agencies, small businesses, and social or charitable agencies such as churches or a local humane society. Organizations are complicated, dynamic organisms that take on a personality and culture of their own, with unique rules, hierarchies, structures, and divisions of labor. Organizations can be thought of as systems of people (Goldhaber) who are in constant motion (Redding). Organizations are social systems (Thayer; Katz & Kahn) that rely on communication to exist. Simon puts it quite simply: “Without communication, there can be no organization” (Simon 57).
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.01%3A_Organizational_Communication_Overview.txt |
Organizational Communication and You
What is Organizational Communication?
Before you begin reading the rest of this chapter, Watch a cool animated short about “What is Organizational Communication
For an example of another approach to Organizational Communication read Dennis Schoeneborn’s paper on organization as communication involving the Luhmannian perspective.
Like defining communication study, many definitions of organizational communication exist. Deetz argues that one way to enlighten our understanding of organizational communication is to compare different approaches. However, for the purpose of this text, we want to define organizational communication so you have a frame of reference for understanding this chapter. Our definition is not definitive, but creates a starting point for understanding this specialization of communication study.
We define organizational communication’ asthe sending and receiving of messages among interrelated individuals within a particular environment or setting to achieve individual and common goals. Organizational communication is highly contextual and culturally dependent. Individuals in organizations transmit messages through face-to face, written, and mediated channels.
Organizational communication helps us to 1) accomplish tasks relating to specific roles and responsibilities of sales, services, and production; 2) acclimate to changes through individual and organizational creativity and adaptation; 3) complete tasks through the maintenance of policy, procedures, or regulations that support daily and continuous operations; 4) develop relationships where “human messages are directed at people within the organization-their attitudes, morale, satisfaction, and fulfillment” (Goldhaber 20); and 5) coordinate, plan, and control the operations of the organization through management (Katz & Kahn; Redding; Thayer). Organizational communication is how organizations represent, present, and constitute their organizational climate and culture—the attitudes, values and goals that characterize the organization and its members.
Organizational communication largely focuses on building relationships and interacting with with internal organizational members and interested external publics. As Mark Koschmann explains in his animated YouTube video, we have two ways of looking at organizational communication. The conventional approach focuses on communication within organizations. The second approach is communication as organization — meaning organizations are a result of the communication of those within them. Communication is not just about transmitting messages between senders and receivers. Communication literally constitutes, or makes up, our social world. Much of our communication involves sending and receiving relatively unproblematic messages and acting on that information. Other times things are a bit more complex, such as when you need to resolve conflict with a close friend or family member. There is much more going on in these situations then merely exchanging information. You are actually engaging in a complex process of meaning and negotiating rules created by the people involved.
For organizations to be successful, they must have competent communicators. Organizational communication study shows that organizations rely on effective communication and efficient communication skills from their members. A number of surveys (Davis & Miller; Holter & Kopka; Perrigo & Gaut) identify effective oral and written communication as the most sought after skills by those who run organizations. The U.S. Department of Labor reported communication competency as the most vital skill necessary for the 21st century workforce to achieve organizational success (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills). The Public Forum Institute maintained that employees need to be skilled in public presentation, listening, and interpersonal communication to flourish in an organization.
Organizations seek people who can follow and give instructions, accurately listen, provide useful feedback, get along with coworkers and customers, network, provide serviceable information, work well in teams, and creatively and critically solve problems and present ideas in an understandable manner. Developing organizational communication awareness and effectiveness is more than just having know-how or knowledge. Efficient organizational communication involves knowing how to create and exchange information, work with diverse groups or individuals, communicate in complicated and changing circumstances, as well as having the aptitude or motivation to communicate in appropriate manners.
How the Field of Organizational Communication Began
As you now know, communication study is deeply entrenched in the oral rhetorical traditions of ancient Rome and Greece. Similar to the many of the early concepts that shaped the discipline, some of the founding principles of organizational communication originated in the East. As early as the fourth century, Chinese scholars concentrated on the “problems of communicating within the vast government bureaucracy as well as between the government and the people” (Murphy, Hildebrandt & Thomas 4). Ancient eastern scholars focused on information flow, message fidelity, and quality of information within their governmental bureaucracy (Krone, Garrett & Chen; Paraboteeah). These still remain areas of focus for organizational communication that you will learn in your classes today.
Organizational Communication and You
Good Communication
The New York Times: Strikes Can Come Easier Than Words. Major League Baseball is trying to ease the language barrier, adopting a new rule that permits interpreters to join mound conversations when pitchers aren’t fluent in English. This example shows just how important communication is for the success of a team.
Good Communication Skills Maybe the Only Skill You Need?! The 10 Skills Employers Most Want In 2015 Graduates, a news article from Forbes demonstrates the communication skills desired by most organizations.
Like most of our field’s specializations, organizational communication began in the mid 20th century with the work of P. E. Lull and W. Charles Redding at the University of Purdue (Putnam & Cheney). During the industrial age, the focus of organizational communication was on worker productivity, organizational structure, and overall organizational effectiveness. Through this work people were interested in higher profits and managerial efficiency. Follett is often referred to as the first management consultant in the United States (Stohl). She focused specifically on message complexity, appropriate channel choice, and worker participation in organizations. Bernard placed communication at the heart of every organizational process, arguing that people must be able to interact with each other for an organization to succeed.
As a specialization in our field, organizational communication can arguably be traced back to Alexander R. Heron’s 1942 book, Sharing Information With Employees that looked at manager-employee communication (Redding & Tompkins; Meyers & Sadaghiani). Putnam and Cheney stated that the specialization of “organizational communication grew out of three main speech communication traditions: public address, persuasion, and social science research on interpersonal, small group, and mass communication” (131). Along with public-speaking training for corporate executives as early as the 1920’s (Putnam & Cheney), early works like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936 focused on necessary oral presentation and written communication skills for managers to succeed in organizations.
Redding and Thompkins identify three periods in the development of organizational communication. During the Era of Preparation (1900 to 1940) much of the groundwork was laid for the discipline that we know today. Scholars emphasized the importance of communication in organizations. The primary focus during this time was on public address, business writing, managerial communication, and persuasion. The Era of Identification and Consolidation (1940-1970) saw the beginnings of business and industrial communication, with certain group and organizational relationships being recognized as important. During the Era of Maturity and Innovation (1970-present), empirical research increased, “accompanied by innovative efforts to develop concepts, theoretical premises, and philosophical critiques” (Redding & Thompkins 7).
As with other specializations over the last century, organizational communication has evolved dramatically as dialogue between business and academic contexts. Redding and Thompkins conclude that “by 1967 or 1968, organizational communication had finally achieved at least a moderate degree of success in two respects: breaking from its ‘business and industrial’ shackles, and gaining a reasonable measure of recognition as an entity worthy of serious academic study” (18).
Organizational Communication Today
As communication evolves, research continues to develop, and organizational communication continues to redefine itself. In the early stages, this area focused on leaders giving public presentations. More recently emphasis has focused on all levels of interaction in organizations. Because interpersonal relationships are a large part of organizational communication, a great deal of research focuses on how interpersonal relationships are conducted within the framework of organizational hierarchies.
Modern organizational communication research has been summarized into eight major traditions: 1) Communication channels, 2) Communication climate, 3) Network analysis, 4) Superior-subordinate communication, 5) the information-processing perspective, 6) the rhetorical perspective, 7) the cultural perspective, and 8) the political perspective (Putnam and Cheney; Kim) Since the 1980s, this specialization has expanded to include work on organizational culture, power and conflict management, and organizational rhetoric. If you were to take an organizational communication course at your campus, much of the time would be spent focusing on developing your skills in organizational socialization, interviewing, giving individual and group presentations, creating positive work relationships, performance evaluation, conflict resolution, stress management, decision making, and communicating with external publics.
Studying Organizational Communication
Looking back to Chapter Six, we looked at three primary ways Communication scholars conduct research. When we study organizational communication we can look to quantitative methods to predict behaviors, or qualitative methods to understand behaviors. We can use qualitative methods to study communication in the natural environment of organizations in order to understand organizational cultures and how they function (Putnam & Cheney; Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo; Kim).
Critical approaches view organizations as “sites of domination” (Miller 116) where certain individuals are marginalized or disadvantaged by oppressive groups or structures. Most often the focus of this line of research involves gender or ethnic identity as they manifest themselves in organizations. The critical researcher uses interpretative research techniques similar to cultural studies. When looking at something such as a company pamphlet or the organization’s employee handbook, a critical researcher will expose political messages that may disadvantage particular groups of people.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.02%3A_What_Is_Organizational_Communication.txt |
Now that you have a better understanding of the concept of organizational communication, let’s look at five different perspectives for understanding organizational communication that have developed over time.
Classical Management Perspective
The original perspective for understanding organizational communication can be described using a machine metaphor. At the beginning of the industrial age, when people thought science could solve almost every problem, American Frederick Taylor, Frenchman Henri Fayol, and German Max Weber tried to apply scientific solutions to organizations. They wanted to determine how organizations and workers could function in an ideal way. Organizations during the industrial revolution wanted to know how they could maximize their profits so the classical management perspective focused on worker productivity.
Case In Point
Owners Richard and Maurice McDonald
McDonalds
After running a restaurant successfully for 11 years, Richard and Maurice McDonald decided to improve it. They wanted to make food faster, sell it cheaper and spend less time worrying about replacing cooks and car hops. The brothers closed the restaurant and redesigned its food-preparation area to work less like a restaurant and more like an automobile assembly line.
Their old drive-in had already made them rich, but the new restaurant – which became McDonald’s – made the brothers famous. Restaurateurs traveled from all over the country to copy their system of fast food preparation, which they called the Speedee Service System. Without cars, Carl and Maurice would not have had a drive-in restaurant to tinker with. Without assembly lines, they would not have had a basis for their method of preparing food.
Being a short-order cook took skill and training, and good cooks were in high demand. The Speedee system, however, was completely different. Instead of using a skilled cook to make food quickly, it used lots of unskilled workers, each of whom did one small, specific step in the food-preparation process.
Instead of being designed to facilitate the preparation of a variety of food relatively quickly, the kitchen’s purpose was to make a very large amount of a very few items.
When you visit different restaurants belonging to the same fast-food chain, the menu and food are pretty much the same. There’s one reason for this uniformity in fast food – it’s a product of mass-production.
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/fast-food.htm
The machine metaphor of classical management suggests that three basic aspects should exist in organizations: Specialization, Standardization, and Predictability (Miller). Those who advocated this perspective argued that every employee should have a specialized function, thus, essentially any individual could perform a job if they are properly trained. If one individual fails to do the job, they are easily replaceable with another person since people are seen as simply parts of a machine.
Taylor developed his Theory of Scientific Management from his early days as a foreman in a machine shop. Little did he know how drastically he was going to influence organizations and our notions of working life. Taylor could not understand why organizations and individuals would not want to maximize efficiency. In Copley’s biography about Taylor he reveals a man who was driven by perfection: “The spectacle of a [man] doing less than [his] best was to him morally shocking. He enthusiastically believed that to do anything less than your best is to add to the sum of the world’s unrighteousness” (207). However, workers were not always as enthusiastic about efficiency and quality as Taylor, especially given the significant difference in status and pay between management and labor. For the common laborer during the industrial revolution, this new approach to employment meant possibly losing your job if a “scientific” formula showed that fewer workers could do the same job. If you don’t think this is alive today, think about organizations such as Apple that have employees overseas manufacture iPhones.
Organizational Communication Then
Frederick Taylor
In today’s world, fast food chains are good examples of classical management. Next time you buy that Whopper or Big Mac, you can thank the influence of American businessman Frederick Taylor. Literally using a stopwatch, Taylor’s used his time and motion studies to prove that for every job, there is one best way to perform it in the shortest amount of time. This meant properly selecting, training, and rewarding the appropriate worker with the right task (Taylor, 1947). Peek into the kitchen the next time you order that burger, fries, and coke. It is likely that you will see employees separated by station and task, doing their specific part to fulfill your order. Likewise, the design of hard plastic seats and bright colors in fast food restaurants is done with intention to get customers in and out of the restaurant in an efficient and expedient manner.
During this time, Weber was also developing his ideas about bureaucracy. He was fascinated with what the ideal organization should look like, and believed that effective hierarchies helped organizations operate effectively. Precise rules, a division of labor, centralized authority, and a distinctly defined hierarchy should be driven by rational thought void of emotion and outside influence (Weber). These qualities would allow organizations to operate in a somewhat predictable manner — employees knew what to expect and who was in charge, and management could make decisions based on familiar, relevant information rather than irrational feelings. Think about the bureaucracy of your college campus, there are numerous divisions of labor, rules, policies, and procedures. Registering for classes, tracking transcripts, obtaining financial aid, living in campus housing, are all part of the time you spend navigating the bureaucracy on your campus. Imagine a campus without bureaucracy. What if you couldn’t easily access your transcripts? What if no one kept track of your progress through college? How would you know what to do and when you were done? What if there was no process for applying for financial aid? While bureaucracies can be slow, tedious, and often inefficient, they provide structure we have come to rely on to accomplish personal and professional goals.
Fayol’s theory of classical management focused on how management worked, specifically looking at what managers should do to be most effective. For Fayol, organizational members should be clear who is in charge, and everyone should know their role in an organization. He argued that organizations should be grouped in a precise hierarchy that limits the flow of communication to top-down communication.
Theory X is an example of a classical management theory where managers micro-manage employees by using reward-punishment tactics, and limiting employee participation in decision-making(McGregor). This theory sees employees as basically lazy or unmotivated. Because of this, managers must closely supervise their workers. Those that do not do their work are disposable parts of the machine. This allows for management to mistreat and abuse their employees, ultimately lowering the very thing they were after, greater productivity.
Organizations using this approach can still be found today. Have you ever had a boss or manager who treated you like an interchangeable part of a machine who had little value? If so, you’ve experienced aspects of the classical management perspective at work. While scientific approaches to organizations were an interesting starting point for determining how to communicate, the classical management approach fell short in many ways. Thus, development and refinement continued to occur regarding ways to understand organizational communication.
Human Relations Perspective
Because classical management was so mechanical and did not treat people as humans, organizational scholars wanted to focus on the human elements of organizations. The human relations approach focuses on how organizational members relate to one another, and how individuals’ needs influence their performance in organizations. In 1924 Elton Mayo and his team of Harvard scientists began a series of studies that were initially interested in how to modify working conditions to increase worker productivity, decrease employee turnover, and change the overall poor organizational effectiveness at the Hawthorne Electric Plant near Chicago (Roethlisberger & Dickson).
Mayo’s team discovered that, no matter what changes they made to the work environment (such as adjusting lighting and temperature levels, work schedules, and worker isolation), worker productivity increased simply due to the fact that researchers were paying attention to them. Simply paying attention to workers and addressing their social needs yielded significant changes in their productivity. This is where the term “The Hawthorne Effect” developed. Mayo’s work provided an impetus for a new way of looking at workers in organizations.
Maslow’s hierarchy suggests that human beings are actually motivated to satisfy their personal needs. His theory is still of interest to us today as we try to comprehend the relevance of human relations in the workplace. Papa, Daniels and Spiker s describe McGregor’s contributions: “As management theorists became familiar with Maslow’s work, they soon realized the possibility of connecting higher-level needs to worker motivation. If organizational goals and individual needs could be integrated so that people would acquire self-esteem and, ultimately, self-actualization through work, then motivation would be self-sustaining” (33). Remember that Theory X managers do not trust their employees because they think workers are inherently unmotivated and lazy. At the other end of the managerial spectrum, Theory Y managers (those that take a human relations perspective to employees) assume that workers are self motivated, seek responsibility, and want to achieve success. As a result of this changing perspective, managers began to invite feedback and encourage a degree of participation in organizational decision making, thus focusing on human relationships as a way to motivate employee productivity. Today many companies make employees happy by keeping them well rested and supplying them with ways to catch up on sleep even at work.
Human Resources Perspective
The Human Resources perspective picks up where human relations left off. The primary criticism of human relations was that it still focused on productivity, trying to achieve worker productivity simply by making workers happy. The idea that a happy employee would be a productive employee makes initial sense. However, happiness does not mean that we will be productive workers. As a matter of fact, an individual can be happy with a job and not work very hard. Another reason scholars tried to improve the human relations perspective was because manipulative managers misused it by inviting participation from employees on the surface, but not really doing anything with the employees’ contributions. Imagine your boss encouraging everyone to put their ideas into a suggestion box but never looking them. How would you feel?
Human Resources attempts to truly embrace participation by all organizational members, viewing each person as a valuable human resource. Employees are valuable resources that should be fully involved to manifest their abilities and productivity. Using this approach, organizations began to encourage employee participation in decision making.
An example of the human resources perspective is William Ouchi’s Theory Z. Ouchi believed that traditional American organizations should be more like Japanese organizations. Japanese culture values lifetime employment, teamwork, collective responsibility, and a sound mind and body. This contrasts with many American work values such as short-term employment, individualism, and non-participation. Many U.S. companies implemented Japanese organizational concepts such as quality circles (QC), quality of work life (QWL) programs, management by objectives (MBO), and W. E. Deming’s notion of total quality management (TQM). Each of these approaches was designed to flatten hierarchies, increase participation, implement quality control, and utilize teamwork. Human Resources works “by getting organizational participants meaningfully involved in the important decisions that regulate the enterprise” (Brady 15).
Systems Perspective
Collectively, individuals in organizations achieve more than they can independently (Barnard; Katz & Kahn; Redding; von Bertalanffy; Skyttner). The systems perspective for understanding organizations is “concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects” (Katz & Kahn 18). An organization is like a living organism and must exist in its external environment in order to survive. Without this interaction an organization remains what we call closed, and withers away (Buckley).
Case In Point
Outsources Jobs
The US News & World Reports Article,Outsourcing to China Cost U.S. 3.2 Million Jobs Since 200–New research shows that more than three-quarters of jobs lost were in manufacturingstates that,
“Jobs outsourced to China have diminished American employment opportunities and have helped contribute to wage erosion since 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization, new research shows.
Between 2001 and 2013, the expanded trade deficit with China cost the U.S. 3.2 million jobs, and three quarters of those jobs were in manufacturing, according to a report released Thursday from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Those manufacturing jobs lost accounted for about two-thirds of all jobs lost within the industry over the 2001 to 2013 period.”
Read the rest of the article HERE to see the impact of systems theory at the organizational and national levels.
All organizations have basic properties. Equifinality means that a system (organization) can reach its goals from different paths. Each professor that teaches public speaking, for example, does so in a different way but, the end result is that the students in each of the classes as completed a course in public speaking. Negative entropy is the ability of an organization to overcome the possibility of becoming run down. Companies like Apple do everything they can to stay ahead of their competition and keep their products ahead of the curve. Requisite variety means that organizations must be responsive to their external environment and adjust when needed. Apple is always under pressure to come up with the newest and best technology. When Apple goes a long time without doing so, the public begins to be critical. Homeostasis points to an organization’s need for stability in a turbulent environment. When gas prices go up, for example, organizations impacted by these rising costs take steps to ensure their survival and profitability. Complexity states that the more an organization grows and interacts, the more elaborate it becomes (Katz & Kahn; von Bertalanffy; Miller). Think about how huge companies such as Verizon must have elaborate organizational systems in place to deal with all of its employees and customers in a competitive market place.
If an organization is a system, how do we use the role of communication to analyze interactions among organizational members? Karl Weick’s Theory of Organizing suggests that participants organize through their communication and make sense of unpredictable environments through interactions. Simply put, organizations exist as a result of the interactions of people in those organizations. An organization is more than just a physical building with people inside. Communication is the “process of organizing” implying that communication actually is the organization (Eisenberg & Goodall). Regardless of whether the focus is on the message or the meaning, systems theory stresses the interdependence of integrated people in organizations and the outcomes they produce as a result of their interactions.
Cultural Perspective
Each organization has unique characteristics and cultural differences such as language, traditions, symbols, practices, past-times, and social conveniences that distinguish it from other organizations. Likewise, they are rich with their own histories, stories, customs, and social norms.
Fast food restaurants such as In-and-Out and Chipotle have a culture of serving high quality food at a fast rate, yet they are very different organizations. Chipotle’s company motto is “good food is good buisness” (Chipotle.com). We can understand organizations by seeing them as unique cultures.
Simply put, the cultural perspective states that organizations maintain: 1) Shared values and beliefs, 2) Common practices, skills, and actions, 3) Customarily observed rules, 4) Objects and artifacts, and 5) Mutually understood meanings. Shockley-Zalabak contends, “Organizational culture reflects the shared realities and shared practices in the organization and how these realities create and shape organizational events” (63). Not every individual in an organization shares, supports, or engages in organizational values, beliefs, or rules in a similar manner. Instead, organizational culture includes various perspectives in a continually changing, emerging, and complex environment.
Some people try to treat culture as a “thing.” However, organizational cultures emerge through interaction. Members share meaning, construct reality, and make sense of their environment on an ongoing basis. As Morgan states, “There is often more to culture than meets the eye and our understandings are usually much more fragmented and superficial than the reality itself” (151).
Organizational Communication Now
Google
There’s no question that Google is a trendsetter. The company made Web search sexy, and lucrative. It established the foundation for an ecosystem that allows any old little Web site to make money off advertising.
With its lava lamps, simple doodle design, pampered employees and millionaires in its rank and file, it has become a cultural icon and an emblem of the gold-rush promise of the Web.
Google was ranked by Fortune magazine as the best place in the U.S. to work, and it has reached another zenith by becoming the most popular Web site. It’s even become a verb in the dictionary.
And it may even have started a new trend by creating a job that carries the title “chief culture officer.” Stacy Savides Sullivan is that person at Google. Sullivan’s mission is simple: retain the company’s unique culture and keep the Googlers happy. In an exclusive interview, she tells CNET News.com how she does just that.
What do you do as chief culture officer?
Sullivan: I work with employees around the world to figure out ways to maintain and enhance and develop our culture and how to keep the core values we had in the very beginning–a flat organization, a lack of hierarchy, a collaborative environment–to keep these as we continue to grow and spread them and filtrate them into our new offices around the world.
We want all of our employees to play a part in being involved in keeping our culture the way it is today but also growing and developing it. So some of it is coming up with different programs or processes, and just being there to talk with people when they have issues, setting up Web sites where people can report bugs in their culture and ideas on how to improve it, and those types of thing.
What have we not covered that you think is germane to what you do at Google?
Sullivan: I think for any company that is growing as quickly as we are the work-life balance component is actually quite high. We don’t typically have early-morning meetings or late-night meetings. And people are welcome to do things via conference call at home and we pay for people to connect from home. We have a good paternity-leave policy where the dads can take off a couple of weeks when their spouse has had a child and we pay for peoples’ meals when they have new babies for the first few weeks.
We’ve all heard about the ability for people to bring their dogs to work. And you have such a litany of perks and benefits and things that would encourage people to stay or even join. And we have a benefit where we reimburse people up to \$5,000 if they buy a hybrid or electric car. And we have shuttle service (for commuters) to and from San Francisco, the East Bay, Santa Cruz.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023_3-6179897.html
When we become involved with organizations, we learn from other people in the organization “the correct way to perceive, think, and feel” (Schein 12). There are three interdependent levels that provide insight into how culture works in organizations.
• Artifacts are the first type of communicative behavior we encounter in organizations. Artifacts aresymbols used by an organization to represent the organization’s culture. You might observe artifacts such as office technology, office architecture and arrangement, lighting, artwork, written documents, personal items on desks, clothing preferences, personal appearance, name tags, security badges, policy handbook, or web sites. You might observe routine behavior such as work processes, patterned communication (greetings), non-verbal characteristics (eye contact and handshakes) rituals, ceremonies, stories, or informal/formal interactions between supervisor and subordinate. All of these are artifacts that tell us something about an organization’s cultural values and practices. What artifacts represent the college or university you are attending right now?
• Values are an organization’s preference for how things should happen, or strategies for determining how things should be accomplished correctly. Hackman and Johnson believe that values “serve as the yardstick for judging behavior” (33). Many times there is a disconnect between what an organization says it values, and their actual behavior. Disney espouses family values, for example, yet many of their subsidiary companies produce media that do not hold up these values. A way around this for Disney is to make sure to use other names, such as Touchstone Pictures, so that the Disney name is not attached to anything antithetical to “family values.”
• Basic assumptions are the core of what individuals believe in organizations. These “unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings” ultimately influence how you experience the world as an organizational member (Schein 24). Unspoken beliefs reveal how we treat other individuals, what we see as good and bad in human nature, how we discover truth, and our place in the environment (Hackman & Johnson; Burtscher). Basic assumptions guide how organizations treat employees and provide services to customers. Imagine that you work overtime almost everyday without pay. Why would you do this? Maybe you hold the basic assumption that people who work hard ultimately get ahead by being given promotions and pay raises. Imagine if you did this for years with no recognition or acknowledgement. What does that say about your basic assumptions in comparison to those of the organization?
Looking at organizations from the cultural perspective began in the 1980s (Putnam & Kim). During this time, several popular books focused on ideal corporate cultures, and the cultural perspective became a hot topic. Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life (Deal & Kennedy) and In Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman) described cultural elements that mark prosperous organizations. The authors talked with Fortune 500 companies and determined that if an organization demonstrates a bias for action, has a close relationship with customers, has identifiable values, reveres individuals that exemplifies organizational values (heroes), and has a solid communication network, it is a healthy organization.
Culture is complicated and unstable. Each organization has its own unique identity, its own distinct ways of doing things, and its own ways of performing culture (Pacanowsky & O ‘Donnell-Trujillo). The books mentioned above prompted many organizations to try to replicate the companies with “strong” or “excellent” cultures. Ironically, several of the companies identified with strong or excellent cultures have had a difficult time maintaining productivity over the last twenty years.
An important focal point of the cultural perspective is the climate of an organization. Climate is the general workplace atmosphere or mood experienced by organizational members (Tagiuri; Green). Organizational climate is a “subjective reaction to organization members’ perception of communication events” (Shockley-Zalabak 66). Do you like working with the people at your job? Are you satisfied with the general climate of your college campus? Are you appropriately rewarded for the work you do? Do you feel like a valued member of your church or social group? Climate has a direct effect on organizational relationships and members’ satisfaction and morale. Researcher Jack Gibb proposes that the interpersonal communication in organizational relationships, especially between superiors and subordinates, contributes to the overall climate of organizations. Gibb identifies a continuum of climate characteristics ranging from supportive to defensive behaviors that lead to member satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.03%3A_A_Chronological_Look_at_Understanding_Organizational_Communication.txt |
As you continue your education in college, you’ll continue to understand the need to be prepared for a perpetually evolving, increasingly diverse, and unpredictable global workplace. The key to organizational success, both for you and the organizations with whom you are involved, is effective communication. As you have probably experienced in both your personal relationships and organizational relationships, communication is not always successful. If you have ever worked on a group project for one of your classes, you have likely experienced many of the communicative challenges organizations face in this increasingly fast-paced and global world.
Case In Point
The Ant Colony and Organizational Communication
The YouTube video ‘Inside the Colony’ shows the system in which ants use to communicate and live. What are some things we can draw from their lives into daily lives using organizational communication? Write bullet points on your ideas and pick the top on to discuss in class.
Ineffective communication can cause many problems that can impact relationships, productivity, job satisfaction, and morale as we interact in organizations. Gerald Goldhaber summarizes Osmo Wiio’s “laws” of communication that are good to remember as you interact in increasingly complex organizations. Wiio pessimistically warns that: 1) If communication can fail, it will fail, 2) If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be misunderstood in the manner that does the most damage, 3) The more communication there is, the more tricky it is for the communication to be successful, and 4) There is always someone who thinks they know better what you said than you do.
One of the greatest challenges facing organizations is the practice of ethics. Ethics are a basic code of conduct (morals) that individuals and groups use to assess whether something is right or wrong. How ethical are you as an organizational participant? Do you always make ethical personal and professional decisions? Have you ever withheld a bit of truth to lessen the impact of revealing the whole truth? What if you accidentally overhear that an individual who is up for a promotion has been stealing from the organization? Do you tell your boss? Or, on a greater scale, what if you discover that your organization is withholding vital information from consumers, or violating lawful practices? Do you blow the whistle or stay loyal to your company? When you write your resume, how accurately do you describe your work history? Each of these scenarios deals directly with ethical considerations and ethical communication.
Case In Point
Ethics
A good example of an ethical dilemma that occurs in the workplace happened to me when one of my co-workers, who is also my good friend, was putting down more hours on her time card than she was actually working. This upset me, because I worked the exact same amount of time as her, yet I was being paid much less. Because our boss was so busy all the time, she never noticed this unfair violation of lawful practices. I had to choose between remaining silent which would prevent my friend from getting in trouble, or speaking out against the injustice in order to sustain a fair workplace.
-Anonymous Coworker
Many organizations practice a climate of “survival of the fittest” as individuals scramble their way up the ladder of success at any cost. Comedian Jimmy Durante posited this advice: “Be nice to people on your way up because you might meet ‘em on your way down.” Obviously, not every organization has this type of cutthroat culture, but with an inherent hierarchy and imbalance of power, organizations are ripe for unethical behaviors. Because of the competitive nature of many business climates, and the push for profits, organizational and individual ethics are often tested.
Do organizations have a moral responsibility to act ethically outside of their capitalistic and legal obligations? “Since 1985, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 firms have been convicted of serious crimes, ranging from fraud to the illegal dumping of hazardous waste” (Eisenberg & Goodall 337). The Chevron Corporation, the second largest oil company in the U.S., is just one example of an unethical organization. Tax evasion and several environmental infractions, including dumping over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest, are examples of their ethical behavior (Sandhu, 2012). Other unethical practices common in organizations include exploiting workers, tax loopholes, overbilling, and dumping toxins. Despite these unfortunate, immoral practices, all of us have an obligation to communicate ethically in all aspects of our lives, including organizations.
Case In Point
The Case of Hills Pet Nutrition, Inc.
In 2007 several major brands of pet food were recalled due to a contaminant in the food. As a result of the poisoned food, thousands of dogs and cats developed renal failure and many died. Many upset customers asked the pet food companies to take financial responsibility for the costs that were incurred while seeking vital veterinary care for their sick pets. Some companies responded ethically with financial settlements; others failed in their ethical responsibility. Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc. (the maker of Science Diet) was one such company. In a letter sent to a customer seeking reimbursement for treating their sick cat, Hill’s wrote a one sentence letter stating, “. . . it appears we are unable to settle your claim for Oscar’s future medical expenses.”
Thinking of this incident in ethical terms Kreps’ three principles of ethical communication are of relevance. He states ethical treatment should 1) Tell the truth, 2) Do no harm, and 3) Treat people justly. Has Hills, Inc. engaged in ethical communication? How could they have done so?
Differences in perception and the failure to clarify communication can lead to miscommunication at interpersonal as well as organizational levels. Organizationally, communication failure occurs due to information overload, communication anxiety, unethical communication, bad timing, too little information, message distortion, lack of respect, insufficient information, minimal feedback, ineffective communication, and even disinterest or apathy. To be successful in our organizational environments, we need to be earnest participants, as well as active listeners, to ensure effective communication and mutual satisfaction. Organizations cannot successfully operate without effective communication at every level.
Future Directions
As with many other specializations in the field of Communication, the area of organizational communication is changing faster than organizations, individuals, and scholars can adapt. It is difficult for organizations to anticipate and keep in front of the changes they encounter. What worked during the industrial age may no longer be relevant in the 21st century. In fact, what worked ten years ago likely does not work today. A sense of urgency, a fast pace, inconsistency, information overload, regenerating technology, and constant change characterize the dynamic changes as organizations move from operating in the industrial age to the information age. When this book was first published, for example, iPhones were just coming on the market. We referred to cds, dvds, and palm pilots in the original text. That was only eight eight years ago, and now we don’t use many of those technologies. Miller identifies four elements of the changing landscape for organizations: 1) Organizations are becoming more global, 2) Images and identity are becoming increasingly important, 3) There is a shift to a more predominant service economy, and 4) The changing workforce is highlighted by the “disposable worker” (Conrad & Poole), downsizing, early retirement, and temporary workers.
As a result, new directions of research are emerging. These changes are forcing those of us in organizational communication to reexamine existing communicative practices relative to the changing dynamics of organizations. For example, can a person lead without any personal, face-to-face contact? How do organizational values impact ethics, and what is the attitude towards ethical communication in this increasingly competitive age? How should work-life issues such as working parents, affirmative action, and drug screening be handled? With increasing diversity in the workplace, what is the role of intercultural communication? In this age of elevated tensions, how do stress and emotions communicatively manifest themselves in the workplace? What is the impact of our social media postings on our work lives?
Organizational Communication Now
Leadership in the Social Age
This article is about leadership and their ability to be flexible in work place. “Today’s leaders face challenges related to business disruption, ambiguity, complexity, widely connected constituencies and how to communicate with multiple constituencies simultaneously”. This ties into how work is different now than it was 10 years ago.
1. Leadership is about who, not what.
2. Leadership is personal.
3. Make experiences true learning experiences.
Scholars are continuing to communicatively adapt and respond to the changing landscape in terms of what we teach, research, and practice. Expect to see a variety of approaches and distinctively unique research agendas that will likely highlight the ways in which you will spend your life working in organizations that are different from today.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.04%3A_Challenges_in_Organizational_Communication.txt |
Summary
In this chapter, you learned that an organization is a “consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals” (Robbins 4). Organizations are dynamic and are created through our communication. Organizational communication is the sending and receiving of messages among interrelated individuals within a particular environment or setting to achieve individual and common goals. Organizational communication is highly contextual and culturally dependent.
The study of organizational communication developed as a result of the rapid changes brought on by the industrial revolution in the past 150 years. The more formal study of organizational communication took root in the mid-1900s and has gained increasing attention over the past 60 years. We examined three predominant periods of organizational communication during this time. The Era of Preparation (1900 to 1940) is the era in which practitioners and scholars focused on public address, business writing, managerial communication, and persuasion. The Era of Identification and Consolidation (1940-1970) saw the beginnings of business and industrial communication with certain group and organizational relationships becoming important. During the Era of Maturity and Innovation (1970 –present) organizational communication has worked to rationalize its existence through rigorous research methods and scholarship.
Those in the field of organizational communication study a variety of communication activity in organizational settings. Researchers focus on communication channels, communication climates, network analysis and, superior-subordinate communication. Since the 1980s, this specialization has expanded to include the study of organizational culture, power and conflict management, and organizational rhetoric. Other content areas of focus include communication in groups and teams, leadership, conflict and conflict management, communication networks, decision making and problem solving, ethics, and communication technology. Introductory organizational communication classrooms often focus on skill development in socialization, interviewing, individual and group presentations, work relationships, performance evaluation, conflict resolution, stress management, decision making, or external publics.
Since the start of the industrial revolution, perspectives regarding organizational communication have continued to be developed and refined. The initial organizational communication perspective, founded on scientific principles, is the classical management perspective which focused on specialization, standardization, and predictability in organizations. Following this perspective were the human relations and human resources perspectives which further tried to incorporate human satisfaction, needs, and participation as a means for creating effective organizations and productive employees. The systems perspective allowed researchers to understand organizations as a “whole greater then the sum of their parts.” This perspective focuses on the interactions of the people who form organizations, with the basic assumption that all people in the organization impact organizational outcomes. Finally, the cultural perspective understands organizations as unique cultures with their own sets of artifacts, values, and basic assumptions. As part of the cultural perspective we can examine the climate of an organization to reveal how an organization impacts its members, and how members impact an organization.
The future of organizational communication is complex and rapidly changing. As a result, there are many challenges to organizations. Two of the most compelling challenges are ethics and the rapid changes occurring in organizational life. As competition continues to increase, and greater demands are placed on organizations and individuals, ethics is becoming an essential focus of examination for organizational communication and behavior. Likewise, the rapid advances in technology and globalization are creating increased challenges and demands on organizational members.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Think of an organization you have worked in. What theoretical perspective did the organization take towards its workers? What was it like working within the boundaries of that perspective?
2. What kinds of organizations does the classical management approach work in today? What kinds of organizations does it not work in?
3. What needs of Maslow’s do you want your job to help you fulfill? Why?
4. How would you describe the “culture” of your campus? What does this tell you about your campus?
5. Explain ethical communication in organizations. What are the challenges? What are the benefits?
6. Review Osmo Wiio’s Laws of Communication. Give an example of a time when one of these rules has applied to you.
KEY TERMS
• Artifacts
• Basic assumptions
• Bureaucracy
• Classical management perspective
• Climate
• Competent communicator
• Complexity
• Cultural perspective
• Defensive Climate
• Equifinality
• Era of Preparation
• Era of Identification and Consolidation
• Era of Maturity and Innovation
• Ethical communication
• Homeostasis
• Human relations perspective
• Human resources perspective
• Negative entropy
• Organization
• Organizational communication
• Permeability
• Requisite variety
• Sociability
• Solidarity
• Supportive Climate
• Systems perspective
• Theory of Scientific Management
• Theory X
• Values | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.05%3A_Organizational_Communication_Summary.txt |
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Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/11%3A_Organizational_Communication/11.06%3A_Organizational_Communication_References.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Identify your own cultural identity.
• Understand how communication, identity, and culture are related.
• Describe research methodologies specific to the study of intercultural communication.
• Identify cultural representations in popular culture artifacts.
Thumbnail: Fauxels via Pexels
12: Intercultural Communication
What is Intercultural Communication? If you were to ask Russel Arent, author of Bridging the Cultural Gap he would tell you that, “Intercultural Communication is the sending and receiving of messages across languages and cultures. It is also a negotiated understanding of meaning in human experiences across social systems and societies.” This provides not only a concise definition but it also describes the importance that understanding has in intercultural interactions.
In this TedTalkX, Pellegrino Riccardi, a man who spent 27 years traveling the world to experience different cultures, refers to culture as, “A system of behavior that helps us act in an accepted or familiar way.”
In efforts to explain the world’s population to young children, David J. Smith asks children to imagine the world as a small village so they can understand the vast population figures in a more comprehensible way. In 2016, the world’s population was 7.5 billion (Smith 7). Instead of talking about numbers of this magnitude, he represents the world as 100 people. Using Smith’s model, we can examine what nationalities make up the world’s population, what languages they speak, how old they are, and how wealth and education are globally distributed.
Here are some interesting facts from Smith’s global village, including the most recent update from: 100People.org, a website dedicated to keeping this idea alive! If the world were made up of 100 people:
• 50 would be female
• 50 would be male
• 25 would be children
• 75 would be adults,
• 9 of whom would be 65 and older
There would be:
• 60 Asians
• 16 Africans
• 14 people from the Americas
• 10 Europeans
• 31 Christians
• 23 Muslims
• 16 people who would not be aligned with a religion
• 15 Hindus
• 7 Buddhists
• 8 people who practice other religions
• 12 would speak Chinese
• 6 would speak Spanish
• 5 would speak English
• 4 would speak Hindi
• 3 would speak Arabic
• 3 would speak Bengali
• 3 would speak Portuguese
• 2 would speak Russian
• 2 would speak Japanese
• 60 would speak other languages
• 86 would be able to read and write; 14 would not
• 7 would have a college degree
• 40 would have an Internet connection
• 78 people would have a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not
• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation
• 33 would be without access to a safe water supply
• 39 would lack access to improved sanitation
• 24 would not have any electricity
• 48 would live on less than US\$ 2 a day
• 20 would live on less than US\$ 1 a day
To see a large scale of diversity around the world check out World Diversity Patterns!
If each villager earned a similar annual income, each one would have \$10,300 per year. Instead, the richest 10 people in the village earn more than \$87,500 a year, the poorest 10 villagers earn less than \$2 a day, while the remaining 80 earn somewhere in between. As the average annual cost of food and shelter in the village is more than \$5,000, many people go without these basic necessities (Smith 22).
Moreover, the people with less money are also less likely to have electricity and education. Besides simple cultural differences such as language or food preferences, cultural identity impacts individuals’ accessibility to certain resources such as shelter, electricity, running water, health care, education, and political and legal systems.
If we return to the United States from our look at the global village (Moore):
• 25 percent of black youth ages 16-19 and 11 percent of 20-24 year olds are neither in school nor working. Compare this to 11 and 6 percent of their white peers. (E-16. Unemployment)
• Black infants have double the infant mortality rate than white infants in the US. (CDC)
• Black levels of unemployment have been roughly twice those of white since 1954 (E-16. Unemployment.)
• Women hold 102 seats in Congress (Women in Congress.)
• 475 of the top 500 companies are run by men (Fortune.)
• Women’s earnings average 81 cents for every \$1 earned by men (Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
• The United States is one of the few countries in the world that puts to death both the mentally retarded and children. The other five countries in the world that execute their children are Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
Think about culture and communication as a reciprocal process: culture affects communication and communication affects culture. Both work together to shape how we identify as belonging to one culture or another, how we feel about belonging to a particular cultural group, how we communicate with other cultural groups, and how that group is regarded in the larger social system. As you will see, this is often a reflection of the language used to refer to a particular group of people, or the relative value placed on their communication practices. In the U.S., political and economic power is not equally distributed among cultures. We can see this power imbalance reflected in various linguistic practices such as the dominance of English, terms used to refer to different groups of people, and lack of bilingual signs or documents. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.01%3A_Intercultural_Communication_Overview.txt |
Before going any further, let us spend some time discussing what we mean by culture. When you began reading this chapter what did you think we meant by the word culture? Your answer probably had something to do with people from different countries or of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. You are right—to a certain degree. Culture does include race, nationality, and ethnicity, but goes beyond those identity markers as well. The following are various aspects of our individual identity that we use to create membership with others to form a shared cultural identity: race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and social class. In addition to explaining the above identities, we will also discuss ethnocentrism, privilege, advantage, disadvantage, power, whiteness, co-culture, and political correctness as these terms are relevant to understanding the interplay between communication and culture.
When we talk about culture we are referring to belief systems, values, and behaviors that support a particular ideology or social arrangement. Culture guides language use, appropriate forms of dress, and views of the world. The concept is broad and encompasses many areas of our lives such as the role of the family, individual, educational systems, employment, and gender.
Understanding Race
“When you begin to understand the biology of human variation, you have to ask yourself if race is a good way to describe that.”–Janis Hutchinson, Biological Anthropologist
Race is often difficult to talk about, not because of the inherent complexity of the term itself, but because of the role that race plays in society. Race is what we call a loaded word because it can bring up strong emotions and connotations. Understandings of race fall into two camps: a biological versus a sociopolitical construction of what it means to belong to a particular racial group. A biological construction of race claims that “pure” races existed and could be distinguished by such physical features as eye color and shape, skin color, and hair. Moreover, these differences could be traced back to genetic differences. This theory has been debunked by numerous scientists and been replaced with the understanding that there are greater genetic differences within racial groups, not between them. In addition, there is no scientific connection with racial identity and cultural traits or behaviors.
Instead of biology, we draw on a sociopolitical understanding of what it means to be of a particular race. This simply means that it is not a person’s DNA that places them into a particular racial grouping, but all of the other factors that create social relations—politics, geography, or migration. We can also examine the reality that the meanings of race have changed across time and space. As dramatized in the 2002 film, “Gangs of New York,” the Irish were once considered a minority with little social or political status. Now, being Irish in America is considered part of the general majority group, white or Caucasian. Noting the change from the biological to the sociopolitical understanding, we refer to race as “a largely social—yet powerful— construction of human difference that has been used to classify human beings into separate value-based categories” (Orbe and Harris 9).
For additional information check out this website. The website “look[s] through the eyes of history, science, and lived experience, the RACE Project explains differences among people and reveals the reality – and unreality – of race.”
Related to race are three other distinct concepts: racial prejudice, racial discrimination, and racism. Racial prejudice refers to the practice of holding false or negative beliefs of one racial group for the purpose of making another racial group (usually one’s own) appear superior or normative. Racial discrimination is the outward manifestation of racial prejudice: it is when people act upon their negative beliefs about other races when communicating or setting policy. Note, it is possible to be prejudiced without acting upon those beliefs and that all races can discriminate against other races. The final concept, racism, combines racial prejudice with social power. Racism is institutional, rather than individual, meaning it occurs in large institutional contexts such as the representations of particular groups within media or the fact that racial minorities do not have equal access to educational or legal opportunities (Orbe and Harris 10). Racism often involves the unequal accessibility to resources and power.
Where Do You Come From?
Two other concepts that are often confused with race are ethnicity and nationality. Ethnicity refers to a person’s or people’s heritage and history, and involves shared cultural traditions and beliefs. A person may identify as Asian-American racially while their ethnicity is Chinese. Nationality refers to a people’s nation-state of residence or where they hold citizenship. Most often nationality is derived from the country where one was born, but on occasion people give up their citizenship by birth and migrate to a new country where they claim national identity. For example, an individual could have been born and raised in another country but once they migrate to the United States and have American citizenship, their nationality becomes American.
Gender and Sexual Orientation
Are you male or female? Do you identify as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgendered? One’s gender and sexual orientation are two additional ways to think about culture. Gender is discussed in more detail in Chapter 13, but for now think of it as the recognition that one is male, female, or androgynous. Gender is part of culture in that every society has particular gender roles and expectations for males and females. For example, in the United States, it is considered normal for the female gender to wear makeup, while it is often considered inappropriate for a male to do so. However, in some Native American tribes it was customary for the males to adorn themselves with paint for hunting and ceremonial rituals.
Sexual orientation refers to a person’s preference for sexual or romantic relationships; one may prefer a partner of the same sex, the opposite sex, or both. Sexual orientation influences one’s worldview or politics because while all societies include members who identify as gay or lesbian, these members do not always receive the same social or health benefits as heterosexual couples. However, this is changing. As of 2015, the Supreme Court of the Unites States made gay marriage legal in all 50 states. On top of these specific benefits, those with a nondominant sexual orientation might still have to contend on a daily basis that some people think they are deviant or somehow less than heterosexual people and couples. This may result in strained family relationships or discrimination in the workplace.
The Role of Money
You are probably familiar with the concept of class—what do the labels working class, middle-class, and upper-class bring to mind? Money? Economic standing is only one variable that influences class or socioeconomic standing. As the label suggests, one’s socioeconomic status is influenced by monetary and social factors. In essence, socioeconomic standing is “your understanding of the world and where you fit in; it’s composed of ideas, behaviors, attitudes, values, and language; class is how you think, feel, act, look, dress, talk, move, walk” (Langston 101). For example, in some middle class families children are expected to go to college just as their parents and grandparents had done. It may also be expected for the children to attend reasonably priced state colleges and universities as opposed to Ivy League Universities, which may be the norm in many upper-class families.
By now you are probably able to think of some other identity markers that shape a person’s culture or worldview. How about spirituality or religion, profession, hobbies, political persuasion, age, abilities? These too are aspects of cultural identity. Spend some time thinking about how these aspects would influence a person’s culture as we have done above.
We may often feel restrained by the constant need to work. We live in a money-centric society where every move we make involves thinking about the monetary gains or losses it will produce. Read Bruce E. Levine’s article on this phenomena. How America's Obsession With Money Deadens Us After reading the article, do you believe that we have become more money-centric? Why?
Intersectionality
Individuals cannot look simply at race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, ability, disability, religion, and social class in isolation. Instead, we must look at identity as a combination of these. Cultural identities have many parts that all factor into an individual's identity. Intersectionality is the theory that shows how multiple systems of power and oppression operate on individuals in various degrees that directly corresponds to their identity (Crenshaw, 1989). Intersectionality was a theory articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate, in the late 1980’s. A United States citizen and a Burmese citizen both growing up in modern times will not have equal opportunities. One might think that the US citizen will have more opportunities based on national privilege. But if the Burmese citizen is from a higher socioeconomic class than the American, the Burmese individual may have more opportunities. Other factors such as race, sexuality and ability also play into how many and which opportunities will be available.
Another example from Kimberle Crenshaw from her 1989 journal article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics states: “Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. . . . But it is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine which driver caused the harm.”
Intersectionality is important for intercultural communication because individuals must realize not only the duality but the depth of identities. This theory is useful for critical analysis because it illuminates the different ways systems of oppression overlap and how systems of privilege and oppression can manifest simultaneously on an individual (Allen, 2010). It is easy for people to assume because they are one thing that is it their whole identity, just like not every feminist’s agenda is the same and not every Syrian’s views are the same. Intersectionality is a key to intercultural communication because it reminds individuals that systems of power although do not operate uniformly and effect how people will receive and transmit messages.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Thai women. Authored by: Morguefile.com. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thailandculture.png. License: CC BY: Attribution
• Image of family on beach. Authored by: morguefile.com. Located at: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaycouple.png. License: CC BY: Attribution | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.02%3A_What_Do_We_Mean_by_Culture.txt |
Perhaps you may have noticed the theme of inequality as we have discussed topics like “unequal access to resources and benefits,” racial discrimination, and racism. You may have also thought, “oh, my, this is going to be a touchy chapter to read and discuss in class” or “this is interesting and relevant, but I feel uncomfortable talking about this as I don’t want to offend anyone.” These are very common and understandable reactions and ones we hear when we teach this subject matter. Hopefully, your instructor has set up a safe, open, and respectful classroom environment to facilitate such discussions. The fact that you are self-reflective of your feelings and how to express them to others is a great start! We too want you to be able to discuss this material both in and out of your class in a productive and self-reflective manner. To facilitate that goal we have included some additional concepts— privilege, ethnocentrism, whiteness, and political correctness—that are useful when considering your own cultural identity, your place in society, and your communication with others.
As it was so eloquently put by Carey W. James, ”I haven’t given up the quest, typically if idealistically American, for an open, nonascriptive basis of community life: one in which neighbors help one another out--you know, lend out the lawnmower, come to the funeral, take part in the town meeting-but do not ask one another too many questions about their private lives and pretty much ignore the color of skin, the shapes of noses and eyes, or the distribution of X/Y chromosomes.” This scholar is one of many people in the fight for political correctness to prevail.
Privilege
Hopefully, you have been thinking about your own cultural identity as you have been reading this chapter. If so, then you have been thinking about labels that define you culturally. Maybe you have defined yourself as female, Latina, and heterosexual. Or maybe you have labeled yourself as gay, white, working-class, and male. When we give ourselves labels such as these, often we ask ourselves, “Where do I fit in?” This is a good question to ask and demonstrates a recognition of the fact that you belong to more than one culture and that your cultures intersect in various ways. The most significant manifestation of these intersections is power—-the ability to influence others and control our lives. From the statistics given earlier in the chapter and from your own experiences, you should realize that some groups have more power than others. These people are what we refer to as the dominant group: white, male, Christian, middle-class, able-bodied, educated, and heterosexual. People whose cultural identities do not conform to this model are the nondominant groups and have less sociopolitical and economic power.
Peggy McIntosh uses the term privilege to refer to the power of dominant groups. She defines privilege as an invisible knapsack of advantages that some people carry around. They are invisible because they are often not recognized, seen as normative (i.e., “that’s just the way things are”), seen as universal (i.e., “everyone has them”), or used unconsciously. Below is a list of some of the privileges McIntosh identifies. Can you think of others?
1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color, who constitute the world's majority, without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge" I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color that more or less match my skin.
McIntosh admits, “My perception is that colleges and universities are the main institutions that are raising awareness of the relationship between privilege and oppression, but that this awareness is needed throughout all public and private sectors of the United States; the ability to see privilege should be in the minds of all citizens” (195). As you think about privilege and the resulting advantages that some groups have over others, you should also keep in mind two facts. One, privilege is a relative concept that varies according to context. In some situations we may be more privileged than others, and in order to access some of that privilege one may decide to highlight or conceal parts of their identity. For example, unless a person tells you, you have no way of knowing their sexual orientation. Thus, a gay man might decide to “pass” as straight at a family reunion to avoid conflict from a heterosexist family. The fact that he can choose to pass as a straight man is also a form of privilege. A black woman cannot decide to pass as a white woman, for example. Two, we may have aspects of our identities that are simultaneously advantaged and disadvantaged. The gay, white, working-class, male above is advantaged by the fact that he has light skin and is male, and is disadvantaged by the fact that he is gay and working-class.
Another example is from Nathan Pyle, a BuzzFeed staff member who wrote an article entitled, 10 Privileges I Have Complained About. Read the article and think about privileges you have complained about. Pyle states, “becoming self-aware of my privilege is a journey I’m still on.” Perhaps we should all start becoming self-aware of our privileges in America.
Watch this video, Students Learn A Powerful Lesson About Privilege
Ethnocentrism
One of the first steps to communicating sensitively and productively about cultural identity is to be able to name and recognize one’s identity and the relative privilege that it affords. Similarly important, is a recognition that one’s cultural standpoint is not everyone’s standpoint. Our views of the world, what we consider right and wrong, normal or weird, are largely influenced by our cultural position or standpoint: the intersections of all aspects of our identity. One common mistake that people from all cultures are guilty of is ethnocentrism'placing one’s own culture and the corresponding beliefs, values, and behaviors in the center. When we do this we view our position as normal and right, and evaluate all other cultural systems against our own. If you want to learn more about ethnocentrism, view this slide show.
Ethnocentrism shows up in small and large ways: the WWII Nazi’s elevation of the Aryan race and the corresponding killing of Jews, Gypsies, gays and lesbians, and other non-Aryan groups is one of the most horrific ethnocentric acts in history. However, ethnocentrism shows up in small and seemingly unconscious ways as well. In American culture, if you decided to serve dog meat as an appetizers at your cocktail party you would probably disgust your guests and the police might even arrest you because the consumption of dog meat is not culturally acceptable. However, in China “it is neither rare nor unusual” to consume dog meat (Wingfield-Hayes). In the Czech Republic, the traditional Christmas dinner is carp and potato salad. Imagine how your U.S. family might react if you told them you were serving carp and potato salad for Christmas. In the Czech Republic, it is a beautiful tradition, but in America, it might not receive a warm welcome. Our cultural background influences every aspect of our lives from the food we consume to classroom curriculum.
Ethnocentrism may show up in Literature classes, for example, as cultural bias dictates which “great works” students are going to read and study. More often than not, these works represent the given culture (i.e., reading French authors in France and Korean authors in Korea). This ethnocentric bias has received some challenge in United States’ schools, as teachers make efforts to create a multicultural classroom by incorporating books, short stories, and traditions from non-dominant groups. In the field of geography there has been an ongoing debate about the use of a Mercater map versus a Peter’s Projection map. The arguments reveal cultural biases toward the Northern, industrialized nations. To see this bias, follow this link.
Case In Point
The Greenland Problem
The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as “the Greenland Problem.” Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa’s land mass is actually fourteen times larger. Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries.
Greenland is 0.8 million sq. miles and Africa is 11.6 million sq. miles, yet the often look roughly the same size on maps.
This was convenient, psychologically and practically, through the eras of colonial domination when most of the world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an image of the world with Europe at the center and looking much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world view. When there are so many other projections to choose from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still such a widely recognized image used to represent the globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit. The inertia of habit is a powerful force.
Whiteness
If you are White, how would you describe your culture? When we ask this question to our students we find that White students are often uncomfortable with the question, feel guilty about self-identifying as White, or claim that White people do not have a culture. Gordon Alley-Young says, “The invisibility of whiteness and white privilege for many people is what makes it difficult to name and thus to disrupt” (312). These sentiments have lead an increasing amount of scholars in a variety of disciplines such as Sociology, Women’s Studies, Anthropology, English, as well as Communication to study the concept of Whiteness. Orbe and Harris explain why exploring this concept is important by explaining that “[i]t helps us all view communication as a racialized process [which] sharpens our awareness of how racial categorization is used to reinforce old hierarchies in which some races are more superior than others [and that] whiteness studies also assign each person a role in race relations” (89).
view communication as a racialized process—meaning that our communication is structured by larger societal and racial dynamics. Second, understanding Whiteness sharpens our awareness of how racial categorization is used to reinforce old hierarchies in which some races are more superior than others. This helps us recognize how Whiteness can be used to signify dominance, privilege, and advantage in the United States. And, third, through studying and recognizing the effects of Whiteness, each person plays a role in race relations. White people can no longer sit on the sidelines and claim “it’s a black problem” when discussing interracial conflict. (82-83)
Overall, it removes the White race from the often-unidentified “normative” group and provides a context for studying, talking about, and hopefully improving race relations.
The above discussion about privilege and Whiteness is not meant to suggest that those people with sociopolitical privilege should feel ashamed or guilty. This is often a trap that people fall into and it can shut down important thinking and conversations about intercultural communication. We want everyone to realize that they have a racial identity and thus are an important part of improving race relations. Race relations is not just a subject that concerns minorities—-it concerns everyone as we all play a part and benefit whether consciously or unconsciously.
Political Correctness
Case In Point
Since his first kneel, Colin Kaepernick has faced backlash from the NFL, fans, “patriots,” and even Donald Trump. He has been told that he will never play in the NFL again and fans have taken to burning his jersey. However, taking a knee has also become a large protest for the unfair treatment of African Americans by police. A peaceful nonverbal communication that says more than most can comprehend.
Another claim or label that may be used to discount such difficult discussions is Political Correctness, or “PC” as it has been dubbed in the popular press. Opponents of multiculturalism and diversity studies try and dismiss such topics as “that’s just PC.” Luckily, some of the heated debate about PC have quieted in recent years but the history lingers. In short, political correctness refers to “the elimination of speech that often works to exclude, oppress, demean, or harass certain groups” (Orbe and Harris 58, Remar). The debate largely focused around competing interpretations of the First Amendment right to free speech and the Fourteenth Amendment’s right to equal access to education. No matter what your position on this issue, we want to simply recognize two facts. One, that much of the PC debate and fury was largely misrepresented and hyped in the mainstream media by the use of extreme examples and a slippery-slope argument. Rush Limbaugh, for example, became famous for claiming that an awareness and sensitivity of language choice would lead to the “thought Police” or “PC police.” Two, that words and labels have great power to create perceptions, realities and identities. Toward that aim, we will discuss the power of language in greater detail in the following section.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
All rights reserved content
• Students Learn A Powerful Lesson About Privilege. Authored by: BuzzFeedVideo. Located at: youtu.be/2KlmvmuxzYE. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
• Victoria Wood Political Correctness Gone Mad Song. Authored by: janderson66607. Located at: youtu.be/oAM2cLhBFzU. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.03%3A_Facilitating_Discussions_about_Intercultural_Communication_Issues.txt |
At this point, you are probably aware of the cultural groups to which you belong (i.e., “I am a Latino, middle-class, (almost) college-educated male”). Do you remember the process of coming to awareness of your cultural identity—when did you know you were white and what that meant? Was it during childhood, as a teenager, or reading this chapter? Has your understanding, or acceptance, of your racial heritage changed during the course of your lifetime? For most people it does. Just as Piaget organized the growth of children according to various stages of development, cultural scholars have similarly organized racial awareness along models and stages. Before explaining the various models, let us make a couple general comments about models. One, a model is not the thing it represents. Is the model car you played with as a child the same as the actual automobile? What were the differences? Size, time, maneuverability, details? These same kinds of differences exist between the model of racial identity development and the actual personal process. But just like the car model gives a fairly accurate picture of the actual automobile so do the racial identity models. Two, these models are general and not meant to fit perfectly to every individual’s experience. With that said, let us examine the process of coming to an understanding of our racial identity.
To better understand this complex process, and in recognition of the above discussion regarding the distinctions in experiences for various cultural groups, we will present four racial identity models—-Minority, Majority, Bi-racial, and Global Nomads.
Minority Identity Development
Because people who identify as members of a minority group in the United States tend to stand out or get noticed as “other” or “different,” they also tend to become aware of their identity sooner than individuals who are part of the majority group. Since White is still considered normative in the United States, White people may take their identity, and the corresponding privilege, for granted. While we are using the following four stages of development to refer to racial and ethnic identity development, they may also be useful when considering other minority aspects of our identity such as gender, class, or sexual orientation (Ponterotto and Pendersen). Moreover, there is no set age or time period that a person reaches or spends in a particular stage, and not everyone will reach the final stage.
• Stage 1: Unexamined Identity. As the name of this stage suggests, the person in stage one of Phinney’s model has little or no concern with ethnicity. They may be too young to pay attention to such matters or just not see the relationship between racial identity and their own life. One may accept the values and beliefs of the majority culture even if they work against their own cultural group.
• Stage 2: Conformity. In stage two the individual moves from a passive acceptance of the dominant culture’s value system to a more active one. They consciously make choices to assimilate or fit in with the dominant culture even if this means putting down or denying their own heritage. They may remain at this stage until a precipitating event forces them to question their belief system.
• Stage 3: Resistance and Separation. The move from stage two to stage three can be a difficult process as it necessitates a certain level of critical thinking and self-reflection. If you have ever tried to wrestle with aspects of your own belief system then you can imagine the struggle. The move may be triggered by a national event such as the case of “Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed on August 9, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, MO (Buchanan). Learn more about the case here. It may be fostered on a more individual scale such as enrolling in a Women’s Studies class and learning about the specifics of women’s history in America. Martin Luther King Jr. moved to this stage around age six after the mother of King’s White neighborhood friends told them that he could not play with her children anymore because he was Black. A person in this stage may simply reject all of their previously held beliefs and positive feelings about the dominant culture with those of their own group, or they may learn how to critically examine and hold beliefs from a variety of cultural perspectives, which leads to stage four.
• Stage 4: Integration. The final stage is one where the individual reaches an achieved identity. They learn to value diversity; seeing race, gender, class, and ethnic relations as a complex process instead of an either/or dichotomy. Their aim is to end oppression against all groups, not just their own.
Majority Identity Development
The following model was developed by Rita Hardiman in 1994 and contains some similarities with Phinney’s minority identity development model.
• Stage 1: Unexamined Identity. This stage is the same for both minority and majority individuals. While children may notice that some of their playmates have different colored skin, they do not fear or feel superior to them.
• Stage 2: Acceptance. The move to stage two signals a passive or active acceptance of the dominant ideology—either way the individual does not recognize that he or she has been socialized into accepting it. When a White person goes the route of passive acceptance they have no conscious awareness of being White although they may hold some subtly racist assumptions such as “[p]eople of color are culturally different, whereas Whites are individuals with no group identity, culture, or shared experience of racial privilege.” Or, White art forms are “classical” whereas works of art by people of color are considered “ethnic art,” “folk art,” or “crafts” (Martin and Nakayama 132). People in this stage may minimize contact with minorities or act in a “let me help you” fashion toward them. If a White person in this stage follows the active acceptance path then they are conscious of their White identity and may act in ways that highlight it. Refusing to eat food from other cultures or watch foreign films are examples of the active acceptance path of this stage.
• Stage 3: Resistance. Just as the move from stage two to stage three in the minority development model required a great deal of critical thought, so does this juncture. Here the members of the majority group cease blaming the members of minority groups for their conditions and see socioeconomic realities as a result of an unjust and biased sociopolitical system. There is an overall move from seeing one’s station in life as a purely individual event or responsibility to a more systemic issue. Here, people may feel guilty about being White and ashamed of some historical actions taken by some White people, they may try to associate with only people of color, or they may attempt to exorcise aspects of White privilege from their daily lives.
• Stage 4: Redefinition. In this stage, people attempt to redefine what it means to be White without the racist baggage. They are able to move beyond White guilt and recognize that White people and people of all cultures contain both racist and nonracist elements and that there are many historical and cultural events of which White people can be proud.
• Stage 5: Integration. In the last phase individuals are able to accept their Whiteness or other majority aspects of their identity and integrate it into other parts of their lives. There is a simultaneous self-acceptance and acceptance of others.
Bi- or Multiracial Identity Development
Originally, people thought that bi-racial individuals followed the development model of minority individuals, but given that we now know that race and the meanings about race are socially constructed, it makes sense to realize that a person of mixed racial ancestry is likely to be viewed differently (from both the dominant culture and the individual’s own culture) than a minority individual. Thus, they are likely to experience a social reality unique to their experience. The following five-stage model is derived from the work of W.S. Carlos Poston.
• Stage 1: Personal Identity. Poston’s first stage is much like the unexamined identity stage in the previous two models. Again, children are not aware of race as a value-based social category and derive their personal identity from individual personality features instead of cultural ones.
• Stage 2: Group Categorization. In the move from stage one to two, the person goes from no racial or cultural awareness to having to choose between one or the other. In a family where the father is Black and the mother is Japanese, the child may be asked by members of both families to decide if he or she is Black or Japanese. Choosing both is not an option in this stage.
• Stage 3: Enmeshment/Denial. Following the choice made in stage two, individuals attempt to immerse themselves in one culture while denying ties to the other. This process may result in guilt or feelings of distance from the parent and family whose culture was rejected in stage two. If these feelings are resolved then the child moves to the next stage. If not, they remain here.
• Stage 4: Appreciation. When feelings of guilt and anger are resolved the person can work to appreciate all of the cultures that shape their identity. While there is an attempt to learn about the diversity of their heritage, they will still identify primarily with the culture chosen in stage two.
• Stage 5: Integration. In the fifth and final stage the once fragmented parts of the person’s identity are brought together to create a unique whole. There is integration of cultures throughout all facets of the person’s life—dress, food, holidays, spirituality, language, and communication.
Global Nomads
People who move around a lot may develop a multicultural identity as a result of their extensive international travel. International teachers, business people, and military personnel are examples of global nomads (Martin and Nakayama 138). One of the earlier theories to describe this model of development was called the U-curve theory because the stages were thought to follow the pattern of the letter U. This model has since been revised in the form of a W, or a series of ups and downs; this pattern is thought to better represent the up and down nature of this process.
• Stage 1: Anticipation and Excitement. If you have ever planned for an international trip, what were some of the things you did to prepare? Did you do something like buy a guide book to learn some of the native customs, figure out the local diet to see if you would need to make any special accommodations, learn the language, or at least some handy phrases perhaps? All of these acts characterize stage one in which people are filled with positive feelings about their upcoming journey and try to ready themselves.
• Stage 2: Culture Shock. Once the excitement has worn off or you are confronted with an unexpected or unpleasant event, you may experience culture shock. This is the move from the top of the U or W to the bottom. Culture shock can result from physical, psychological, or emotional causes often correlating with an unpleasant and unfamiliar event. When individuals have spent most of their lives in a certain country, they will most likely experience culture shock when they travel overseas. The differences in cultural language, customs, and even food may be overwhelming to someone that has never experienced them before.
Case In Point
Digital nomads travel the world while you rot in your office.
Todd Wasserman explains the benefits of the increased presence that digital technologies have in our lives. People have realized that they can do their work from anywhere that provides wifi, thus creating a new population of individuals that opt to travel the world while doing the same work that they could have been doing in a home office. To find out more, click here.
• Stage 3: Adaptation. The final stage at the top of the U and W is a feeling of comfortableness: being somewhat familiar with the new cultural patterns and beliefs. After spending more time in a new country and learning its cultural patterns and beliefs, individuals may feel more welcomed into the society by accepting and adapting to these cultural differences.
After exploring the identity development models for minority, majority, bi-racial individuals, and global nomads, we hope you have some understanding that a person’s identity development is a process, occurs in stages, and is specific to the individual and cultural groups. We also hope you noticed that identity development is a social process—it occurs within our relationships with other people and the larger society. Not surprisingly, language is a key factor in shaping our own self-perception as well as the attitudes and beliefs we hold about other cultural groups. In the next section, we will explore the role that language plays in intercultural communication.
There are a variety of global nomads. There are digital and physical nomads, as well as willing and unwilling nomades. Each of these experiences can also be applied to the model but understand that the excitement phase for someone could be positive or negative. Nevertheless, the goal is always to adapt to your situation.
As a consequence of war outbreaks and volatile political climates, individuals are unwillingly thrust into different cultures. Refugees are people fleeing conflict or persecution, they are defined and protected in international law, and must not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedoms are at risk (UNHCR). As of 2017 there are nearly 20 million refugees worldwide (UNHCR). It is important to have effective intercultural communication in refugee situations because, often the agencies and camps that are resources, are staffed by outsiders. This difference of culture, between refugees and staff, can cause unforeseen obstacles.
An example would be if an agency, trying to provide food for refugees, offered pork to a Muslim community. On one hand, these people need help, but religiously it would be a “haram”. If the refugees do not or cannot explain why they do not want to eat pork, the staffers may feel resentment or think they do not need food.
Food is not the only difference that can be a problem for global nomads. Living or sleeping arrangements may also be different and may depend on gender, age, and family structure. Cultural identity, as seen above, is complex and ingrained in individuals, so it is very difficult for people to adapt their identity and practices.
Language Shapes Cultural Perception
Saying that language plays a vital role in intercultural communication and relationships probably seems obvious to you at this point. But do you know how and why? Let us now turn to a more detailed explanation of the power of language. Specifically, we will discuss ascription and avowal, the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, labels and stereotypes, and reclaiming.
As you have been reflecting on your own identity, do you think it matches up with how others see you? The way people present themselves is referred to as the avowal process. The opposite of that is ascription, how others see us: the qualities or attributes that are ascribed to us. Part of your avowed identity is probably that of a college student and you hope that others see you this way too. Perhaps one of your hobbies is fashion and you enjoy paying attention to your clothes. You may then see yourself as fashionable and stylish. But do others? Might some of your classmates think you trendy, superficial, or fiscally irresponsible? The qualities that others may ascribe to you based on your fashion sense may in turn affect how you see yourself. This is yet another way that identity is shaped through communication in a social context.
In Part I of this book you were introduced to the idea that language shapes reality; the vocabulary we use to discuss an idea or person influences how we think about our subject. Likewise, if we have no words for a phenomenon then we are discouraged from talking about it or bringing it into our reality. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf believed that the structure of language was a necessary component for producing thought. You have probably heard that Eskimos have numerous words for snow. How many do you have? Snow. Ice. If you ski or snowboard then you probably have a few more. Powder. Moguls. Depending on the extent of your snow vocabulary you can look at the frozen water and perceive it in numerous ways. But if your vocabulary is limited then so is the way you can think and talk about snow. If you have studied languages such as Spanish or French then you are familiar with the concepts of a formal and informal “you.” Depending on the relationship between you and your audience you will use a different word for “you” and consequently conjugate your verbs accordingly. If you are talking with a child, for example, you would use the informal version, but if you were speaking with someone of higher social status such as your Professor you would use the formal “you.” As you speak and write, this language structure demands that you be consciously aware of social relations. This awareness then becomes part of your social reality.
If you have ever been on the receiving end of a stereotype or derogatory label in reference to your culture, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, or other aspect of your identity, then you are acutely aware of the power of language. You know that such language is not a neutral conveyor of ideas, but is designed to alter and shape the way the audience thinks about a particular person or group. Think about the list of terms that historically have been used to refer to persons of African descent—African, Colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, African American, and the harshest, the N-word. When you read each term, what are the different images or connotations connected with them? Do they bring up different historical periods, varying degrees of sociopolitical power, a variety of relationships to the dominant group? The range of emotions and images that each of these terms produces is further testament to the subjectivity of language as well as its temporal nature.
A more recent linguistic strategy among historically oppressed groups is called reclaiming. When a group reclaims a word they are attempting to take it back from the dominant group. If the dominant group has used a word or phrase as an insult then the oppressed group reclaims it for their own, positive meaning. Can you think of some examples? How about “bitch,” “queer,” “nigga,” or “cunt”? Hopefully, you are thinking, “hey, those words may still be insulting to some people; they’re not necessarily positive.” True. Part of the process in reclaiming is that only certain people can use them in a reclaimed fashion, most simply, the members of the oppressed groups at which the term was designed to hurt. If a woman is walking down the street and a man yells out, “Hey Bitch, watch where you’re going!” that is not reclaiming as the term is used as an insult. However, the magazine, BITCH: A Feminist Response to Popular Culture, is reclaiming this term. Here is a YouTube Video where the Bitch Media’s co-founder Andi Zeisler talk about the word. Also, visit the website www.bitchmedia.org to learn more. Can all words be reclaimed? Here is one perspective about the word “slut” from Feministing, “an online community run by and for young feminists” (www.feministing.com). A Few Words About Reclaiming ‘Slut’
Case In Point
Language shapes more than our cultural perspective, it also shapes our senses! See how in this article from the New York TimesCan’t Place That Smell? You Must Be American: How Culture Shapes Our Senses
Empathy
In the International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (June 27th 2017), Benjamin Broom states that, “In intercultural situations, empathy is more complex and more difficult, but it is a key competency for effective intercultural communication.” The author goes on to describe how empathy is an opportunity to try to imagine the life of another person. That being said, trying to understand the struggles of another is a first step to positive intercultural communication. Statement shirts or clothing such as, “I Can’t Breathe” are attempting to convey a sense of empathy with the plight of African-American males in US society. Seeing another person wearing this shirt might be confusing if one does not ask about it in hope of understanding. Being sensitive to the potential underlying meaning of these kinds of cultural reference can lead to empathy.
Contributions and Affiliations
All rights reserved content
• Bitch Media cofounder Andi Zeisler on the word Bitch. Authored by: BitchMedia. Located at: youtu.be/1q-jWBgkNU8. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.04%3A_Knowing_Where_We_Belong.txt |
Theoretical Approaches and Concepts
By now you should be familiar with the three general research approaches—social science, interpretive, and critical. Thus, this chapter will highlight a few specific approaches within these three general categories that have particular relevance to the study if intercultural communication.
Social Science
Describe and predict behavior. These are the goals of the social scientist. One particular theory useful for this kind of research is Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) that was developed by colleagues of Giles. This model focuses on the ways in which individuals adjust their communication with others. When you tell the story of a college party to a friend or to a parent do you tell it the same way? Do you leave out or highlight certain details? The kinds of decisions you make when telling a story reflect the ways in which you accommodate your communication to your specific audience. In general, there are two types of accommodation: convergence and divergence. When we converge our communication we make it more like the person or persons with whom we are speaking. We attempt to show our similarity with them through our speech patterns. When we diverge, we attempt to create distance between our audience and ourselves. Here, we want to stress our difference from others or our uniqueness. Using social scientific approaches as applied to communication accommodation theory, researchers may attempt to define, describe and predict what sorts of verbal and nonverbal acts can produce the desired convergent or divergent effects.
Interpretive
Like the social scientists, interpretive scholars want to describe behavior, but because of the importance of the individual context, they do not assume accurate and generalizable predictions can be made. As they are particularly relevant to intercultural communication research, we will discuss the following two methodologies in this section—ethnography and co-cultural research.
Since interpretivists believe in the subjective experience of each cultural group, it makes sense that they would select to study intercultural communication as used in particular speech communities. A speech community, according to Hymes is a “community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety” (54). This method is also referred to ethnography. A prolific ethnographer, Gerry Philipsen has identified four assumptions of this method:
1. Members of speech communities create meanings.
2. Each distinct culture possesses a unique speech code.
3. The rules for interpreting actions and meanings are limited to a given culture and cannot be universally applied.
4. Within each speech community there are specific procedures and sources for assigning meaning.
Using ethnography guided by these four assumptions, researchers are able to understand culture, its participants, and its communication on its own terms.
Critical Cultural
Originating in the legal arena, Critical Race Theory explores the role of race in questions of justice, equal access, and opportunity. Borrowing from the work of Matsuda et.al, Orbe and Harris summarize six key assumptions helpful for understanding critical race theory (125-6).
1. Critical race theory recognizes that racism is an integral part of the United States.
2. Critical race theory rejects dominant legal and social claims of neutrality, objectivity, and color blindness.
3. Critical race theory rejects a purely historical approach for studying race for a contextual/historical one to study interracial communication.
4. Critical race theory recognizes the importance of perspectives that arise from co-cultural standpoints.
5. Critical race theory is interdisciplinary and borrows from Marxism, feminism, critical/cultural studies, and postmodernism.
6. Critical race theory is actively focused on the elimination of the interlocking nature of oppression based on race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.
As this methodology is inherently complex and multifaceted it lends itself to producing a rich understanding of interracial and intercultural communication.
Intercultural Communication and You
The best way to experience intercultural communication is to immerse yourself into a culture. While you are in college take advantage of the study abroad programs your school has to offer. Here is a list of websites that offer students information on studying abroad.
http://www.ciee.org/study-abroad/
http://www.studyabroad.com
It may be difficult to adjust to a new culture but here are some tips from the Huffington Post to make your study abroad trip run smoothly: 13 Mistakes Study Abroad Students MakeA method focused solely on the interests of Africans is referred to as Afrocentricity. The foremost scholar in this field is Molefi Kete Asante and this functions as an interdisciplinary approach to questions of race relations. Instead of assuming a Eurocentric frame as normative for understanding the world and its people, this perspective embraces “African ways of knowing and interpreting the world” (Orbe and Harris 156). Similarly, there are also Asiacentric frameworks for understanding intercultural communication.
Important Concepts for Understanding Intercultural Communication
If you decide to take a class on intercultural communication you will learn a great deal about the similarities and differences across cultural groups. Since this chapter is meant to give you an overview or taste of this exciting field of study we will discuss four important concepts for understanding communication practices among cultures.
High and Low Context
Think about someone you are very close to—a best friend, romantic partner, or sibling. Have there been times when you began a sentence and the other person knew exactly what you were going to say before you said it? For example, in a situation between two sisters, one sister might exclaim, “Get off!” (which is short for “get off my wavelength”). This phenomenon of being on someone’s wavelength is similar to what Hall describes as high context. In high context communication the meaning is in the people, or more specifically, the relationship between the people as opposed to just the words. When we have to rely on the translation of the words to decipher a person’s meaning then this is said to be low context communication. The American legal system, for example, relies on low context communication.
While some cultures are low or high context, in general terms, there can also be individual or contextual differences within cultures. In the example above between the two sisters, they are using high context communication, however, America is considered a low context culture. Countries such as Germany and Sweden are also low context while Japan and China are high context.
Speech Styles
Other variations in communication can be described using Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey’s four communication styles. We find it is helpful to think about these descriptors as a continuum rather than polar opposites because it allows us to imagine more communicative options for speakers. They are not fixed into one style or another but instead, people can make choices about where to be on the continuum according to the context in which they find themselves.
This first continuum has to do with the explicitness of one’s talk, or how much of their thoughts are communicated directly through words and how much is hinted at. Direct speech is very explicit while indirect speech is more obscure. If I say, “Close the window” my meaning is quite clear. However, if I were to ask, “Is anyone else cold in here?” or, “Geez, this room is cold,” I might also be signaling indirectly that I want someone to close the window. As the United States is typically a direct culture, these latter statements might generate comments like, “Why didn’t you just ask someone to shut the window?” or “Shut it yourself.” Why might someone make a choice to use a direct or indirect form of communication? What are some of the advantages or disadvantages of each style? Think about the context for a moment. If you as a student were in a meeting with the President of your university and you were to tell them to “Shut the window,” what do you think would happen? Can you even imagine saying that? An indirect approach in this context may appear more polite, appropriate, and effective.
Remember the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? As Goldilocks tasted their porridge, she exclaimed, “this is too hot, this one is too cold, but this one is just right.” This next continuum of communication styles can be thought of this way as well. The elaborate style uses more words, phrases, or metaphors to express an idea than the other two styles. It may be described as descriptive, poetic or too wordy depending on your view. Commenting on a flower garden an American (Exact/Succinct) speaker may say, “Wow, look at all the color variations. That’s beautiful.” An Egyptian (Elaborate) speaker may go into much more detail about the specific varieties and colors of the blossoms, “This garden invokes so many memories for me. The deep purple irises remind me of my maternal grandmother as those are her favorite flowers. Those pink roses are similar to the ones I sent to my first love.” The succinct style in contrast values simplicity and silence. As many mothers usually tell their children, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” Cultures such as Buddhism and the Amish value this form. The exact style is the one for Goldilocks as it falls between the other two and would be in their words, “just right.” It is not overly descriptive or too vague to be of use.
Remember when we were talking about the French and Spanish languages and the fact that they have a formal and informal “you” depending on the relationship between the speaker and the audience? This example also helps explain the third communication style: the personal and contextual. The contextual style is one where there are structural linguistic devices used to mark the relationship between the speaker and the listener. If this sounds a bit unfamiliar, that is because the English language has no such linguistic distinctions; it is an example of the personal style that enhances the sense of “I.” While the English language does allow us to show respect for our audience such as the choice to eliminate slang or the use of titles such as Sir, Madame, President, Congressperson, or Professor, they do not inherently change the structure of the language.
The final continuum, instrumental/affective, refers to who holds the responsibility for effectively conveying a message: the speaker or the audience? The instrumental style is goal- or sender-orientated, meaning it is the burden of the speaker to make themselves understood. The affective style is more receiver-orientated thus, places more responsibility on the listener. Here, the listener should pay attention to verbal, nonverbal, and relationship clues in an attempt to understand the message. Asian cultures such as China and Japan and many Native American tribes are affective cultures. The United States is more instrumental. Think about sitting in your college classroom listening to your professor lecture. If you do not understand the material where does the responsibility reside? Usually it is given to the professor as in statements such as “My Math Professor isn’t very well organized.” Or “By the end of the Econ. lecture all that was on the board were lines, circles, and a bunch of numbers. I didn’t know what was important and what wasn’t.” These statements suggest that it is up to the professor to communicate the material to the students. As the authors were raised in the American educational system they too were used to this perspective and often look at their teaching methods when students fail to understand the material. A professor was teaching in China and when her students encountered particular difficulty with a certain concept she would often ask the students, “What do you need—more examples? Shall we review again? Are the terms confusing?” Her students, raised in a more affective environment responded, “No, it’s not you. It is our job as your students to try harder. We did not study enough and will read the chapter again so we will understand.” The students accepted the responsibility as listeners to work to understand the speaker.
Collectivist versus Individualistic
In addition to the four speaking styles that characterize cultures so do value systems. One of particular importance to intercultural communication is whether the culture has a collectivistic or individualistic orientation. When a person or culture has a collective orientation they place the needs and interests of the group above individual desires or motivations. In contrast, the self or one’s own personal goals motivate those cultures with individualistic orientations. Thus, each person is viewed as responsible for their own success or failure in life. From years of research, Geert Hofstede organized 52 countries in terms of their orientation to individualism. Look Here to see the results.
When looking at Hofstede’s research and that of others on individualism and collectivism, it is important to remember is that no culture is purely one or the other. Again, think of these qualities as points along a continuum rather than fixed positions. Individuals and co-cultures may exhibit differences in individualism/collectivism from the dominant culture and certain contexts may highlight one or the other. Also remember that it can be very difficult to change one’s orientation and interaction with those with different value orientations can prove challenging. In some of your classes, for example, does the Professor require a group project as part of the final grade? How do students respond to such an assignment? In our experience we find that some students enjoy and benefit from the collective and collaborative process and seem to learn better in such an environment. These students have more of a collective orientation. Other students, usually the majority, are resistant to such assignments citing reasons such as “it’s difficult to coordinate schedules with four other people” or “I don’t want my grade resting on someone else’s performance.” These statements reflect an individual orientation.
Where Intercultural Communication Occurs
Thus far, we have shared with you a bit about what intercultural communication is, some important concepts, and how scholars study this phenomenon. Now we want to spend the final part of the chapter looking at a major context for intercultural communication—-the media. There are other contexts as well, such as interpersonal relationships and organizations, but we will leave these to your own investigation or in a class devoted to intercultural communication.
Media
Looking at texts or media artifacts (these are specific television shows, films, books, magazines, musical artists, etc.) is both a fun and important area of study for intercultural communication. Since most people spend much of their free time taking in some form of media, such as going to the movies with friends or watching YouTube, media messages have a great deal of influence and impact over its audience. As you also remember, the media is also the location and source for much of the critical cultural research.
Specifically, what critical theorists tend to look at are the artifacts of popular, or pop culture? At the time this book first came out, bands such as Creed and Wilco; the television programs Friends, West Wing, and Sex and the City; and the films Bowling for Columbine and The Two Towers were all pop culture artifacts. Now, popular bands, television shows, and movies are very different. Popular culture is defined as “those systems or artifacts that most people share and that most people know about” (Brummett 21). So, while you may not listen to or watch the examples listed, chances are that you are at least aware of them and have a basic idea of the plot or content. Popular culture is distinct from high culture, which includes events such as the ballet or opera, visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the L’ouvre, or listening to classical music at the symphony. These activities, unlike the artifacts mentioned earlier all require something to have access. Namely money. Attending the ballet or opera takes considerably more money than purchasing songs on iTunes.
The fact that most of us participate to some degree in consuming popular culture is one reason to study its messages. Another is that it is an area of struggle for representation—specifically about cultural identity issues. Representation refers to the portrayal, depiction, or characterization of particular cultural groups. A related term is that of symbolic annihilation which refers to the fact that “women and minorities are underrepresented in media content and that when they are represented they are marginalized, trivialized, or victimized” (Valdiva 243). By looking at the numbers and characterizations of ethnic minorities in television and film we can see the dominant culture’s attitudes about them. This is because the dominant culture is the group in control of media outlets and represents groups in particular ways.
Let us walk through an analysis of a scene in the 2001 film, Spiderman, to illustrate these concepts. The female character, Mary Jane, is walking home from work one dark and rainy night. She is wearing a raincoat which is soon removed, leaving so her pink shirt and clothes to be drenched and cling to her. (Prior to this scene she has been portrayed as the “girl next door” with little or no sexuality.) Her path home takes her through an alleyway where she is quickly surrounded by a group of violent men. One of the men pulls a knife and there is the threat of rape or other violent attack. She fails when she attempts to fight back. But as is the case with superheroes, Spiderman arrives just in the nick of time to save the damsel in distress. After he saves her, she and Spiderman, who is hanging upside down from a building, share their first kiss.
So, what is going on in this scene? Can you identify examples of representation or symbolic annihilation? There are issues concerning both gender and race in this scene. First, she is portrayed as weak, unable to take care of herself, and in need of a man to save her. This is characteristic of images of women in film. Second, in terms of culture, the “good guys” or “innocent victims” are middle class and the potential attackers are portrayed as stereotypical lower class males. This too represents a stereotyped portrayal of young men in the inner city as criminals or gang members. Finally, and perhaps the most dangerous message in this scene, is the equation of female sexuality, violence, and romance. As her pink shirt clings to her, her breasts are revealed in a sexual manner, next she is almost attacked, and then she is sweetly and romantically kissing Spiderman. Thus, this short scene illustrates how images (we did not even discuss the dialogue) work to unfairly and inaccurately portray groups of people.
By looking to the media, scholars can discover what images of various cultural groups are prevalent in a society and the stories that are told about various cultures. As active citizens, we can make choices about what media images we decide to consume, accept, or reject. As knowledgeable communicators we can critique the images we see rather than accept constructed and artificial media images as normative or “just the way things are.” As you learned in the first section of the book, language, symbols, and images are not neutral, but are subjective interpretations of a person’s or group of people’s interpretation of reality.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
All rights reserved content
• Spider-man Upside down kiss scene [HD]. Authored by: Liam Summers. Located at: youtu.be/_iOC5ajR51g. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.05%3A_How_Scholars_Study_Intercultural_Communication.txt |
Summary
After reading this chapter, you should have a greater understanding of how culture influences communication. We began with an overview and description of the various aspects of personal identity and how they work together to determine a person’s and co-cultures relative power and privilege. Next, we traced the process of coming to an understanding of one’s individual identity through the use of the identity models for minorities, Bi-racial individuals, Majority members, and those whom identify as global nomads. Turning to specific communication styles we discussed the differences between high and low context cultures and the continuums of direct/indirect, elaborate/exact/succinct, personal/contextual, and instrumental/affective styles. Finally, we examined a particular site for intercultural communication—the media. We hope this chapter has increased your knowledge base as well as your enthusiasm and interest in this exciting area of the Communication discipline. Moreover, we encourage you to think about the importance of culture when studying the other sub-disciplines of communication such as gender, organizational, interpersonal, rhetorical theory, rhetorical criticism, and health communication.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are some ways that you see to support Hofstede’s claim that the U.S. is the most individualistic society? Are there ways in which we display attributes of collectivism?
2. Describe a situation in which you attempted to diverge or converge you communication with others? What did you do? What were you attempting to accomplish by doing so? What was the result?
3. What are some examples of representation and symbolic annihilation can you locate and analyze in contemporary texts of popular culture?
KEY TERMS
• Afrocentricity
• Critical race theory
• Collectivism/Individualism
• Communication Styles
• Culture
• Ethnicity
• Ethnocentrism
• Gender
• High and low context
• Identity
• Popular Culture
• Privilege
• Race
• Representation
• Symbolic Annihilation
• Whiteness
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
12.07: Intercultural Communication References
“10 Privileges I Have Complained About.” BuzzFeed. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2014.
Alley-Young, Gordon. “Articulating Identity: Refining Postcolonial And Whiteness Perspectives On Race Within Communication Studies.” Review Of Communication 8.3 (2008): 307-321. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.
Asante, Molefi Kete. Afrocentricity. Trenton. NJ: Africa World Press, 1988. Print.
Asante, Molefi Kete. The Afrocentric Idea (rev. Ed.). Philadelphia: Temple UP (1998): n. pag. Print.
Buchanan, Larry. “What Happened in Ferguson?” The New York Times 13 Aug. 2014. NYTimes.com. Web.
Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture. Sage Publications, 2014. Print.
Geert, Hofstede, and Hofstede Gert Jan. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill, New York (1991): n. pag. Print.
Giles, Howard and Kimberly A. Noels. “Communication Accommodation in Intercultural Encounters.” Readings in Intercultural Communication. Eds. Judith N. and Thomas K. Nakayama and Lisa A. Flores Martin. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Gudykunst, William B., Stella Ting-Toomey, and Elizabeth Chua. Culture and Interpersonal Communication. Sage Publications, Inc, 1988. Google Scholar. Web. 15 Oct. 2014
Hall, Edward T. Beyond Culture. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976.
Hardiman, Rita. “White Racial Identity Development in the United States.” Race, ethnicity and self: Identity in multicultural perspective (1994): 117–140. Print.
Hymes, D. “Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life.” Directions Is Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Ed. J. and D. Hymes Gumperz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. 35-71.
Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. London; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.
Langston, D. “Tired of Playing Monopoly?” Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. Ed. M.L. Anderson and P.H. Collins. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1995. 100-09.
Levine, Bruce E. “How America’s Obsession With Money Deadens Us.” Alternet. N.p., 18 Mar. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
Matsuda, Mari J., C. R. Lawrence, R. Delgado, and K. W. Crenshaw. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Print.
Martin, Judith N., and Olga Idriss Davis. “Conceptual Foundations for Teaching about Whiteness in Intercultural Communication Courses.” Communication Education 50.4 (2001): 298–313.Print.
Martin, Judith, and Thomas Nakayama. Intercultural Communication in Contexts. 5 edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2009. Print.
McIntosh, Peggy. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women, 1988. Print.
McIntosh, Peggy. “Reflections and Future Directions for Privilege Studies.” Journal of Social Issues 68.1 (2012): 194–206. Wiley Online Library. Web.
O’Neil, Dennis. “Ethnicity and Race: World Diversity Patterns.” Ethnicity and Race: World Diversity Patterns. 6 July 2006. Web. 3 Dec. 2014. <anthro.palomar.edu/ethnicity/ethnic_5.htm>.
Orbe, Mark P., and Tina M. Harris. Interracial Communication: Theory Into Practice. 3rd ed. Sage, 2012. Print.
Philipsen, Gerry, and T. Albrecht. “A Theory of Speech Codes.” Developing communication theories 6 (1997): n. pag. Google Scholar. Web.
Pyle, Nathan. “10 Privileges I Have Complained About.” BuzzFeed. N.p., n.d. Web
Phinney, Jean S. “A Three-Stage Model of Ethnic Identity Development in Adolescence.” Ethnic identity: Formation and transmission among Hispanics and other minorities 61 (1993): 79. Print.
Ponterotto, Joseph G., Shawn O. Utsey, and Paul B. Pedersen. Preventing Prejudice: A Guide for Counselors, Educators, and Parents. 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2006. Print.
Poston, W. S. Carlos. “The Biracial Identity Development Model: A Needed Addition.” Journal of Counseling & Development, 69.2 (1990): 152-155.
“RACE – Are We So Different?” A Project of the American Anthropological Association. American Anthropological Association, n.d. Web. <www.understandingrace.org/home.html>.
Remar, P. “Should College and Universities Prohibit ‘Hate Speech’ on Campus?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of Speech Communication Association. Atlanta, GA, 1991.
Smith, David J., and Shelagh Armstrong. If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People. 2nd ed. Toronto: Kids Can, 2011. Print.
Valdiva, Angharad N. “Big Hair and Bigger Hoops: Rosie Perez Goes to Hollywood.” Readings in Cultural Contexts. Eds. Judith N. Martin, Thomas K. Nakayama, and Lisa A. Flores. Mountain View: Mayfield, 1998.
Wasserman, Todd. “Digital Nomads Travel the World While You Rot in Your Office.” Mashable. N.p., 9 Nov. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
Wingfield-Hayes, Rupert “China’s Taste for the Exotic.” BBC 29 June 2002. bbc.co.uk. Web.
Wood, Victoria. “Victoria Wood Political Correctness Gone Mad Song.” YouTube. YouTube, 11 Sept. 2010. Web. 29 Oct. 2014. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/12%3A_Intercultural_Communication/12.06%3A_Intercultural_Communication_Summary.txt |
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
• Understand the difference between sex and gender.
• Identify the multiplicity of feminisms.
• Discuss prominent theories used in the study of gender and communication.
• Identify the major theorists in gender and communication research.
• Identify the various methods used to study gender communication.
• Describe masculine and feminine speaking styles.
• Recognize the impact of gender on nonverbal communication.
• Know the problems with and the future directions of this area of communication studies.
Thumbnail: Transgender symbol (CC BY-SA 2.5; via Wikipedia)
13: Gender Communication
Have you ever been told that you “throw like a girl,” “run like a girl,” or “fight like a girl”? Was it an insult? A compliment? We have been taught that throwing like a girl is the equivalent of throwing poorly. We use a variety of channels of communication (language, books, tv, clothing, etc.) to teach children what it means to be a “girl” or a “boy”. We limit these identities to separate categories we are not usually supposed to mix. We are taught that men are supposed to be more athletic than women, and even play in different leagues! In almost every professional sport like football, baseball, and basketball the men’s league is seen as more competitive and more popular. The company Always decided to examine the phrase “like a girl” and how children of different ages would respond! The results were not what you would expect!
So what happens when a girl is able to throw a 70 mile per hour fastball and win The World Series for her team? Ideas about gender are continually being challenged. Mo’ne Davis was the first girl to pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series in August 2014 and is showing everyone what it means to throw like a girl. Known as America’s favorite pastime, baseball used to be reserved for men only. Currently, Davis is being recognized because of her rare talent, but also because of her gender (Wallace). With Davis as a role model, we hope to see many more examples of transformations of traditional gender roles! For more information on Mo’ne, check out this link! This example highlights one of the key characteristics of gender—-that it is fluid. Gender roles of a given culture are always changing.
Like in sports, people of all genders are taking on new roles in all different ways! This picture depicts females on the field during a competitive game of lacrosse at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.
In this chapter, we want to look at the ways in which gender has been constructed in our society and the ways in which we communicate about the idea of gender.
Gender communication is a specialization of the communication field that focuses on the ways we, as gendered beings, communicate. Gender research might look at roles for people of different genders in academia, sports, media, or politics. For example, research in this area could examine the similarities and differences in the conversations that take place in the comment section of a Youtube video created by Bethany Mota verses one created by Philip DeFranco. Researchers could also look at how people of different genders have been represented throughout history. Gender communication is also a field that strives to change the way we talk about people, in order to make a more empathetic and safe space for our entire community. For example, the word “queer” used to be a slur for people who were homosexual. Now we see the LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual) community has reclaimed the word queer to mean any person who is not straight. It is now a self proclamation and one that can be empowering for many people.
In this chapter, we want to make a distinction between sex and gender before providing an overview of this specialization’s areas of research, main theories and theorists, and highlights from research findings about feminine and masculine communication styles. While we are taking a communication lens to the study of gender, we need to acknowledge the contributions made by other academic disciplines such as women’s studies, linguistics, and psychology (Stephen, 2000).
As with other specializations in communication, definitions of gender abound (Gamble & Gamble; Gilbert; Howard & Hollander; Lorber; Vannoy). Ivy and Backlund define gender communication as, ‘“communication about and between men and women”’ (4). Central to this definition are the terms about and between, and men and women. About addresses the attention this specialization pays to how the sexes are “discussed, referred to, or depicted, both verbally and nonverbally.” Between addresses how members of each sex communicate interpersonally with others of the same, as well as the opposite, sex (Ivy & Backlund 4). We find this problematic because it limits the discussion about gender to only men and women. For our purposes, we will be adapting the Ivy and Backlund definition and instead using the definition: communication about and between people of all genders. This new definition is more inclusive of the large number of gender identities that are present in our community. For example gender queer, transgender, and a-gender. We will discuss and define some of these identities later in the chapter, for a more in-depth exploration of these identities, check out this article from the Huffington Post.
In our society, we use the gendered terms women and men instead of male and female. What’s the difference between these two sets of terms? One pair refers to the biological categories of male and female. The other pair, men and women, refers to what are now generally regarded as socially constructed concepts that convey the cultural ideals or values of masculinity and femininity. For our purposes, gender is, “the social construction of masculinity or femininity as it aligns with designated sex at birth in a specific culture and time period. Gender identity claims individuality that may or may not be expressed outwardly, and may or may not correspond to one’s sexual anatomy” (Pettitt). This definition is important because it discusses the separation between sex and gender as well as the idea that gender is socially constructed.
This basic difference is important, but it’s most important that you know something else about these two sets of terms. One set has fixed meaning and the other set maintains fluid or dynamic meaning. Because they refer to biological distinctions, the terms male and female are essentially fixed. That is, their meanings are generally unchanging (as concepts if not in reality, since we do live in an age when it’s medically possible to change sexes). Conversely, because they are social constructions, the meanings of the gendered terms masculine and feminine are dynamic or fluid. Why? Because their meanings are open to interpretation: Different people give them different meanings. Sometimes, even the same person might interpret these terms differently over time. For example, as a teenager a girl may portray her femininity by wearing make-up. Eventually, she may decide to forego this traditional display of femininity because her sense of herself as a woman may no longer need the validation that a socially prescribed behavior, such as wearing make-up, provides. We use the terms fluid and dynamic to describe the social construction of gender because they will change based on the time, place, and culture a person lives in. For example, did you know that high heels were first invented for men to make them look taller? These days, if a man wears high heels, he would be described as “feminine.” This is an example of how our ideas of gender can change over time.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.01%3A_Gender_Communication_Overview.txt |
A quick review of some biological basics will lay a good foundation for a more detailed discussion of the interplay between sex and gender in communication studies.
Sex
As you may recall from a biology or health class, a fetus’s sex is determined at conception by the chromosomal composition of the fertilized egg. The most common chromosome patterns are XX (female) and XY (male). After about seven weeks of gestation, a fetus begins to receive the hormones that cause sex organs to develop. Fetuses with a Y chromosome receive androgens that produce male sex organs (prostate) and external genitalia (penis and testes). Fetuses without androgens develop female sex organs (ovaries and uterus) and external genitalia (clitoris and vagina). In cases where hormones are not produced along the two most common patterns, a fetus may develop biological characteristics of each sex. These people are considered intersexuals.
Case In Point
According to the Intersex Society of North America
“Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.
Though we speak of intersex as an inborn condition, intersex anatomy doesn’t always show up at birth. Sometimes a person isn’t found to have intersex anatomy until she or he reaches the age of puberty, or finds himself an infertile adult, or dies of old age and is autopsied. Some people live and die with intersex anatomy without anyone (including themselves) ever knowing.
Which variations of sexual anatomy count as intersex? In practice, different people have different answers to that question. That’s not surprising, because intersex isn’t a discreet or natural category.
What does this mean? Intersex is a socially constructed category that reflects real biological variation. To better explain this, we can liken the sex spectrum to the color spectrum. There’s no question that in nature there are different wavelengths that translate into colors most of us see as red, blue, orange, yellow. But the decision to distinguish, say, between orange and red-orange is made only when we need it—like when we’re asking for a particular paint color. Sometimes social necessity leads us to make color distinctions that otherwise would seem incorrect or irrational, as, for instance, when we call certain people “black” or “white” when they’re not especially black or white as we would otherwise use the terms.
In the same way, nature presents us with sex anatomy spectrums. Breasts, penises, clitorises, scrotums, labia, gonads—all of these vary in size and shape and morphology. So-called “sex” chromosomes can vary quite a bit, too. But in human cultures, sex categories get simplified into male, female, and sometimes intersex, in order to simplify social interactions, express what we know and feel, and maintain order.
So nature doesn’t decide where the category of “male” ends and the category of “intersex” begins, or where the category of “intersex” ends and the category of “female” begins. Humans decide. Humans (today, typically doctors) decide how small a penis has to be, or how unusual a combination of parts has to be, before it counts as intersex. Humans decide whether a person with XXY chromosomes or XY chromosomes and androgen insensitivity will count as intersex.
In our work, we find that doctors’ opinions about what should count as “intersex” vary substantially. Some think you have to have “ambiguous genitalia” to count as intersex, even if your inside is mostly of one sex and your outside is mostly of another. Some think your brain has to be exposed to an unusual mix of hormones prenatally to count as intersex—so that even if you’re born with atypical genitalia, you’re not intersex unless your brain experienced atypical development. And some think you have to have both ovarian and testicular tissue to count as intersex.
Rather than trying to play a semantic game that never ends, we at ISNA take a pragmatic approach to the question of who counts as intersex. We work to build a world free of shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries for anyone born with what someone believes to be non-standard sexual anatomy. By the way, because some forms of intersex signal underlying metabolic concerns, a person who thinks she or he might be intersex should seek a diagnosis and find out if she or he needs professional healthcare.
As you know, hormones continue to affect us after birth—throughout our entire lives, in fact. For example, hormones control when and how much women menstruate, how much body and facial hair we grow, and the amount of muscle mass we are capable of developing. Although the influence of hormones on our development and existence is very real, there is no strong, conclusive evidence that they alone determine gender behavior. The degree to which personality is influenced by the interplay of biological, cultural, and social factors is one of the primary focal points of gender studies.
Interested in the different genders on the chart? Go to the following links!
Gender Fluid
A-Gender
Gender
Compared with sex, which biology establishes, gender doesn’t have such a clear source of influence. Gender is socially constructed because it refers to what it means to be a woman (feminine) or a man (masculine). Traditionally, masculine and feminine characteristics have been taught as complete opposites when in reality there are many similarities. Gender has previously been thought of as a spectrum, as a line; this implies the drastic separation of genders. A better way to think about gender is a circle, where all genders can exist in relation to each other.
One expression of gender is known as androgyny, the term we use to identify gendered behavior that lies between feminine and masculine—-the look of indeterminate gender. Gender can be seen as existing in a fluid circle because feminine males and masculine females are not only possible but common, and the varying degrees of masculinity and femininity we see (and embody ourselves) are often separate from sexual orientation or preference. The circle chart illustrates how all genders exist on a sort of plane. They are not arranged in a straight line, with female on one end, and male on the other. There are no set borders to any one gender, and there is open space for people to define themselves however they uniquely identify.
The Social Construction of Gender
In this section, we will discuss how gender is dynamic, social, symbolic, and cultural. Gender is dynamic, not just because it exists on a plane, but because its meanings change over time within different cultural contexts. For example, in 1907, women in the United States did not have the legal right to vote, let alone the option of holding public office. Although a few worked outside the home, women were expected to marry and raise children. A woman who worked, did not marry, and had no children was considered unusual, if not an outright failure. Now, of course, women have the right to vote and are considered an important voting block. There are many women who are members of local and state governing bodies as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, even though they aren’t representative in government of their 51 percent of the population. Similarly, men were also prescribed to fill a role by society one hundred years ago: marriage and wage earner. Men were discouraged from being too involved in the raising of children, let alone being stay-at-home dads. Increasingly, men are accepted as suitable child-care providers and have the option to stay home and raise children.
As a social construct, gender is learned, symbolic, and dynamic. We say that gender is learned because we are not born knowing how to act masculine or feminine, as a man or a woman, or even as a boy or a girl. Just as we rely on others to teach us basic social conventions, we also rely on others to teach us how to look and act like our gender. Whether that process of learning begins with our being dressed in clothes traditionally associated with our sex (blue for males and pink for females), or being discouraged from playing with a toy not associated with our sex (dolls for boys, guns for girls), the learning of our genders begins at some point. Once it’s begun (usually within our families), society reinforces the gender behaviors we learn. Despite some parents’ best efforts to not impose gender expectations on their children, we all know what is expected of our individual gender.
Gender is symbolic. It is learned and expressed through language and behavior. Language is central to the way we learn about gender and enact it through communicative acts because language is social and symbolic. Remember what we learned in chapter two, that language is symbolic because the word “man” isn’t a real man. It is a symbol that identifies the physical entity that is a human male. So, when a mother says to her children, “Be a good girl and help me bake cookies,” or “Boys don’t cry” children are learning through symbols (language) how to “be” their gender. The toys we are given, the colors our rooms are painted, and the after-school activities in which we are encouraged to participate are all symbolic ways we internalize, and ultimately act out, our gender identity.
Case In Point
The franchise, Dick’s Sporting Goods, received much backlash after 12 year old McKenna Peterson brought attention to the lack of females in their Fall 2014 Basketball catalog. The issue was brought to the corporation’s attention when Mckenna’s father posted a picture of her letter to the company to his Twitter account. McKenna writes, “There are NO girls in the catalog! Oh, wait, sorry. There IS a girl in the catalog on page 6. SITTING in the STANDS. Women are…mentioned once…for some shoes. And there are cheerleaders on some coupons. It’s hard enough for girls to break through in this sport as it is, without you guys excluding us from your catalog.” Dick’s CEO, Ed Stack, has since apologized to McKenna and admitted it was a mistake to not have female athletes, and promises that they will be featured in next year’s issue. However, Dick’s might communicate inclusivity to female athletes if they redid their recently released catalog to include female athletes now, because we know that women play ball the same as men and don’t just sit on the sidelines. You can read more about this story at here.
Finally, gender communication is cultural. Meanings for masculinity and femininity, and ways of communicating those identities, are largely determined by culture. A culture is made up of belief systems, values, and behaviors that support a particular ideology or social system. How we communicate our gender is influenced by the values and beliefs of our particular culture. What is considered appropriate gender behavior in one culture may be looked down upon in another. In America, women often wear shorts and tank tops to keep cool in the summer. Think back to summer vacations to popular American tourist destinations where casual dress is the norm. If you were to travel to Rome, Italy to visit the Vatican, this style of dress is not allowed. There, women are expected to dress in more formal attire, to reveal less skin, and to cover their hair as a display of respect. Not only does culture influence how we communicate gender identities, it also influences the interpretation, understanding, or judgment of the gender displays of others (Kyratzis & Guo; Ramsey). Additionally, popular media, such as commercials and catalogs can dictate how culture communicates gender roles.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.02%3A_The_Interplay_of_Sex_and_Gender.txt |
If you have a gender communication course on your campus you may have heard students refer to it as a “women’s class,” or even more misinformed, as a course in “male bashing.” When professors that teach this course hear such remarks, they are often saddened and frustrated: sad because those descriptors define the course as an unsafe place for male students, and frustrated because there is often a common misconception that only females are gendered. Courses in gender and communication serve as powerful places for both female and male students to learn about their own gender constructions and its influence on their communication with others.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the popular misconception that gender is exclusively female is that it has somehow been linked with the other f-word—-feminism. What sorts of images or thoughts come to mind when you hear or read the word feminism? Are they positive or negative? Where did you learn them? Is this a label you would use to define yourself? Why or why not?
Just as gender is not synonymous with biological sex, it is also not synonymous with feminism. As we stated earlier, gender refers to the socially constructed definitions of what it means to be female or male in a given culture. Feminism is a socio-political and philosophical position about the relationships between men, women and power. As a result, there is not one kind of feminism (Lotz; Bing; Marine), thus this section is entitled feminisms. Just as members of republican, democratic, green, and independent political parties disagree and agree about values, causes of social conditions, and policy, so do feminists. Below we provide brief descriptions of thirteen types of feminism. These are not all the feminisms that exist but some of the most common in which you may have already come into contact.
• Liberal Feminism. Liberal Feminism is one of the most common types of feminism and is institutionalized in the organization, the National Organization of Women (NOW). Basic beliefs of this position are that women and men are alike in important ways and should receive equal treatment. Accordingly, supporters work for causes such as “equal pay for equal work,” gender equity in political representation, as well as equality in other social, professional, and civic causes. This is movement is often referred to as second wave feminism.
• Radical Feminism. Growing out of a discontentment with their treatment in New Left political movements of the 1960’s, many women began addressing issues of oppression on a systematic level. They argued that oppression of women is a platform on which all other forms (race, class, sexual orientation) of oppression are based. Communication strategies such as “consciousness raising” and “rap groups,” and positions such as the “personal is political” grew out of this movement.
• Ecofeminism. Coming into consciousness in 1974, Ecofeminism unites feminist philosophy with environmental and ecological ideas and ethics. Ecofeminists see the oppression of women as one example of an overall oppressive ideology. Thus, supporters of this position are not just concerned with ending oppression of women but changing the value structure that supports oppression of the earth (i.e. deforestation), oppression of children (i.e. physical and sexual abuse), and oppression of animals (i.e. eating meat.).
• Marxist Feminism. Stemming from the work of Karl Marx, Marxist feminism focuses on the economic forces that work to oppress women. Specifically, Marxist feminists question how a capitalist system supports a division of labor that privileges men and devalues women. If you thought that women were catching up to men economically, think again. The U.S. census found that the salary gap between men and women is not improving. In 2014 women earned 78 cents for every dollar men made – the yearly wage difference could be about \$39,157 for women and \$50,033 for men. This is a classic example of economic oppression of women in our society.
• Socialist Feminism. Extending Marxist feminist thought, Socialist Feminists believe that women’s unpaid labor in the home is one of the fundamental causes of sexism and oppression of women. Moreover, patriarchy, the system of sex oppression is connected with other forms of oppression, such as race and class.
• Womanist. One criticism of liberal and radical feminism is that these two movements have been largely a movement for and about white women. These movements have often failed to address issues such as the interlocking nature of race, class, and sex oppression. Womanists, then, connect issues of race and sex when working against oppression.
• Lesbian Feminism. This type of feminism is connected with one’s sexual orientation. Important issues for this feminist perspective include fighting for marriage and adoption rights, fair and safe treatment in the workplace, and women’s health issues for gay and lesbian couples.
• Separatist Feminism. Instead of fighting against the patriarchal system, this position maintains that patriarchal systems of oppression cannot be changed. Thus, the best way to deal with patriarchy is to leave it. Separatists work toward the formation of women-centered communities that are largely removed from the larger society.
• Power Feminism. Power Feminism emerged in the 1990’s and urges women not to be victims. Power is derived not by changing a patriarchal structure but by gaining success and approval from traditionally male dominated activities. Although it labels itself feminist, this position is actually contradictory to some very basic feminist tenants. Instead of recognizing the interplay of cultural institutions and sexual oppression, Power Feminism takes a “blame the victim” position and asserts that if women are denied opportunity then it is their fault.
• Revalorist Feminism. Those who are Revalorist Feminists are dedicated to uncovering women’s history through writings, art, and traditional activities such as sewing. Once uncovered, they can be incorporated into educational curriculum, used as a basis for reevaluating existing theoretical and methodological perspectives, and receive a more positive or accepted place in society. Their approach is to move women’s positions, ideas, and contributions from the margin to the center.
• Structural Feminism. Unlike Liberal Feminists who contend that women and men are alike in important ways, Structural Feminism holds that men and women are not alike due to different cultural experiences and expectations. These different experiences produce dissimilar characteristics. Because women can bear children, for example, they are more nurturing and caring.
• Third Wave Feminism. Third Wave Feminism believes the best way to change patriarchy is to not replicate the strategies of second wave feminism, although it is vital to acknowledge their contributions. Instead, a feminist agenda should focus more on practice than theory, foster positive connections and relationships between women and men, and be inclusive of diversity issues and diverse people.
• Post Feminism. Post Feminism suggests that feminism has made sufficient progress at eliminating sexism in our society. There is a move away from sex (women and men) and a focus on the human experience. Though its members aren’t in 100% agreement of the meaning, they generally agree that feminism is over and we have reached equality. However, there is much disagreement about post feminism because many women and men experience inequality daily.
Just as there are many women’s movements, did you know that there are men’s movements too? Men’s movements also vary in their goals and philosophies. Some men’s movements are strong supporters of feminist positions while others resist feminist movements and seek to return to a time where sex roles were clearly defined and distinct. Just as women can consider themselves feminists, many men consider themselves as feminists too!
• Pro-Feminist Men. Pro-feminist men are the most closely aligned with the Liberal Feminist position. They share the belief that women and men are alike in important ways, thus, should have access to equal opportunities in work, politics, and the home. They do not stop at challenging the traditional roles for women. They also work for expanding the roles and opportunities of men. The ability to express emotions, to seek nurturing relationships, and to fight against cultural sexism are all concerns of Pro-Feminist Men. The organization NOMAS (National Organization for Men Against Sexism) represents this group of men.
• Free Men. Compared to Pro-Feminist men, Free Men – represented by organizations such as NOM (National Organization of Men), the National Coalition for Free Men, and MR, Inc. (Men’s Rights, Incorporated) – seek to restore the macho and independent image of men in culture. While they may acknowledge that women do suffer gender and sex oppression, the oppression leveled at men is far greater. Arguing that feminism has emasculated men, Free Men want women to return to roles of subordination and dependence.
• Mythopoetic. Founded by poet, Robert Bly, this group of men is a combination of the previous two perspectives. Although they believe that the man’s role is limiting and damaging to both men and women, they argue that there was a time when this was not the case. Masculinity, they claim, was originally tied to connection with the earth and it was the advent of technology, resulting in modernization and industrialization, and feminism that ripped men from their roots.
• Promise Keepers. Strongly aligned with a Christian belief system, Promise Keepers urge men to dedicate themselves to God and their families. They ask men to take a servant leadership role in their families, being involved in their homes as well as in work contexts.
• Million Man March. Like the Womanists who believe that a majority of feminisms do not adequately address issues of race and class oppression, many African-American males do not feel represented in the majority of men’s movements. Thus, on October 18, 1995, the leader of the nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan, organized the Million Man March to bring African American men together in Washington, D.C. Like, the Promise Keepers, this group asked men to dedicate themselves spiritually with the belief that this will help strengthen families. Since the march, two decades ago, people gather to observe the Holy Day of Atonement and reflect on the messages spoken that day and the ideas they wish to spread.
• Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. This annual event raises awareness of sexualized violence against women–by men. It was founded in 2001 by Frank Baird as a mile walk for men in women’s heels. The idea is to get men to walk the walk and then talk the talk to end sexualized violence. It is not only an event to raise awareness of violence against women but to offer resources to those needed and ultimately creating a united gender movement.
With the different groups or philosophical positions all communicating aspects of gender, the next section examines how gender is related to communication. Specifically we discuss what we study, gender development theories, prominent scholars in this specialization, and research methods used to study gender and communication.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.03%3A_Feminism_versus_Feminisms.txt |
We said earlier that gender is socially learned, but we did not say specifically just what that process looks like. Socialization occurs through our interactions, but that is not as simple as it may seem. Below we describe five different theories of gender development.
• Psychodynamic. Psychodynamic theory has its roots in the work of Viennese Psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. This theory sees the role of the family, the mother in particular, as crucial in shaping one’s gender identity. Boys and girls shape their identity in relation to that of their mother. Because girls are like their mothers biologically they see themselves as connected to her. Because boy are biologically different or separate from their mother, they construct their gender identity in contrast to their mother. When asked about his gender identity development, one of our male students explained, “I remember learning that I was a boy while showering with my mom one day. I noticed that I had something that she didn’t.” This student’s experience exemplifies the use of psychodynamic theory in understanding gender development.
• Symbolic Interactionism. Symbolic Interactionism (George Herbert Mead) is based specifically on communication. Although not developed specifically for use in understanding gender development, it has particular applicability here. Because gender is learned through communication in cultural contexts, communication is vital for the transformation of such messages. When young girls are told to “sit up straight like a lady” or boys are told “gentlemen open doors for others,” girls and boys learn how to be gendered (as masculine and feminine) through the words (symbols) told to them by others (interaction).
• Social Learning. Social Learning theory is based on outward motivational factors that argue that if children receive positive reinforcement they are motivated to continue a particular behavior. If they receive punishment or other indicators of disapproval they are more motivated to stop that behavior. In terms of gender development, children receive praise if they engage in culturally appropriate gender displays and punishment if they do not. When aggressiveness in boys is met with acceptance, or a “boys will be boys” attitude, but a girl’s aggressiveness earns them little attention, the two children learn different meanings for aggressiveness as it relates to their gender development. Thus, boys may continue being aggressive while girls may drop it out of their repertoire.
• Cognitive Learning. Unlike Social Learning theory that is based on external rewards and punishments, Cognitive Learning theory states that children develop gender at their own levels. The model, formulated by Kohlberg, asserts that children recognize their gender identity around age three but do not see it as relatively fixed until the ages of five to seven. This identity marker provides children with a schema (A set of observed or spoken rules for how social or cultural interactions should happen.) in which to organize much of their behavior and that of others. Thus, they look for role models to emulate maleness or femaleness as they grow older.
• Standpoint. Earlier we wrote about the important role of culture in understanding gender. Standpoint theory places culture at the nexus for understanding gender development. Theorists such as Collins and Harding recognize identity markers such as race and class as important to gender in the process of identity construction. Probably obvious to you is the fact that our culture, and many others, are organized hierarchically—some groups of people have more social capital or cultural privilege than others. In the dominant U.S. culture, a well-educated, upper-middle class Caucasian male has certain sociopolitical advantages that a working-class African American female may not. Because of the different opportunities available to people based on their identity markers (or standpoints), humans grow to see themselves in particular ways. An expectation common to upper middle-class families, for example, is that children will grow up and attend college. As a result of hearing, “Where are you going to college”? as opposed to “Are you going to college”? these children may grow up thinking that college attendance is the norm. From their class standing, or standpoint, going to college is presented as the norm. Contrast this to children of the economically elite who may frame their college attendance around the question of “Which Ivy League school should I attend?” Or, the first generation college student who may never have thought they would be in the privileged position of sitting in a university classroom. In all of these cases, the children begin to frame their identity and role in the society based on the values and opportunities offered by a particular standpoint. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.04%3A_Theories_of_Gender_Development.txt |
Let’s take a moment to describe in more detail many of the specific areas of gender and communication study discussed in this chapter. You know by now that the field of Communication is divided up into specializations such as interpersonal, organizational, mass media. Within these particular contexts gender is an important variable, thus, much of the gender research can also be integrated into most of these specializations.
Gender and Interpersonal Communication
There are many kinds of personal relationships central to our lives wherein gender plays an important role. The most obvious one is romantic relationships. Whether it takes place in the context of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or heterosexual relationships, the gender of the couple will have an impact on communication in the relationship as well as relational expectations placed on them from the culture at large. After a man and woman marry, for example, a common question for family and friends to ask is, “So, when are you having a baby?” The assumption is when not if. Since gay and lesbian couples must go outside their relationship for the biological maternal or paternal role, they may be less likely to be asked such a question.
Other interpersonal relationships occur in families and friendships where gender is a consistent component. You may have noticed growing up that the boys and girls in your household received different treatment around chores or curfews. You may also notice that the nature of your female and male friendships, while both valuable, manifest themselves differently. These are just a couple of examples that gender communication scholars study regarding how gender impacts interpersonal relationships.
Gender and Organizational Communication
While Liberal Feminist organizations such as NOW have made great strides for women in the workplace, gender continues to influence the organizational lives of both men and women. Issues such as equal pay for equal work, maternity and paternity leave, sexual harassment, and on-site family care facilities all have gender at their core. Those who study gender in these contexts are interested in the ways gender influences the policies and roles people play in organizational contexts. See the Case In Point for information on the current wage-gap in organizations.
Case In Point
The Wage-Gap Widens
According to the U.S. General Accounting Office (a nonpartisan group), the wage gap between the sexes is widening, not getting better. In 2012 women earned 81 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. In 2013 that fell to 78 cents. The disparity is even greater when kids are involved, citing the GAO’s research, Strasburg explains, “Men with kids earn 2.1 percent more, on average, than men without kids. Women with kids earn 2.5 percent less than women without kids” (14). The cause of the disparity is a complex one—-involving economics, education, science, public relations, and social gender roles. If women, for example, are expected to take on a more passive role in the public sphere, they may feel less inclined to negotiate for a higher salary or ask for a raise.
Gender and Mass Communication
A particular focal point of gender and communication focuses on ways in which males and females are represented in culture by mass media. The majority of this representation in the 21st century occurs through channels of mass media—-television, radio, films, magazines, music videos, video games, and the internet. From the verbal and nonverbal images sold to us as media consumers, we learn the “proper” roles and styles of being male and female in American culture. During World War II, for example, there was a shortage of workers in factories because many of the workers (men) were being sent overseas to fight. Needing to replace them to keep the factories in business, the media launched a campaign to convince women that the best way they could support the war effort was to go out and get a job. Thus, we saw a large influx of women in the workplace. All was fine until the war ended and the men returned home. When they wanted their jobs back they discovered that they were already filled—-by women! The media once again launched a campaign to convince women that their proper place was now back in the home raising children. Thus, many women left paid employment and returned to a more traditional role (This phenomenon is depicted in the film, Rosie the Riveter).
As media and technology increases in sophistication and presence, they become new sites of gender display and performance. More examples of this can be seen in the increase of women filling leadership roles and men portrayed in nurturing, home environments in television and advertising (Krolokke). The comedy series, “Up All Night,” that ran on NBC from September 2011 to December 2012 reflects this idea. The mom, Reagan, goes back to work as a talk show producer after having a baby while husband, Chris stays at home with their newborn. However, there is still a serious lack of strong female roles in the media. Fortunately for women, one Oscar winning actress, Reese Witherspoon has decided to do something about this. In 2012, Witherspoon “grew increasingly frustrated by the answers she got to her question, ‘What are you developing for women?’” (Riley). In her search for a production with a female lead she recalls discovering only “one studio that had a project for a female lead over 30,” and thought, “‘I’ve got to get busy.’ After ‘getting busy’, Witherspoon, along with female Australian producer Bruna Papandrea, started Pacific Standard Production Company that focuses on producing films with a strong female lead. Since the company’s start, Witherspoon and Papandrea have produced two films, “Gone Girl,” based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, and “Wild”, the best-selling memoir by Cheryl Strayed; both released in December 2014. To read more about Witherspoon and her pursuit for women roles read the article by the Columbus Dispatch.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.05%3A_What_Do_We_Study_When_We_Study_Gender_Communication.txt |
Many of us have had conversations with others about how different the “other” gender communicates. Countless books have been written claiming they have the answer for understanding the opposite gender. But what have we really learned about gendered ways of communicating? This section talks about language, the purpose of communication, patterns of talk, and nonverbal communication in relation to our gender.
Language
We have already discussed that one way language obscures women’s contributions to academic scholarship is by erasing the name from the ideas generated. Below we will discuss three other ways in which the English language demonstrates a positive bias toward the masculine and a negative bias toward the feminine.
• Generic “He”
It is likely that you have been told when you write or speak to use what is referred to as gender-neutral language. This is an attempt to get away from the generic “he” and move toward inclusive pronouns. For example, using “he” when we mean “he or she.” Using gender-neutral language tells us to select the latter option. Another popular way this issue presents itself is with the use of titles that contain gender markers. Words such as “policeman,” “fireman,” “mailman,” and “chairman”; all suggest that the people who hold these positions are male. Over time it has become more common to replace the above titles with gender neutral ones such as “police officer,” “firefighter,” “mail carrier,” and “chairperson.” The linguistic change has two main implications: 1) We don’t know the gender of the person being discussed, and 2) Both males and females can perform these jobs. Since we have learned that language influences perception and constructs our reality, it is important to use language responsibly to reflect nonsexist attitudes (Beal; McConnell and Fazio; Mucchi-Faina; O Barr; Parks; Stringer & Hopper). In recent years, our language has been progressing even further. Instead of simply using she/he and men/women, we recognize that not every person will identify within those categories. Now we see it is more appropriate to use the term “people of all genders” to be more inclusive.
• Defining Men and Women
A second way in which language is biased against the feminine is the way it is used to define women. One such way is to use descriptions based on accomplishments or actions to define males, while defining females in terms of physical features or their relationships to men. As First Lady, Michelle Obama received a lot of press coverage about her choice of clothing for public events. Her personal accomplishments with our nation’s school system as a political figure were either downplayed or used against her as evidence that she was not properly filling the role of First Lady. Another way language is used to define men and women is through the slang terms commonly used to refer to one sex or another. What are some common ones you hear on your campus and within your circle of friends? Are women “chicks?” Are men “dudes?” What about explicit sexual references to women as a “piece of ass” or men as “dicks?” These are just some ways in which sexual terms are used to define us. Numerous studies have shown that there are many more sexual terms used for women than men. Stanley (1977) found that there were 220 terms for sexually promiscuous women and 22 similar terms for men.
Case In Point
Vagina Isn’t a Dirty Word
While driving in the car with our two young girls, the four year old asked, “If boys have a penis, then what do girls have”? We were taken aback by the question since they were able to name the correct body part for male genitalia but not their own. We told them that girls and women have a vagina. They smiled and then started screaming, “Vagina, Vagina, I have a vagina!” over and over again. We both laughed, saying Eve Ensler would be so proud.
Eve Ensler is the playwright of The Vagina Monologues, a collection of over 200 interviews of women of diverse sexual orientations, racial, class, age, religious, and professional backgrounds. Her play has become an international hit and is performed every year on college campuses and local theatres. It has spawned the V-Day movement which seeks to end sexual violence against women and girls.
One of the key themes in the play is communication, specifically how we communicate about vaginas. In one monologue the woman explains, “Let’s just start with the word “vagina.” It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument: “Hurry nurse, bring me the vagina.” “Vagina.” “Vagina.” Doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say. It’s a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word. If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct—“Darling, could you stroke my vagina?”—you kill the act right there.”
By reclaiming the word “vagina” through challenging the connotation that it is a dirty, unsexy, or clinical term, Ensler attempts to create a positive way of thinking about “vaginas”: an accurate and loving way to refer to girls and women. Her efforts and success demonstrate the power of language to name and create reality.
• Naming Reality’
The final way language influences the ways we understand gender is in the reality it creates for us. In the same way that the term “fireman” suggests that only males can do this job, creating terms to name experiences (or not having such terms) defines what we can or cannot experience. Undoubtedly, you are familiar with the term “sexual harassment” and may be familiar with your campus policy for reducing its occurrence. Did you know that this term did not come into existence until 40 years ago? Did sexual harassment occur prior to 40 years ago? Of course it did! The point is that until there was a term for such behavior (emerging in 1974) there was no way for women (as they are the most common victims/survivors of this behavior) to either talk about what was happening to them or to fight against it. Imagine the difficulty inherent in trying to create a policy or law to prohibit behavior when there is no term for such behavior! With the advent of the term and the publicity about this issue generated by the bravery of Anita Hill when she testified against current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, most organizations have policies to protect employees from sexual harassment. Without the language, this would have been impossible to accomplish: “the development of a vocabulary with which to accurately describe one’s experiences is an important process during which one needs to reflect on the political implications of that experience” (DeFrancisco & Palczewski 119).
The use of a generic or universal he, the use of nonparallel descriptors for different genders, and the lack of vocabulary are just some of the ways language influences our experiences as one gender or another. See if you can think of other examples.
Purpose of Communication
Starting in childhood, girls and boys are generally socialized to belong to distinct cultures and thus, speak in ways particular to their own gender’s rules and norms (Fivush; Johnson; Tannen). This pattern of gendered socialization continues throughout our lives. As a result, men and women often interpret the same conversation differently. Culturally diverse ways of speaking can cause miscommunication between members of each culture or speech community. These cultural differences are seen in the simple purpose of communication.
For those socialized in a feminine community, the purpose of communication is to create and foster relational connections with other people (Johnson; Stamou). On the other hand, the goal for men’s communication is to establish individuality. This is done in a number of ways such as indicating independence, showing control, and entertaining or performing for others.
Although our previous discussion of feminist movements for women and men indicates that gender roles are changing, traditional roles still influence our communication behaviors. Because men have traditionally been expected to work outside the home to provide financial support for the family, they need to demonstrate their individual competence as this is often the criterion for raises and promotions. Conversely, because women have been expected to work inside the home to provide childcare, household duties, and other social functions the need to create interpersonal bonds is crucial. Thus, it is important to understand the cultural reasons and pressures for the differences in communication, rather than judge one against the other devoid of context.
Patterns of Talk
One way to think of gender communication is in terms of co-cultures or speech communities. A speech community is a “community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech” (Hymes 54). Muted group theory (Kramerae) explains the societal differentiation of gender and its corresponding language development. This develops on two levels:
1. Thus, when discussing patterns of talk we conceptualize them as occurring in different speech communities or co-cultures based on historical, cultural and economic expectations of a given co-culture. For the different genders, we develop different patterns of talk based on expectations placed on us.
• Feminine Speech Community
When cultures have different goals for their communication, this results in unique communication strategies and behaviors. When the goal is connection, members of a feminine speech community are likely to engage in the following six strategies—equity, support, conversational “maintenance work,” responsiveness, a personal style, and tentativeness.
Showing equity in conversation means showing that you are similar to others. To do this one might say, “That happened to me too,” or “I was in a similar situation.” Showing support conversationally involves the expression of sympathy, understanding, and emotions when listening or responding to others. Sotirin suggests “women use bitching to cope with troubles by reaffirming rapport; men address troubles as problems of status asymmetry and respond with solutions. The characterization minimizes the political import of women’s bitching; it’s not political but interpersonal; not transformative but cathartic” (20). Have you ever felt as if you were the one in the conversation who had to keep the conversation moving? This is conversational maintenance at work. This work is performed by asking questions and trying to elicit responses from others. A typical family dinner conversation might begin with one of the parents asking their children, “What happened in school today?” The purpose is to initiate dialogue and learn about others to fulfill the purpose of communication—to maintain connection with others.
When listening to others we often respond in various ways to show that we are attentive and that we care about what the other person is saying. Responsiveness includes asking probing questions such as, “How did you feel when that happened?” or, “Wow, that’s interesting, I’ve never thought of that before.” Displaying a personal style refers to all the small details, personal references, or narratives that a person uses to explain her/his ideas. A professor explaining the stages of friendship development might supplement the model with how a particular friendship developed in their life.
The final quality, tentativeness, involves a number of strategies and has invoked a multiplicity of interpretations. A student might say, “This is probably a stupid question, but…” as a way of qualifying her/his question. Turning statements into questions is another way of showing tentativeness. This is done with tag questions or intonation. Tag questions are phrases tacked onto the end of a sentence. In the statement, “I liked the film, didn’t you?” the “didn’t you?” is the tag. If you have studied French, this is similar to the use of “n’est pas.” When we use our voice to make a statement into a question (intonation) we make the last syllable raise. For example, if your roommate asks you, “what do you want for dinner?” you could say “pizza” to make it a question (“pizza?”) or a statement (“pizza.”) Another way to show tentativeness is through verbal hedges such as, “I sort of think I was too sensitive.”
As you read the types of tentativeness, what were your reactions? How do you feel when someone communicates this way? Generally, scholars have offered four explanations for tentativeness. First, is that this style represents a lack of power, self-confidence, or assuredness on the part of the speaker. Lakoff theorized that the powerlessness in speech mirrored women’s powerlessness in the culture. Wood theorized that tentativeness is a strategy to maintain communication and connection. A final interpretation is that to understand tentativeness we must examine the context in which such speech occurs. The relative power between two speakers may cause the one with less power to communicate tentatively to the other. Do you use markers of tentativeness when speaking with those in power such as your boss, teachers, or parents?
• Masculine Speech Community
When the goal is independence, members of this speech community are likely to communicate in ways that exhibit knowledge, refrain from personal disclosure, are abstract, are focused on instrumentality, demonstrate conversational command, are direct and assertive, and are less responsive. Showing knowledge in conversation gives speakers the opportunity to present themselves as competent and capable. If someone has a problem at work one might respond, “You should do this …” or “The best way to deal with that is …” This strategy is sometimes referred to as a “communication tool box.” While some may interpret this as bossy, responding in a manner that tries to fix a problem for someone you care about makes a lot of sense.
The next two features—minimal personal disclosure and abstractness—are related. When we refrain from personal disclosure we reveal minimal or no personal information. While giving a lecture on communication anxiety in a public speaking class, a professor may use examples from famous people rather than revealing her/his own experiences. Likewise, when we speak in less personal terms our conversation tends to become more abstract. Think back to the traditional roles for men and women for a moment. Since men typically have been more involved in the public rather than the private sphere, it makes sense that their communication would be more abstract and less personal.
A masculine communication style tends to be focused on instrumental tasks. This is particularly true in the case of same sex friendships. Like the “tool box” or a problem solving approach to communication, when talk is instrumental it has a specific goal or task. It is used to accomplish something. Take baseball or football, for example. The talk that is used in these activities is strategic. In the case of male friendships it is more likely that men will get together to do something. Whether the activity is rock climbing, going to lunch, or helping someone move, the conversation is instigated by a particular activity. While female friends also like to engage in activities together, they are much more likely to get together “just to talk.”
Conversational command refers to the ability to control or manage conversation. This can be done by controlling which topics are discussed, interrupting, or being the one to control the turn taking in conversation. A popular stereotype is that women talk a lot, but most research shows that men talk more than women. More talk time is another way to demonstrate conversational command.
Directness is another feature of masculine communication. This refers to the use of more authoritative language and minimal use of tentativeness. Finally, men generally perform “minimal response cues” (Parlee). Response cues include saying, “mmm” or “go on” while nodding when listening to others. Fewer verbal indicators of sympathy, empathy, or understanding are likely to characterize this style of talk. While members of this speech community may be less likely to verbally express sympathy or other similar emotions, this is not the same as saying the members of the community do not feel such emotions. People of different genders feel and care for others in a variety of ways. The difference is how they are communicated, not if they are communicated.
As you were reading about the feminine and masculine speech communities you were probably thinking to yourself, “Hey, I am a woman but I have a lot of masculine communication traits,” or “I know some men who speak in a more feminine style.” As you think, reflect more on these ideas you will realize that all of us are capable of speaking, and do speak, the language of multiple gender cultures. Again, this is one of the reasons it is important to make a distinction between gender and sex. Our gender construction and the contexts in which we speak play a large role in the ways we communicate and express our gender identity. Both men and women may make conscious choices to speak more directly and abstractly at work, but more personal at home. Such strategic choices indicate that we can use our knowledge about various communication styles or options to make us successful in many different contexts.
Nonverbal Communication
Because you know how important nonverbal communication is to the production of meaning you may have wondered about the gendered nature of nonverbal communication. Below we discuss seven areas of nonverbal communication and the role of gender in each. We will discuss: Artifacts, Personal Space and Proxemics, Haptics, Kinesics, Paralanguage, Physical Attributes, and Silence
• Artifacts
Earlier in the chapter we mentioned the pink and blue blankets used to wrap girl and boy babies after birth. These are examples of artifacts that communicate gender. Simply speaking, personal artifacts are objects that humans use to communicate self-identity. The jewelry we choose to wear (or not wear) communicates something about our personal tastes and social roles. Our clothes indicate a preference for certain designers or fashions, or may be used to subvert dominant fashion trends and expectations. An American male who wears a skirt or sarong may be trying to challenge the cultural norm that says pants and shorts are the only appropriate clothes for men.
Artifacts that are an early influence on gender construction are the toys we are given as children. What are typical girl and boy toys and what kind of play do they inspire? You are probably thinking of dolls for girls and cars and trucks for boys. Just walk through the aisles of your local toy store and you will have no difficulty discovering the “girl” aisle (it’s pink) and the boy aisle (it’s darker colors). Typically toys for boys are more action-oriented and encourage competition. Girls’ toys, on the other hand, encourage talk (Barbies talk to each other and role play) and preparation for traditional female roles (playing house). If you think products (toys) are only gendered at a young age, pay close attention when you watch television commercials and look through magazines. What kinds of products do women typically sell? What do men sell? How are gender-neutral products (cigarettes for example) sold to both women and men?
• Personal Space and Proxemics
As you recall, the study of space and our use of it (proxemics) has two important dimensions. First, we understand space as our personal space, or the bubble in which we feel comfortable. When someone stands or sits too close to you, you may react by pulling away and describe the interaction as “they invaded my space.” Second, space can be thought of in terms of the kinds of physical spaces we have access to. Were some rooms in the family home off limits to you as a child? Relative to both kinds of space is power. People with more power in society are able to invade the space of those with less power with few repercussions. Those with more power also have access to more and better spaces. For example, the upper-class often own multiple homes in desirable locations such as the beach or high-priced urban areas.
What does all of this have to do with gender? Go back to the creation of power and ask yourself, “Which gender in American society holds the most power?” While there are exceptions, most of the time the masculine gender holds the most powerful positions in our culture. Thus, males typically have access to greater space. In the homes of many heterosexual couples, the father has a den and a garage that was for his use only. Mothers are often limited to shared space such as the kitchen and living areas. Not only is there a lack of private space, but also the tasks associated with each (cooking in the kitchen) are work as opposed to the hobbies that take place in the garage (rebuilding cars). What are some ways that space was gendered in your family?
• Haptics
People of all genders in our culture use touch to communicate with others. However, there are differences in both the types of touch used and in the messages conveyed (Lee & Guerrero; Guerrero). Women are more likely to use touch to express support or caring, such as touching someone on the shoulder or giving them a hug. Men are more likely to use touch to direct actions of another. The relative power of men to women, coupled with a greater level of social power that can manifest itself in unwanted closeness or touching, have been linked with the problems of sexual harassment and domestic violence (May; McLaughlin). However, men do not use touch only to show control. Men use touch to display affection and desire to romantic partners, to communicate caring and closeness to children, and to show support to friends. Since men are culturally sanctioned for showing caring through touch, especially to other men, a choice to do so is a conscious choice to challenge gender stereotypes for men. Another strategy for touch between men is to create contexts in which it is acceptable such as wrestling, play punching or fighting, or football.
• Kinesics
Like haptics, men and women use body language differently and to convey different meanings. Coinciding with cultural messages, men use their bodies to signal strength and control while women use theirs to communicate approachability and friendliness. Women, for example, smile more often than men and Caucasian women do this more than African-American women (Halberstadt & Saitta). Whether the cause is social or biological, men tend to take up more space and encroach on others’ space more often than females.
• Paralanguage
Consistent with a communication goal of maintaining and fostering relationships with others, women tend to use more listening noises or back-channeling. Such noises are “mmm,” “ah,” and “oh” and are often accompanied by nodding the head. Often they mean, “I am listening and following what you are saying. Keep going.” While men also make listening noises, they do so less frequently and often the meaning is “I agree.” Hopefully, you can see how this could cause some miscommunication between the sexes. Likewise, being aware of this difference can reduce miscommunication. For example, when two people (Courtney and Juan) talk, Juan will often ask Courtney, “are you saying ‘mm hmm” because you agree, or are you just listening?” In doing so, he is trying to determine which gendered approach to listening paralanguage Courtney is employing.
• Physical Attributes
Another area of nonverbal communication that has gendered implications is physical attributes—the most common one for gender being body size and shape. If you were socialized in America you probably know how men and women are “supposed” to look. Men should be larger and physically strong while women should be smaller—very thin. These cultural pressures cause both men and women to engage in dangerous behaviors in an attempt to achieve an ideal physical body. Women are more likely to engage in dieting to become thin and men are more likely to weight-lift to excess, or take steroids, to increase muscle mass. The cultural messages for both sexes are physically and emotionally dangerous. Too severe dieting or steroid use can permanently damage the physical body and too much attention to appearance can harm one’s self esteem and take time away from pursuing other activities such as school, career, hobbies, and personal relationships.
• Silence
A final area of nonverbal communication that has had large implications on gender is silence. Throughout history women have been silenced in all cultures across the world and this continues today. In chapter 4, we were introduced to one of the early Greek female rhetoricians, Aspasia. We don’t know much about her and her work because women have been systematically left out of our traditional history lessons. Women’s work has often been discredited, published under a male pseudo name, or males have passed it off as their own work. More recently, there’s a great episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey entitled, “Sisters of the Sun,” that demonstrates women making large strides in the study of stars in our galaxy, yet they are rarely mentioned in our history books. Historically, achievements of females have been silenced.
This systematic silencing of women has lead many women to hesitate against speaking out against sexual assault, harassment, violence, or rape that they have experienced. They are often silenced due to uneven power dynamics, the fear of victim blaming, threats, and a countless number of forces. Fortunately, technological and social media efforts of today are working to break this silence. In October 2014, a new hash tag on Twitter was trending in the US and Canada that reads #BeenRapedNeverReported. Rape victims tweet about past experiences they felt they could not talk about and include the hashtag. One tweet reads, “Ive #beenrapedneverreported because he was military, and I am a vocal feminist slut. Who would the media believe? Not me. #DoubleStandards.” You can access the full article here.
In another instance Jatindra Dash reports, women in India who suffer from domestic violence tend to keep quiet because they are “scared of … [their] husband, mistrustful of the police and worried what … family and neighbors would think.” India is trying to combat this silence with an ATM-like machine that allows people to report their testimony into a microphone that the police station receives, contacts the person who reports it, and may make an arrest. You can read about this new kiosk here. Today’s technology and media may just help disrupt the long history of silence faced by women either placed on them by others or by themselves.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.06%3A_Are_There_Really_Differences_in_Gender_Communication_Styles.txt |
Summary
In this chapter you have been exposed to the specialization of gender and communication. You learned that gender communication is “the social construction of masculinity or femininity as it aligns with designated sex at birth in a specific culture and time period. Gender identity claims individuality that may or may not be expressed outwardly, and may or may not correspond to one’s sexual anatomy” (Pettitt). It is important to remember as we discuss gender and communication that there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex refers to the biological distinctions that make us male or female. Gender is the socially constructed enactment of what it means to be a man or a woman. We are generally born as either male or female, but taught how to be men and women.
People of all identities are gendered and experience their genders in a variety of ways. As a result of how gender is manifested, many feminist, men, and other activist groups have formed for the purpose of banding together with others who understand gender in similar ways. We discussed 12 types of feminism and five different men’s groups that focus on various approaches for understanding and enacting gender. There are a variety of theories that seeks to explain how we form gender. Remember that theories are simply our best representations of something. Thus theories of gender development such as Psychodynamic theory, Social Interactionism, Social Learning theory, Cognitive Learning theory, and Standpoint theory are all attempts to explain the various ways we come to understand and enact our genders.
Like with many other specializations in the field of Communication, gender communication applies to a variety of other specializations. Interpersonal communication, organizational communication, and mass communication are specializations that are particularly ripe for exploring the impact of gender and communication. Gender communication research continues to explore gender in these contexts, thus helping redefine how gender is understood and behaved.
We explored differences in gender communication styles by looking at language, the purpose of communication, patterns of talk, and nonverbal communication. While impossible to come to a definitive conclusion, gender and communication studies generally promotes the idea that the differences in gender communication are socially learned and are thus fluid and dynamic. Males and females learn to communicate in both masculine and feminine styles and make strategic choices about which style is more effective for a given context.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are some ways that your gender was communicated or taught to you by your parents? Other family members? Your school? Friends? Church?
2. Do you see gendered patterns of interaction in your romantic relationships?
3. Did you know there were so many/if any Men’s movements, all with different goals, before reading this chapter? What does our limited knowledge of men’s movements imply?
4. What ways do you break traditional gender roles?
5. Do you feel drawn to any of the types of feminisms listed in the chapter? Why or why not?
KEY TERMS
• androgyny
• cognitive learning
• culture
• ecofeminism
• feminine speech community
• feminism
• free men
• gender
• gender communicated
• gendered
• lesbian feminism
• liberal feminism
• marxist feminism
• masculine speech community
• million man march
• muted group theory
• mythopoetic
• power feminism
• pro-feminist men
• promise keepers
• psychodynamic
• psychological theories
• radical feminism
• revalorist feminism
• separatist feminism
• sex
• socialist feminism
• social learning
• speech community
• standpoint theory
• structural feminism
• symbolic interactionism
• third-wave feminism
• womanist
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.07%3A_Gender_Communication_Summary.txt |
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Tannen, Deborah. Talking from 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work. New York: W. Morrow, 1994.
Vannoy, Dana. Gender Mosaics: Social Perspectives: Original Readings. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Pub., 2001. Print.
Wallace, Kelly. “Baseball Sensation Mo’ne Davis’ Impact on Girls and Boys.” CNN 20 Aug. 2014. Web. <Baseball sensation Mo’ne Davis’ impact on girls and boys (CNN) By:
“Welcome | Walk a Mile in Her Shoes.” Welcome | Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. Venture Humanity, Inc., n.d.
Contributions and Affiliations
• Survey of Communication Study. Authored by: Scott T Paynton and Linda K Hahn. Provided by: Humboldt State University. Located at: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Preface. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Introduction_to_Communication_(Paynton_and_Hahn)/13%3A_Gender_Communication/13.08%3A_Gender_Communication_References.txt |
• 1.1: Introduction
• 1.2: What is an Organization?
As with any academic endeavor, one must understand what one is studying before one can delve into the specifics and intricacies of the subject matter. For this reason, this section is going to start by defining what is meant by the term “organization” and then looking at three different ways of categorizing different types of organization.
• 1.3: What is Communication?
First and foremost, there is no agreed upon definition of the word “communication” by various scholars. In fact, various scholars have attempted to examine the term and generally found that there are a vast array of different approaches to understanding the term.
• 1.4: History of Organizational Communication
Now that we’ve examined what we mean by “human communication” in this book, let’s switch gears and discuss the nature of “organizational communication.” To help us understand what is meant by the term “organizational communication,” we’ll explore differing ways of viewing the term and then a basic conceptual definition that we will use in this book.
• 1.5: Approaches to Organizational Communication Research
• 1.6: Chapter Exercises
01: Introduction to Organizational Communication
Welcome to your first book in organizational communication. This book assumes that you have some background in the field of human communication and probably minimal exposure to the world of organization studies. In the Preface of this book, which we strongly encourage you to read, we discussed the reasons why studying organizational communication matters in the 21st Century.
Your average employed person working in the United States averages 7.5 hours of work per day (7.9 hours on the week days; 5.5 hours on the weekend). This study from the US Department of LaborThe US Department of Labor. (2010). American time-use survey—2010 results [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf further noted that these are just the hours a person spends in a traditional working environment. People further spend about 36 minutes a week interacting with an educational organization, about 43 minutes shopping, and about 16 minutes attending religious services or volunteering. When people traditionally hear the word “organization” they most often jump right to the idea of a workplace. However, an organization is a much broader term and covers a lot more ground than just someone’s workplace. As such, time that is spent in an educational environment, shopping, attending religious services, and volunteering are also examples of someone interacting with or in an organization.
This book looks at organizational communication as a broad term that encompasses a wide array of organizational types, which we’ll explore in more detail elsewhere in this chapter. Even if you just take the average 7.5 hours per day an individual spends “working” in an organization, you will end up in an organizational environment a little over 111 days per year. If you work for 40 years, you’ll basically spend 12 of those years at work. We don’t tell you this to scare you, but to help you understand the importance of knowing how to interact and behave in organizations. So, let’s get started!
1.02: What is an Organization
Learning Objectives
• Understand the three common components of the various definitions of the term “organization.”
• Differentiate among the four types of organizations: mutual benefit, business concerns, service, and commonweal.
As with any academic endeavor, one must understand what one is studying before one can delve into the specifics and intricacies of the subject matter. For this reason, this section is going to start by defining what is meant by the term “organization” and then looking at three different ways of categorizing different types of organization.
Defining “Organization”
Many people have attempted to define what is meant by the word “organization.” Instead of following suit and throwing yet another definition into the mix, we’ve selected a number of definitions from common dictionary definitions to ones used by business, psychology, economics, and communication scholars. Table 1.1 contains a partial list of the different types of definitions seen across various academic disciplines.
Table 1.1 Defining “Organization”
Dictionary Definition
(1) the act of organizing or the state of being organized; (2) an organized structure or whole; (3) a business or administrative concern united and constructed for a particular end (4) a body of administrative officials, as of a political party, a government department, etc (5) order or system; method.organization. (2009). Collins English Dictionary—Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved March 18, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/organization
General Business Definitions
“a system of consciously coordinated activities of two or more persons.”Barnard, C. I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pg. 73.
“The accomplishment of an objective requires collective effort, men set up an organization designed to coordinate the activities of many persons and to furnish incentives for others to join them for this purpose.”Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 5.
“A social unit of people, systematically structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals on a continuing basis. All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between functions and positions, and subdivides and delegates roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out defined tasks. Organizations are open systems in that they affect and are affected by the environment beyond their boundaries.”organization. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2012, from BusinessDictionary.com website: www.businessdictionary.com/definition/organization.html
“a Body of individuals working under a defined system of rules, assignments procedures, and relationships designed to achieve identifiable objectives and goals.”Greenwald, H. P. (2008). Organizations: Management without control. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 6.
Organizational Behavior Definitions
“a social unit within which people have achieved somewhat stable relations (not necessarily face-to-face) among themselves in order to facilitate obtaining a set of objectives or goals.”Litterer, J. A. (1963). Organizations: Structured behavior. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pg. 5.
“an organization is a complex system, which includes as subsystems: (1) management, to interrelate and integrate through appropriate linking processes all the elements of the system in a manner designed to achieve the organizational objectives, and (2) a sufficient number of people so that constant face-to-face interaction is impossible.”Lundgren, E. F. (1974). Organizational management: Systems and process. San Francisco: Canfield Press, pg. 7.
Economics Definition
A short hand expression for the integrated aggregation of those persons who are primarily involved in: “(1) the undertaking or managing of risk and the handling of economic uncertainty; (2) planning and innovation; (3) coordination, administration and control; (4) and routine supervision” of an enterprise.Harbison, F. (1959). Entrepreneurial organization as a factor in economic development. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 70, 364–379, pg. 365.
Industrial/Organizational Psychology Definition
“work consists of patterned human behavior and the ‘equipment’ consists of the human beings.”Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations. New York, NY: John Wile & Sons, pg. 55.
“lively sets of interrelated systems [task, structure, technology, people, and the environment] designed to perform complicated tasks.”Levitt, H. J. (1972). Managerial psychology: An introduction to individuals, pairs, and groups in organizations. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pg. 265.
Organizational Communication Definitions
“social collectives in which people develop ritualized patterns of interaction in an attempt to coordinate their activities and efforts in the ongoing accomplishment of personal and group goals.”Kreps, G. L. (1986). Organizational communication. New York: Longman, pg. 5.
“including five critical features—namely, the existence of a social collectivity, organizational and individual goals, coordinated activity, organizational structure, and the embedding of the organization with an environment of other organizations.”Miller, K. (2012). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Wasdworth-Cengage, pg. 11.
“Communicative structures of control.”Mumby, D. (in press). Organizational communication. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
“an organized collection of individuals working interdependently within a relatively structured, organized, open system to achieve common goals.”Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2009). Organizational communication for survival: Making work, work (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon, pg. 1.
“an aggregate of persons, arranged in predetermined patterns of relationships, in order to accomplish stated objectives.”Redding, W. C. (1964). The organizational communicator. In W. C. Redding & G. A Sanborn (Eds.), Business and industrial communication: A source book (pp. 29–58). New York: Harper & Row, pg. 33.
After reading this laundry list of different definitions for the word “organization,” you may wonder how you to determine which one is the best? Well, to be honest—we think they all have something to offer. When you look at the various definitions for the word “organization,” you will start to see a certain pattern emerge of consistent themes within the definition. Jason WrenchWrench, J. S. (in press). Communicating within the modern workplace: Challenges and prospects. In J. S. Wrench (Ed.), Workplace communication for the 21st century: Tools and strategies that impact the bottom line: Vol. 1. Internal workplace communication. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. examined a similar list of definitions and concluded that there are three primary features that run through all definitions of the term “organization”: the structure, the goal, and the people.
Organizational Structures
The first major theme commonly seen in the various definitions of the word “organization” has to do with structure: How an organization functions in terms of what happens both within the organization itself and within its external environment.. When we talk about how organizations are structured, we are talking primarily about how they function in terms of what happens both within an organization and how an organizations functions within its external environment. For our purposes, we will look at structure in terms of four basic processes: external environment, input, throughput, and output (Figure 1.1)
External Environment
The first factor to consider when thinking about an organization is the external environment that an organization exists in. The external environmentAll of the vendors, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders who can have an impact on the organization itself but exist outside the boundaries of the organization. consists of all vendors, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders who can have an impact on the organization itself but exist outside the boundaries of the organization. Changes in the external environment where an organization exists will have an effect on the organization itself. For example, image that the government is going to pose new regulations on your industry, these new regulations will have an effect on how the organization must function. When it comes to how organizations interact with its external environment, we often refer to two different types of boundaries. An organization that has open boundariesOrganizations that allow for the free flow of information to the organization and is more likely able to adapt to changes that occurs within the environment. allows for the free flow of information to the organization and is more likely able to adapt to changes that occurs within the environment. Closed boundariesWhen an organization insulates itself from what is occurring within its external environment., on the other hand, occur when an organization tries to insulate itself from what is occurring within its environment. When an organization has closed boundaries, that organization ends up being less aware of what is going on within the external environment and sets itself up for major problems or obsolescence.
Input
The next major aspect of an organization’s environment involves inputs. InputsThose resources that an organization brings in from the external environment in order for the organization to accomplish its goals. are those resources that an organization brings in from the external environment in order for the organization to accomplish its goals. Typically, resources can be discussed in three general categories: physical materials, people, and information. First, organizations bring in physical materials that it needs to accomplish its goals. Whether its computers, desks, light fixtures, or supplies necessary to build silicon microchips, organizations rely on a variety of vendors in the external environment to provide physical materials.
The second type of input necessary from the external environment involves people. People can either come in the forms of workers, which are necessary resources for any organization. An organization is reliant on bringing in skilled workers to help the organization accomplish its goals. One of the biggest complaints many organizations have is a lack of skilled or qualified workers. Depending on the organization, skills or qualifications can run from specific college or graduate degrees to specific industry experience to specific technical know-how. According to Julian L. Alssid, executive director of the Workforce Strategy Center in New York, "Employers seem to be less willing to invest in training in this economy. Again, it is the combination of the right credential and practical experience they look for."Balderrama, A. (2010, February 22). Available jobs, not enough skilled workers [online article]. Retrieved from msn.careerbuilder.com/Article...illed-Workers/, Paragraph 7.
The final type of input an organization needs is information. InformationAny data that is necessary for an organization to possess in an effort to create knowledge. refers to any data that is necessary for an organization to possess in an effort to create knowledge.Atwood, C. G. (2009). Knowledge management basics: A complete how-to guide. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press. According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), data is “is raw and without context and can exist in any form, usable or not.”ASTD. (2006). Managing organizational knowledge. In E. Biech (series Ed.), ASTD Learning System, Vol. 8. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press, pg. 2. Often organizations end up with piles of data including customer service reports, market trends, and other material typically in the raw, numerical form. Organizations then turn this data into information by giving the data meaning through some kind of interpretation. While most people think of data as purely numerical, there are other non-numerical types of data that can be important to turn into information. For example, if the US congress passes a new law that impacts how your organization must handle customer records, the law may not specifically say how your organization must comply with the law. In this case, the new law is data and your organization must turn that law into usable information in the form of its own policies and procedures. When you combine information with understanding that leads to action, information is transformed from information to knowledge.
So, how do organizations go about acquiring data that can lead to action? ASTD discusses two types of external environment scanning processes that organizations can employ: proactive and reactive.ASTD. (2006). Managing organizational knowledge. In E. Biech (series Ed.), ASTD Learning System, Vol. 8. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press. First, proactive scanningWhen an organization actively looks for data or existing information that could be transformed into useable knowledge. occurs when an organization actively looks for data or existing information that could be transformed into useable knowledge. For example, doing research on what your competitors in an effort to stay on top of your market is an example of proactive scanning. The second type of scanning, reactive scanningWhen an organization faces a specific problem or crisis and then either makes sense of data/information it poses or searches the external environment for data or information that could be useful. occurs when an organization faces a specific problem or crisis and then either makes sense of data/information it poses or searches the external environment for data or information that could be useful. Ideally, if an organization does a good job with proactive scanning, reactive scanning will not be necessary very often. When an organization is forced to use reactive scanning, time gets wasted as they attempt to find the data/information and turn it into actionable knowledge.
Throughput
ThroughputWhat an organization does with inputs within the confines of the organization itself. is ultimately what an organization does with inputs within the confines of the organization itself. Throughput can range from the use physical materials, people, and information to how organizations structure themselves internally to create goal oriented throughput. While we cannot discuss every possible way an organization can utilize inputs, we should note that the issue of internal organizational structure is very important at this level of an organizations. For this reason, we really must discuss two ways that organizations commonly structure hierarchies.
A hierarchyA categorization system where individuals/departments are ranked over other individuals/departments based on skills, centrality, and status. is a categorization system where individuals/departments are ranked over other individuals/departments based on skills, centrality, and status. First, organizations can place people/departments over others because of specific skill sets. For example, managers are placed over workers because of their skills in managing people. While we know this isn’t always why people get promoted, the general idea of a management class of people is because managers can help organize employees towards the organization’s goal(s). Second, people can be ranked over others because of their centrality to the organization’s goals. For example, if your organization is a tech company, the product developers may be ranged structurally over people in customer support or marketing because without the product developers there is no need for customer support or marketing. Lastly, organizations can be organized based on status, an individual’s relative position to others as a result of esteem, privilege, or responsibility. When someone gets promoted to a higher position, her or his status increases in terms of a formal hierarchy. Whether that promotion is a result of esteem, privilege, or responsibility doesn’t matter at this point, only the elevation within the hierarchy.
Now that we’ve discussed what a hierarchy is, let’s talk about the two common ways that organizations are typically patterned: flat vs. tall hierarchies (Figure 1.2).
The first image in Figure 1.2 represents tall hierarchiesAny stimuli that could elicit meaning that is not contained in words themselves., they are called such because they represent many, many hierarchical layers between those at the bottom of the hierarchy and those at the top of the hierarchy. Two commonly discussed tall hierarchies are the Catholic Church and the US military. With the Catholic Church, you have the average parishioner at the bottom of the hierarchy the Pope at the top of the hierarchy. In the US military, you have your average enlisted soldier at the bottom of the hierarchy and the President of the United States (in her/his commander in chief title) at the top of the hierarchy. In both cases, the people at the bottom have little or no communication with those at the top of the hierarchy.
The second image in Figure 1.2 represents flat hierarchies where there are only a couple of hierarchical layers between those at the bottom and those at the top of the hierarchy. Think of these organizations like mom and pop restaurants. In a typical small restaurant, the owner may also serve as the chef and may only have a handful of waitstaff, table bussers, and dish cleaners as employees. In these hierarchies, it is very easy for those at the bottom of the hierarchy to communicate with those at the top of the hierarchy.
Output
The final aspect related to organizational structure is outputThe ultimate product or service that an organization disseminates back to the external environment., which is the ultimate product or service that an organization disseminates back to the external environment. Whether one is create the components of a cell phone or sending computer technicians to people’s homes, every organization is designed to produce some kind of service or product for the external environment. Even nonprofit organizations like the American Red Cross are producing a range of both products and services for the external environment.
Organizational Goals
Organizations have many goals, but it helps to clarify those goals into a simple typology (classification into ordered categories). Edward Gross examined the various types of organizational goals and created a simple typology consisting of five distinct goals that organizations have: output, adaptation, management, motivation, and positional.Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294.
Output
The first type of goal that organizations commonly have are referred to as output goals, or organizational goals that are “reflected, immediately or in the future, in some product, service, skill or orientation which will affect (and is intended to affect) that society.”Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294, pg. 287. While Gross was initially discussing goals in terms of educational organizations, the goals also apply to other organizational types as well. In essence, every organization has some type of output goal that will be released back into the external environment. For a pizza chain, the output goal could be the pizza it delivers to your house (product); the customer service it gives customers (service); or the expertise in pizza making it brings to the enterprise (skill).
Adaptation
The second type of organizational goal argued by Edward Gross are adaptation goals, or goals that an organization has in terms of adapting to the external environment.Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294. All organizations exist in environments that change, and successful organizations are going to change and adapt to that external environment. One of the biggest risks many organizations face if they do not adapt to the external environment is obsolescence, which “occurs when there is a significant decline in customer desire for an organization’s products or services.”Wrench, J. S. (2012). Casing organizational communication. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, pg. 11. Many organizations becomes so focused on making a specific product that the product eventually is no longer wanted or needed by customers, which will lead to the eventual death of an organization.
Management
The next type of organizational goal discussed by Edward Gross are management goals, which involves three types of decisions: (1) who will manage or run an organization, (2) how to handle conflict management, and (3) output goal prioritization.Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294. First, organizations need to decide on the formal structure of an organization and who will exist at various rungs of the hierarchy. In addition to determining the formal structure, these goals also determine what type of and who holds power within the organizational hierarchy. Second, managerial goals focus on how conflicts within the organization will be handled. Organizations have a vested interest in keeping the organization running smoothly, so too much conflict can lead to interpersonal or inter-departmental bickering that has negative consequences for the organization. Lastly, management goals determine the overarching direction of the organization itself. As the saying goes, someone has to steer the ship. We’ll discuss different types of leaders in Chapter 7, but for now we’ll just note that having a clear direction and clear prioritization of the products and services an organization has is very important for the health of an organization. If an organization tries to do too much, the organization may end up scatter-brained and not function as a cohesive whole. If the organization tries to do one and only one thing, the organization may become obsolescent. Overall, people in management must place output goal prioritization very high on the to-do-list.
Motivation
The fourth common goal organizations have, as discussed by Edward Gross, are motivational goals or goals set out to ensure that all employees are satisfied and remain loyal to the organization.Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294. There is a wealth of research that has examined the importance of employee motivation on job satisfaction and worker productivity.Latham, G. P. (2007). Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. In a study conducted by Whitman, Van Rooy, and ViswesvaranWhitman, D. S., Van Rooy, D. L., & Viswesvaran, C. (2010). Satisfaction, citizenship behaviors, and performance in work units: A meta-analysis of collective construct relations. Personnel Psychology, 63, 41–81. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01162.x, the researchers examined the relationship between job satisfaction and employee productivity across 73 different research studies that have examined the subject. Overall, the researchers concluded that satisfied employees were more productive. Secondly, ensuring that employees are motivated also helps to ensure that employees remain loyal to an organization. According to Hart and Thompson, employee loyalty is “an individual’s perception that both parties to a relationship [employee and organization] have fulfilled reciprocal expectations that 1) demote enduring attachment between two parties, and that 2) involve self-sacrifice in the face of alternatives, and that 3) are laden with obligations of duty.”Hart, D. W., & Thompson, J. A. (2007). Untangling employee loyalty: A psychological contract perspective. Business Ethics Quarterly, 17, 297–323, pg. 300. By this definition employees are loyal because they knowingly enter into a relationship with an organization, sacrifice part of themselves to the organization (and vice versa), and thus feel a sense of obligation or duty to the organization. Of course, loyalty only works when an employee feels that the organization is standing up to its end of the reciprocal expectations. If an employee feels that an organization is not meeting its basic obligations, then the employee will view that organization unkindly and the employees loyalty will diminish over time.Hajdin, M. (2005). Employee Loyalty: An Examination. Journal Of Business Ethics, 59, 259–280. doi:10.1007/s10551-005-3438-4 As such, organizations must strive to make one of its goals ensuring that it is meeting its basic obligations towards employees in an effort to foster employee loyalty.
Positional
The final type of organizational goal described by Edward Gross are positional goals, which are goals that attempt to position an organization within the environment in comparison to other organizations within the same market.Gross, E. (1969). The definition of organizational goals. The British Journal of Sociology, 20, 277–294. For example, imagine that your organization is an automotive tool manufacturer. Your organization will attempt to position itself against other automotive tool manufacturers that exist in the market. There are two common ways to position one’s self within a specific market: 1) higher volume at a lower price or 2) higher quality at a higher price. The first way to position one’s self within a market is to create more products or faster service at a cheaper cost. The second way to position one’s self in the market is to create a luxury product/service that costs more. While the product or service costs more, you provide the appearance of being the luxury brand. In a 2011 article in PCWorld, the authors mention that 56% of new cellphone users were purchasing an Android device as compared to only 28% that purchased an iOS (iPhone) device.Kellog, D. (2011, September 26). In U.S. market, new smartphone buyers increasingly embracing Android [Press release]. Retrieved from blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/...acing-android/ Simply put, the Android is cheaper and there are more versions of the Android available for cellphone subscribers. Only Apple makes iOS compatible cellphones and they are typically more expensive than Android devices. Apple has historically set itself up as a luxury line in the computing industry while PCs and now Android cellphones are cheaper and made for the mass market. Interestingly, iPhones actually only account for 4% of the overall cell phone market in November 2011, but accounted for 52% of industry profits.Hamburger, E. (2011, December 7). These charts tell the real story of Android vs. Business Insider. iPhone. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/android-vs-iphone-charts-2011-12 Clearly, the iPhone may not be getting a strong percentage of the market share, but it is still beating out its competition.
Organizational People
The final characteristic common the various definitions of the word “organization” involves people. In Jason Wrench’s original discussion of the three common themes related to people, he discussed interdependency, interaction, and leadership.Wrench, J. S. (in press). Communicating within the modern workplace: Challenges and prospects. In J. S. Wrench (Ed.), Workplace communication for the 21st century: Tools and strategies that impact the bottom line: Vol. 1. Internal workplace communication. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. For our purposes, we also pose the notion of control as an important factor related to people as well.
Interdependency
The first term associated with people in organizations is the concept of interdependency. InterdependencyMutual dependence or depending on one another. is mutual dependence or depending on one another. Interdependency is the notion that people within an organization are dependent upon one another to achieve the organization’s goals. If one part of the organization stops functioning properly, it will impact the other parts of the organization. For example, imagine you are a copyeditor for a publisher in New York City. If you get behind on your job, the graphic designers, marketing professionals, printers, and other groups of people will also get behind. At the same time, interdependency can also help an organization. If you working with a solid group of colleagues, if something happens to get you behind others can help pull the slack and keep things moving forward on schedule. Overall, people impact each other in organizations.
Interaction
Our interactions with others help define and create what is an organization. Without the interactions we have with our coworkers, customers, and other stakeholders, an organization really doesn’t exist. For this reason, you can almost say that the “thing” we call an organization doesn’t really exist because it’s not a physical structure, but rather an organization is the outcome of our interactions with others. An organization may have physical things within it (desks, computers, pencils, etc.), but the actual organization is ultimately the people that make exist.
At the same time, people within an organization also interact with each other in various roles in an effort to accomplish the organization’s goal(s). People within organizations and people who come in contact with organizations are constantly in a state of interaction. As we will learn later in this book, organizations have many different stakeholders (an individual or group that has an interest in the organization), and each different set of stakeholders requires different communication strategies. Ultimately, communicative interaction is one of the most basic functions of any organization.
Control
As the definition of organization from Dennis Mumby, organizations are inherently entities that must control the behavior of its members while members generally strive for their own sets of needs.Mumby, D. (in press). Organizational communication. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. When one group has one set of needs and desires and another has a different set of needs and desires, we refer to these groups as being in dialectical tensions. Table 1.2 contains many of the dialectical tensions that exist between organizations and its various members.
Table 1.2 Dialectical Tensions
What the Organization Needs/Wants What Workers Need/Want
Minimize Costs Maximize Salary/Benefit Package
Systemization of Job Duties Autonomy to do one’s job
Ability to Streamline the Organization Job Stability
Agreement Dissent
Transparency Privacy
Conventionality Innovation
Organization-Focused Self-Focused
Permanence Change
Rights of the Organization Rights of the Individual
Work life Social life
As a result of these inherent dialectical tensions, organizations try to stack the deck in its favor to maximize its needs and desires, and subsequently minimizes the needs and desires of workers in the process. Let’s briefly examine each of these dialectical tensions in turn.
Minimize Costs vs. Maximize Salary/Benefits. The first dialectical tensions occurs when organizations try to keep their overhead costs low while workers try to maximize what they earn in terms of both salary and benefits (insurance, stock options, retirement, etc.).
Systemization vs. Autonomy. Organizations like stability, so they prefer workers who learn how to do a specific task and then systematize that task in the most efficient manner. As such, organizations (especially in manufacturing contexts) will train in explicit detail exactly how an employee should accomplish a task. Workers, on the other hand, prefer to have autonomy when making decisions for how best to accomplish their daily work and do not enjoy being micromanaged.
Streamline vs. Stability. Organizations are fundamentally focused on the bottom line, and therefore often want to have the ability to streamline the organization in an attempt to maximize profits. If an organization can lay off workers and maintain maximum productivity, then it’s often in the organization’s best interest to do so. While streamlining is good for an organization, it can create a chaotic environment for employees who crave job stability. Workers want to know that their work is appreciated and it will keep them employed.
Agreement vs. Dissent. The next dialectical tension listed here is agreement vs. dissent. In this tension, organizations prefer for workers to blindly follow and do what organizational leaders dictate. Workers, on the other hand, want to have a voice to articulate when they disagree with the dictates of leaders or the general direction of the organization. We’ll explore the area of organizational dissent more in Chapter 5.
Conventionality vs. Innovation. Organizations are innately slow moving organisms that do not like change, so it’s very common to hear “But we’ve always done it that way.” Workers on the other hand want to bring their own creative problem solving skills to the table and think of new and innovative processes and procedures that could benefit both the organizations and the workers. While not all worker ideas spot-on, organizations that stick to conventional ways of thinking may end up losing a lot of employees who prefer more freedom to be innovative.
Transparency vs. Privacy. In our world today organizations are increasingly want to know what workers are doing in the workplace. As such, organizations expect that employee’s work lives are completely transparent and will do everything from monitoring e-mail and telephone calls to installing software on workers’ computers that logs and monitors key strokes made on a keyboard. Workers, on the other hand, are increasingly demanding that there be some privacy especially in their digital lives.
Organization vs. Self-Focused. Organizations innately want workers to be focused on their jobs and improving their productivity. Workers, on the other hand, want to focus on themselves and improving themselves. Many organizations will support self-improvement as long as it has a clear benefit for the organization, but workers often want to focus on their own improvement even if that improvement has no benefits for the organization or may lead the worker to find a new organization.
Permanence vs. Change. When looking at the permanence/change dialectic, organizations strive to maintain knowledge and thus keep people who are hard workers for the long haul. Often, organizations call this employee loyalty. Workers on the other hand, desire change and can get very bored doing the same work day-in and day-out. Often workers become pigeonholed in specific jobs with specific duties, that there is no way to get out besides leaving the organization itself. Overall, organizations in our society have many more tools at its disposal to get its way than do workers.
Organizational vs. Individual Rights. Ultimately, when it comes to organizations the focus is on the organization and its rights and less on the individual’s rights. Workers believe that their human rights shouldn’t stop at the front door of the organization. For example, many workers are shocked when organizations fire them for posts that are made on social networking websites. Workers believe these posts should be private and organizations looking at these posts is a violation of one’s privacy rights. Organizations, on the other hand, believe looking at social networking site posts is a completely appropriate behavior and well within its rights as an organization. While this specific example also overlaps with the transparency/privacy dialectic, the focus here is on whose rights are more important.
Work vs. Social Life. The last dialectical tension associated with organizational control is the focus on work vs. social life. Organizations believe that workers should be focused purely on their work life. As a result of digital technology, it has become increasingly easier for people to be on call 24-7 by their organizations. Workers, on the other hand, believe they are entitled to a social life that does not involve one’s organization. Furthermore, workers often believe that as long as their private, social life behavior does not impact their work life, their organization’s should stay out of their personal lives. Many organizations go so far as to include “morality clauses” into contracts that enable them to fire employees whose person-life behavior is deemed inappropriate for organizational members.
Leadership
The last term associated with people in organizations is leadership. Any organization must have an individual or clearly discernible group that guides the organization towards accomplishing its goal(s). Without strong leadership, individual members of an organization are left to their own ideas of how to accomplish the organization’s goals. Basically, if you have too many people trying to lead, you’ll end up with an organization that is stretched entirely too thin to accomplish anything.
The opposite of leadership is followership. If an organization is going to thrive, it must have strong leadership and followers who are willing to follow that leader. In Chapter 7 we’ll examine leadership and followership.
Types of Organizations
The last factor in understanding organizations is to realize that there are numerous types of organizations. For a good overview of the different taxonomies that have been created trying to categorize these different types of organizations, we recommend reading Carper and Snizek’s article on the subject.Carper, W. B., & Snizek, W. E. (1980). The nature and types of organizational taxonomies: An overview. Academy of Management Review, 5, 65–75. For our purposes in this book, we are going to use the classification scheme originally posed by Peter M. Blau and W. Richard Scott.Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach (2004 printing). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Blau and Scott created a taxonomy of organizations that included four distinct categories: mutual benefit, business concerns, service, and commonweal.
Mutual Benefit Associations
The first type of organization that exists is the mutual benefit organizationOrganization focused on providing for its membership., which is focused on providing for its membership. Some examples are “political parties, unions, fraternal associations, clubs, veterans’ organizations, professional associations, and religious sects.”Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 45. People generally join these types of organizations because of the benefits of membership. When these organizations are first being created, organizational members are generally very involved in the creation of the organization. However, once one of these organizations has been around for a while, the majority of the members become passive and let the minority run the organization.
Business Concerns
The second type of organization is the business concerns organizationOrganization focused on doing well profitably for the organization and its stakeholders., which is focused on doing well for the organization itself. According to Blau and Scott, the “dominant problem of business concerns is that of operating efficiency—the achievement of maximum gain at minimum cost in order to further survival and growth in competition with other organizations.” Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 49. Most for-profit organizations will fall into the business concerns organization. Business concerns organizations are faced with problems associated with “maximizing operating efficiency in a competitive situation.”Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 43. Because of the need to cut costs and maintain a competitive advantage, these organizations are often cold and calloused in how they treat its members and customers.
Service Organizations
According to Blau and Scott, service organizationsOrganization whose prime concern is providing products or services for a specific public clientele. are “one whose prime beneficiary is the part of the public in direct contact with the organization, with whom and on whom its members work—in short, an organization whose basic function is to serve clients.” Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 51. Service organizations can include “social-work agencies, hospitals, schools, legal aid societies, and mental health clinics.” Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 51. The basic problem service organizations face is “the problems associated with the conflict between professional service to clients and administrative procedures are characteristic of service organizations.” Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 43. Often service organizations are steeped in organizational hierarchies and procedures that prohibit providing the easiest and fastest service to potential clients.
Commonweal Organizations
The last type of organization discussed by Blau and Scott are commonweal organizationsOrganization designed to benefit society at large. “where the prime beneficiary is the public-at-large.”Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach (2004 printing). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pg. 44. Some examples of commonweal organizations include “the State Department, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, military services, police and fire departments, and also the research function as distinguished from the teaching function in universities.”Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach. San Francisco: Chandler, pg. 54. All of these organizations were created because they represented areas where the general public needed some level of protection or knowledge or the organization serves administrative purposes of the government. Overall, the crucial problem posed “by commonweal organizations is the development of democratic mechanisms whereby they can be externally controlled by the public.” Blau, P. M., & Scott, W. R. (1962). Formal organizations: A comparative approach (2004 printing). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pg. 43.
Key Takeaways
• When one analyzes a variety of definitions for the term “organization,” three common themes tend to emerge: the structure, the goal, and the people. Organizational structure examines how an organization functions both internally and with its larger external environment. The goal is the general purpose a group of people is trying to achieve. Lastly, the people refer to the various internal and external stakeholders associated with the organization.
• There are four common organizational types: mutual benefit, business concerns, service, and commonweal. Mutual benefit organizations are designed to help the individuals who belong to the group (e.g., fraternities, sororities, clubs, etc…). Business concerns organizations are primarily concerned with turning a profit for the organization and its shareholders (e.g. anything from Walmart and Citibank to your local grocery story or restaurant). The third type of organization is the service organization, which is geared towards providing a specific service to people within society (e.g., hospitals, legal-aid societies, etc…). Lastly, commonweal organizations are those that are generally run by the government for the greater good of society (e.g., the military, fire/police departments, department of education, etc…).
Exercises
1. Think of an organization you currently belong to (or have belong to in the past). Looking at Figure 1.1, how has your organization interacted with its environment with regards to input, throughput, and output.?
2. Of the ten dialectical tensions discussed in Table 1.2, which one do you think has the strongest impact on an organization you current belong to (or has belong to in the past)? Why do you think this dialectical tension causes the most imbalance of control?
3. From your own organizational interactions, find two different organizations that fit into each of the four types of organizations: mutual benefit, business concerns, service, and commonweal. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Communication/1.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Define and explain what is meant by the term “human communication.”
• Explain the basic model of communication and how it applies to the organizational context.
First and foremost, there is no agreed upon definition of the word “communication” by various scholars. In fact, various scholars have attempted to examine the term and generally found that there are a vast array of different approaches to understanding the term.Dance, F. E. X. (1970). The “concept” of communication. The Journal of Communication, 20, 201–210.,Dance, F. X. (1984). What is communication?: Nailing Jello to the wall. Association for Communication administration Bulletin, 48, 4–7.,Losee, R. M. (1999). Communication defined as complementary informative processes. Journal of Information, Communication and Library Science, 5(3), 1–15.,Nilsen, T. R. (1957). On defining communication. Speech Teacher, 6(1), 10–17. In one of the most exhaustive examination of the types of definitions created by various academics, Frank Dance examined 95 unique definitions and broke them down into fifteen different types of definitions.Dance, F. E. X. (1970). The “concept” of communication. The Journal of Communication, 20, 201–210. While all of these definitions may exist, not all of them are clearly applicable for our purposes as we study organizational communication. For this reason, we are going to focus on defining the term “human communication.”
The first step in defining the term “human communication” is to acknowledge that the attempt you are making is one in a voice of many. The definition of “human communication” we will provide here is not necessarily the best or the one most commonly used in every communicative context, but it is the one we will use to guide this book. In the words of Frank Dance when he wrote about what makes human communication human, “Human communication is indeed a dappled thing, swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim. The search for its essence and the study of its meaning is a search rich in the doing, not in the done.”Dance, F. E. X. (1980). Swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim: What makes human communication human. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 44, 60–63, pg. 63.
For the purposes of this book, we define human communicationThe process whereby one individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another individual (or group of individuals) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages. as the process whereby one individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another individual (or group of individuals) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages.Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008). Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. This definition can be easily broken down into a series of characteristics: source, message, channel, and receiver. Figure 1.3 provides a general representation of what this model looks like within the public speaking context, but can easily be applied to other communicative contexts (interpersonal communication, small group/team communication, mass communication, etc.). Let’s briefly break this definition and model down into four core areas that must be understood: process, source, message, channel, and receiver.
Process
First, and foremost, it is important for anyone studying communication to remember that communication is a processThe notion that there are no distinct beginnings to communication nor ends., which indicates that there are no distinct beginnings to communication nor ends. By process, we mean that communication is a series of interactions that alter with time and produce changes in those involved in the interactions. We should also mention that there are many external factors that can influence the process as well. The success or failure of informative or persuasive attempts can alter how people interact with each other in future interactions. Additionally, one’s cultural background can affect how people approach the communicative process. In essence, there are a number of factors that are constantly at play within an interaction that effect the communication process.
Source
The “sourceThe individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning.” is the individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning. To help us understand the role of the source we will look at the two major components here: individual/group and message.
Individual vs. Group
We refer to this position in the basic communication model as either an individual or a group because depending on the communicative context, the source of a message could represent a single person’s ideas or an entire group’s ideas. For example, if you are providing an employee feedback about her or his job performance, the message you are sending may come from you and you alone. However, if you are the CEO of a corporation delivering a press conference, your message may be coming out of your mouth but may represent dozens of individuals involved in the crafting of the message. Often receivers are completely unaware of the number of people involved in the crafting and filtering of a message before they receive the message itself. Furthermore, in the position as a CEO, you would also be viewed as the mouthpiece of the organization, so anything you say is also attributed to the organization, which could represent thousands of people.
Message
The basic goal of the source is to take an idea that is occurring in her or his mind and someone transmit that same idea to another person (or persons). The “idea” someone is trying to send to a receiver is the messageThe “idea” someone is trying to send to a receiver.. We refer to this transmission of a message from the source to the receiver as “stimulating meaning” because the source is attempting to transmit the idea in her or his head and communicate in such a fashion that the receiver will understand the idea in the same way as the source. One very important caveat to stimulating meaning is ensuring that meaning is actually achieved. One of the biggest mistakes some novice managers have is assuming that if they tell an employee something, their message has actually been understood in the way it was intended to be understood. As such, it’s very important to ensure a receiver is understanding the meaning of a message in the way a source intends for that message to be understood.
One of our coauthors was recently involved in a labor negotiation. The employees in the organization believed that the organization was financially healthy and thus they deserved better pay. The organization, on the other hand was not financially healthy. The discrepancy between the two arose because there was a pot-of-money that the employees believed could be tapped to give them raises. Unfortunately, that specific pot-of-money was untouchable because the organization oversaw the management of the money but could not actually use the money for its own devices. As a peripheral member of the negotiations, our coauthor recommended that the organization get its auditing firm to clearly specify in a note to the employee negotiators what the uses of the fund were. Our coauthor realized that the organization’s negotiators had a problem communicating this message because the receivers viewed them as biased. By having the outside (and thus impartial) auditing team craft the specific message, the employee negotiators finally understood the problem backed down on their demands. This example involves both problems sending a message (from the organization to the employee negotiators) and then a solution to ensure understanding (from the auditing firm to the employee negotiators). The example also illustrates another common problem with transmissions of messages, receivers must see the source as credible and trustworthy or the receivers may dismiss the message as inherently biased.
Channel
When a source decides to create a message, he or she can rely on three primary channels to send that message. A channelThe means by which a message is carried from one person to another. is “the means by which a message is carried from one person to another [emphasis in original].”Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008). Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, pg. 10. As we are discussing human communication, break these channels into three distinct types: verbal, nonverbal, and mediated.
Verbal
The verbalSpecific spoken sounds that represent real phenomena or ideas. channel consists of specific spoken sounds that represent real phenomena or ideas. For example, when we say the word “office,” we know that the letters o-f-f-i-c-e do not represent an actual physical location but rather the idea of a location where work occurs. Of course, for understanding to occur, the source and the receiver must have the same understanding for how words are intended to be understood. In fact ensuring that people communicating in an organization are using the same lexicon is such a common problem that there are numerous humor books that have been written on the subject.Beckwith, L. (2006) The dictionary of corporate bullshit: An A to Z lexicon of empty, enraging, and just plain stupid office talk. New York, NY: Broadway Books.,Fugere, B., Hardaway, C., Warshawsky, J. (2005). Why business people speak like idiots: A bullfighter's guide. New York, NY: Free Press.
Nonverbal
The second channel people can transmit a message through is the nonverbalAny stimuli that could elicit meaning that is not contained in words themselves. channel, which encompasses any stimuli that could elicit meaning that is not contained in words themselves. Everything from how someone gestures, looks (physical attractiveness, dress, jewelry, etc.), sounds, smells, etc… can impact how others will view that person. Research has indicated that between 65 to 95% of someone’s understanding of a verbal message is dependent upon the nonverbal behavior associated with the verbal message.Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008). Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.For examine, imagine you walk into a colleague’s office and she’s clearly red-faced and her fists are clenched. You ask her how she’s doing and she flatly responds, “fine.” If you pay attention to only the verbal message sent, “fine,” you will interpret her message as she’s excellent (like fine wine). However, when you interpret her nonverbal behavior, you’ll quickly ascertain that she is far from “excellent” but may not want to talk about what happened at the moment.
Mediated
The last channel a source can send a message through is a mediatedAny message that is sent using some kind of technology (print-form, auditory, visual, electronic, etc…). channel. A mediated message is any message that is sent using some kind of technology (print-form, auditory, visual, electronic, etc…). Historically, some of the earliest writings on communicating with employees were about creating employee newsletters to communicate better. In today’s technologically advanced world, we are increasingly spending more and more time communicating with each other at work using mediated computer technologies. From e-mail, to Skype, to Twitter, LinkedIn, to blogs and vlogs, to who knows what comes next, we are increasingly becoming more and more dependent on mediated forms of communication in the workplace.
Receiver
While we’ve discussed the receiver a message throughout the entire section, we should note that the receiverThe person interpreting and understanding a source’s message.(s) is ultimately the person interpreting and understanding a source’s message. When a receiver attends to a source’s message, he or she must interpret that message in light of her or his understanding of the message. If the source uses unfamiliar words, the receiver may not accurately interpret the message in the intended way. For this reason, it’s important for a source to consider any feedback the receiver sends about the message to ensure that understanding has occurred.
A Few Notes About The Basic Model
While this model presents communication in an easily digestible, linear fashion, we also recognize that in many communicative contexts (like a business meeting) we may be functioning in the roles of source and receiver simultaneously. The definition presented here (as well as the basic model) are starting points for understanding human communication that have been developed and expanded upon since the 1940s.Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.,Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008). Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, pg. 10.
Key Takeaways
• Human communication is the process whereby one individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another individual (or group of individuals) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages.
• The basic model of communication examines four basic components: source, message, channel, and receiver. The source of a message is the individual or group who is originating an idea and attempting to transmit that idea to another person or persons. The message is the idea that is attempting to be transmitted. The channel is the specific method of communication an individual uses to convey a specific message: verbal (the use of words), nonverbal (other communicative characteristics outside of the words themselves), and mediated (the use of technology to convey a message). Lastly, the receiver is the individual who is targeted for a message who receives the message and then has to make sense of the message itself.
Exercises
1. Look at the definition of human communication provided in this book. Do you think this definition accurately reflects how humans communicate with one another? Why or why not?
2. Image you’ve been asked to run a meeting consisting of five people. Explain how a meeting consisting of five people would relate to the basic model of communication. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Communication/1.03%3A_What_is_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain the three different ways the term “organizational communication” can be understood according to Stanley Deetz.
• Define the term “organizational communication” as it is used within this book.
• Identify some of the major historical events in the creation of the field of “organizational communication.”
Now that we’ve examined what we mean by “human communication” in this book, let’s switch gears and discuss the nature of “organizational communication.” To help us understand what is meant by the term “organizational communication,” we’ll explore differing ways of viewing the term and then a basic conceptual definition that we will use in this book.
Ways of Viewing Organizational Communication
Stanley Deetz argues that defining what is meant by the term “organizational communication” is only half the question. “A more interesting question is, ‘What do we see or what are we able to do if we think of organizational communication in one way versus another?’ Unlike a definition, the attempt here is not to get it right but to understand our choices.” Deetz, S. (2001). Conceptual Foundations. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 3–46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pg. 4. Instead, Deetz recommends that we attempt to understand the three conceptualizations that are available to “organizational communication” scholars and students: the discipline, ways to describe organizations, and a phenomenon within organizations.
“Organizational Communication” as a Discipline
The first way the term “organizational communication” is commonly used is as a descriptor tool that refers to a specific sub-division of the communication field. However, organizational communication is not an academic area of study unique to the field of communication studies. Because organizational communication is a unique discipline there are courses, books, and degrees all associated with the study of organizational communication. According to Dennis K. Mumby and Cynthia Stohl, “A community of scholars constitutes a disciplinary matrix when they share a set of paradigmatic assumptions about the stud of a certain phenomenon.”Mumby, D., & Stohl, C. (1996). Disciplining organizational communication studies. Management Communication Quarterly, 10, 50–72, pg. 52. In essence, organizational communication is a discipline because people who study it share a common conception of the study of this thing called “organizational communication.” Mumby and Stohl go on to note that “This does not mean that there is a consensus on every issue, but rather that scholars see objects of study in similar ways, and use the same language game in describing these phenomena.” Mumby, D., & Stohl, C. (1996). Disciplining organizational communication studies. Management Communication Quarterly, 10, 50–72, pg. 52. In fact, you may find your teacher or even yourself disagreeing with our interpretation of certain aspects of organizational communication, which is very much a normal part of any academic discipline.
“Organizational Communication” as a Descriptor
The second way we can view the term “organizational communication” is as descriptor for what happens within organizations. Deetz explains, “to think of communication as a way to describe and explain organizations. In the same way that psychology, sociology, and economics can be thought of as capable of explaining organizations’ processes, communication might also be thought of as a distinct mode of explanation or way of thinking about organizations.” Deetz, S. (2001). Conceptual Foundations. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 3–46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pg. 5. As you will quickly see in this book, organizational communication as it has been studied in the past and continues to be studied today is a hybrid field, which means that people in a variety of different academic areas conduct research on the topic. People in anthropology, business, psychology, sociology, and other academic areas conduct research that is fundamentally about organizational communication. Communication scholars differ in how we approach organizational communication because our training is first, and foremost, in human communication, so we bring a unique history and set of tools to the stud of organizational communication that other scholars do not possess.
“Organizational Communication” as a Phenomenon
The final way one can view the term “organizational communication” is to view it as a specific phenomenon or set of phenomena that occurs within an organization. For example, when two employees get into a conflict at work, they are enacting organizational communication. When the chief financial officer of an organization is delivering a PowerPoint presentation on the latest quarterly earnings to the organization’s board of directors, he or she is engaging in organizational communication. The latest advertisement campaign an organization has created for the national media is another example of organizational communication.
A Conceptual Definition of “Organizational Communication”
The definition we will use for organizational communication in this book stems primarily out of the last of Deetz’s three views of “organizational communication.” Deetz, S. (2001). Conceptual Foundations. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 3–46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For the purposes of this book, we define organizational communicationThe process whereby an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages. as the process whereby an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages. You’ll notice the similarities between this definition and the one we provided earlier for human communication. Let’s break this definition down by exploring the primary unique factor in this definition, organizational stakeholders.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary of Business Terms, a stakeholderAny individual or group who has an interest within the organization. is “any party that has an interest in an organization. Stakeholders of a company include stockholders, bondholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and so forth.”Scott, D. L. (Ed.). (2009). stakeholder. In The American heritage dictionary of business terms (p. 503). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. As discussed in the Preface of this book, there are a range of different stakeholders that exist for an organization. Here is just a short list of some of the stakeholders within an organization: workers, managers, shareholders, etc… Every organization also has to be concerned with stakeholders who exist within the organization’s external environment: competitors, community members, governmental agencies, etc… Basically, every organization has a wide range of stakeholders that it must attend to in order to run itself smoothly.
A History of Organizational Communication
Instead of providing a long, drawn out history of the field of organizational communication as we know it today, we’ve provided you a brief timeline dating back to the 1750s when the Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom. The introduction of steam-powered machinery forever changed the way businesses operated and led to the eventual creation of the modern corporation. Table 1.3 is a summary of the major events in the history of organizational communication. This table is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but only a representative list of some of the major key-moments in the study of organizational communication.
Table 1.3 Major Events in Organizational Communication
1750 Industrial Revolution starts in the United Kingdom and quickly transforms the nature of business.
1908 A. E. Phillips publishes the first public speaking book specifically aimed at business men, Effectively Speaking.
Harvard Business School becomes the first academic program to focus on the scholarship of business.
1910, April The first meeting of the Eastern Public Speaking Conference is held. The association changed itself to the Speech Association of the Eastern States in 1950 and then to the Eastern Communication Association in 1973.
1914 The National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking is formed and holds is first convention the following the year. This association changed its names four times over the next hundred years: National Association of Teachers of Speech, 1923; Speech Association of America, 1946; Speech Communication Association, 1970; and National Communication Association, 1997.
1919 Edward L. Bernays and Doris Fleishman open the first public relations firm.
1929 William Phillips Sandford and Willard Hayes Yeager are the first speech scholars to publish a public speaking book aimed at business professionals titled Business and Professional Speaking.
1937 W. Charles Redding publishes an article titled “Speech and Human Relations” in the academic journal The Speaker. Redding is widely considered the father of organizational communication.
1938 Chester Barnard publishes The Functions of the Executive and argues that “The first function of the executive is to develop and maintain a system of communication” (p. 226).
1941 Paul F. Lazarsfeld publishes the first review of the discipline of communication based on his and others’ research at the Bureau of Applied Social Research and determines that communication could be broken into four categories: 1) who, 2) said what, 3) to whom, and 4) with what effect.
1942 Alexander R. Heron argues that successful communication with one’s employees is necessary for good business in his book Sharing Information with Employees.
1945 University of Denver holds the first graduate-level seminar in industrial communication.
1949 Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver publish The Mathematical Theory of Communication, which provides the first major model of human communication (source, message, receiver, noise).
1952 The first dissertation specifically in industrial communication was completed by Keith Davis in the department of business at Ohio State University. The title of the manuscript was “Channels of Personnel Communication within the Management Setting.”
1953 Ohio State University and the University of Nebraska offer the first Ph.D. degrees conferred by speech departments in industrial communication.
1961 Lee Thayer, a speech professor with an interest in communication in businesses, publishes Administrative Communication which is the first true textbook in organizational communication.
1963 The Journal of Business Communication is started by the American Business Communication Association.
1964 W. Charles Redding and George A. Sanborn publish Business and Industrial Communication: A Source Book, which compiled copies of previously published articles on a wide range of organizational communication topics. The publication of this book is generally seen as the true start of the field of organizational communication.
1967 The first “Conference on Organizational Communication” is held at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At the conference, Philip K. Tompkins reviews the state of organizational communication and divides the types of research into two categories: (1) informal and formal channels of communication and (2) superior-subordinate relationships. Tompkins’ presentation marks the official acceptance of the term “organizational communication.”
Henry Voos publishes Organizational Communication: A Bibliography sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.
1968 Division IV, organizational communication, becomes an officially recognized group by NSCC, which became the International Communication Association in 1970.
1972 W. Charles Redding publishes his book Communication with the Organization: An Interpretive Review of Theory and Research. In this monograph he poses 10 basic postulates of organizational communication.
1973 The Academy of Management authorizes a new division within its association titled Organizational Communication.
1982 The Western Journal of Communication publishes a series of articles based out of a conference held in Alta, Utah, “The Summer Conference on Interpretive Approaches to the Study of Organization Communication.” This series of articles argues for the importance of incorporating interpretive methods in the study of organizational communication.
1983 Linda Putnam and Michael E. Pacanowsky publish Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach. This edited book further solidifies the importance of interpretive research methods in organizational communication.
1987 Fredric M. Jablin, Linda L. Putnam, Karlene H. Roberts, and Lyman W. Porter publish the Handbook of Organizational Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.
1991 Wert-Gray, Center, Brashers, and Meyers publish an article titled “Research Topics and Methodological Orientations in Organizational Communication: A Decade in Review.” The authors find that of the 289 articles published in the 1980s, 57.8% were social scientific, 25.9% were qualitative, 2.1% were critical, 14.2% were categorized as other.
1993 Dennis Mumby puts for a research agenda for critical organizational communication research in an article titled “Critical Organizational Communication Studies: The Next 10 Years” in Communication Monographs.
2001 Fredric M. Jablin and Linda L. Putnam publish The New Handbook of Organizational Communication: Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods.
2004 Elizabeth Jones, Bernadette Watson, John Gardner, and Cindy Gallois publish an article titled “Organizational Communication: Challenges for the New Century” in the Journal of Communication. In the article they identify six challenges organizational communication scholars face in the 21st Century: (1) innovate in theory and methodology, (2) acknowledge the role of ethics, (3) move from the microlevel to macrolevel issues, (4) examine new organizational structures, (5) understand the communication of organizational change, and (6) examine diversity and intergroup communication.
Key Takeaways
• Stanley Deetz articulated three different ways the term “organizational communication” can be understood: the discipline, ways to describe/explain organizations, and a phenomenon within organizations. His first perspective describes organizational communication as an academic discipline that consists of an intellectual history, textbooks, courses, degrees, etc… The second way to describe organizational communication as a way of describing organizations. Under this perspective, organizational communication is used to describe and/or explain how organizations functions. Lastly, organizational communication is a specific set of behaviors that is exhibited within an organization itself. People talk and interact with one another, which is a form of organizational communication, and through these interactions we actually create the phenomenon that is an organization.
• In this book, the authors define “organizational communication” as the process whereby an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another an organizational stakeholder (or group of stakeholders) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages.
• The history of organizational communication is a complicated one. Starting with the industrial revolution and the evolution of the modern corporation, the idea of organizational communication was ultimately crystalized in the 1950s and 1960s. During the early years, most of the research conducted examining communication within an organization was conducted from a social scientific perspective, but starting in the 1980s with the work of Linda Putman, organizational communication research has become more diversified to include both interpretive and critical perspectives.
Exercises
1. Find two examples of how you could use the term “organizational communication” for each Stanley Deetz’s three conceptualizations of the term. Did you find this process easy or difficult? Why?
2. Look at the definition of organizational communication provided in this book. Do you think this definition accurately reflects the nature of organizational communication? Why or why not?
3. Since the 1960s, which decade do you think has been the most important in the transformation of the field of organizational communication? Why? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Communication/1.04%3A_History_of_Organizational_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain what is meant by the social-scientific approach to organizational communication.
• Explain what is meant by the interpretive approach to organizational communication.
• Explain what is meant by the critical approach to organizational communication.
In Table 1.3 you saw the basic history or of organizational communication and how it’s grown into the academic discipline that it is today. The earliest years in the development of the field were predominantly marked by either thought pieces written about organizational communication or were driven by social-scientific/quantitative research. If you read Table 1.3 carefully, starting in the early 1980s new voices began emerging in the field of organizational communication brining both qualitative/interpretive and then rhetorical/critical approaches to the study of organizational communication. In this section, we are going to examine each of these different methodological traditions and the types of research questions commonly posed in each. As authors, we find it very important to have this discussion in the first chapter because you’ll come in contact with all three methodological approaches as you read this book. We want you, as readers, to be able to critically analyze the research we are presenting and understand how the different methodological traditions impact our understanding of the phenomenon that is organizational communication. To help with this purpose, we are going to explore the two major branches of organizational communication: social-scientific/quantitative and qualitative (both interpretive and critical).
Social-Scientific/Quantiative
The first major tradition in organizational communication is the social-scientific/quantitative tradition to organizational communication. The bulk of the early work in organizational communication either focused on prescriptive methods for business speaking or came from outside the field of communication studies until the 1960s. The 1960s represented a period when the field started to solidify and create professional boundaries to differentiate itself from business, psychology, sociology, and speech. During these early years of the field, the goal of organizational communication research was very scientific. In essence, researchers would use theory to form a series of hypotheses, the researchers would then test these hypotheses through experimental observation, and the outcomes of the experimental observations would help the researchers revise the original theory, which inevitably lead to new research questions and hypotheses. The predominant research methodology available at the time stemmed out of the world of social psychology and was based in statistics. As noted in the two studies examining organizational methodology discussed in the history of organizational communication, the bulk of research conducted today is still from this social-scientific or quantitative perspective.Spence, P. R., & Baker, C. R. (2007). State of the method: An examination of levels of analysis, methodology, representation, and setting in current organizational communication research. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 36, 111–124.,Wert-Gray, S., Center, C., Brashers, D. E., & Meyers, R. A. (1991). Research topics and methodological orientations in organizational communication: A decade in review. Communication Studies, 42, 141–154. For social scientists, there are three general avenues of research that are common: survey, experiments, and content analyses.
Survey Research in Organizational Communication
The first common type of social scientific method utilized in organizational communication is probably the most common in communication research as a whole, the survey. SurveysForm of social-scientific research based on a series of questions designed to measure individuals’ personality/communication traits, attitudes, beliefs, and/or knowledge on a given subject. involve a series of questions designed to measure individuals’ personality/communication traits, attitudes, beliefs, and/or knowledge on a given subject. Surveys are as popular as they are because you can get massive amounts of information from a wide array of people very quickly. However, one always has to question whether or not a survey is adequately using the right types of participants for a specific study. For example, using a group of college students to discuss workplace violence may not be very accurate because of the limited exposure your average undergraduate college student has in the work world. As such, you want to look for studies that utilize people who not in school and work for a living outside of the college environment if at all possible.
Experimental Research in Organizational Communication
The second type of common social-scientific/quantitative study conducted by communication researchers is the experiment. Like in the physical sciences, the goal of an experimentForm of social-scientific research based on the manipulation of some facet of a participant’s experience to determine how that participant responds. is to manipulate some facet of a participant’s experience to determine how that participant responds. For example, in a study examining the impact that an initial handshake has on potential interviewers, you could have a trained confederate (someone the participants do not know is working for the researcher) enter into a potential job interview and shake the hands in an aggressive, average firmness, or weak fashion. The goal of this potential study would be to determine if the interviewer’s experiences with the potential job candidate would differ based on the type of handshake he or she used at the beginning of an interview. In this hypothetical study, we, as the researchers, would manipulate the type of handshake an interviewer receives at the beginning of the interview in some kind of random fashion to ensure we are not accidentally biasing the results. Overall, experiments generally involve a lot of planning and time to pull-off competently.
Content Analysis in Organizational Communication
The final type of research conducted on the banner of social-scientific/quantitative research is the content analysis. A content analysisForm of social-scientific research based on taking a series of artifacts and numerically coding information contained within the artifacts to see if a discernible pattern emerges. involves taking a series of artifacts and numerically coding information contained within the artifacts to see if a discernible pattern emerges. First, we need to define what we mean by artifacts. In this sense of the word, artifacts are objects made by organizational members capturing communication attempts. For example, speeches of CEOs found on YouTube could be a video artifact or press releases from Fortune 500 corporations could be a different type of artifact. Second, we then numerically code these artifacts looking for specific details. For example, maybe we’re going to analyze speeches made by Fortune 500 CEOs looking for terms that resemble patriotic themes: patriotism, United States, duty, honor, America, etc… Our could would be to get a numerical count of this specific type of image. We could then also analyze the incidence of these themes across different organizational types: banking, automotive, etc… In this case, the goal would be to see if different types of organizations have CEOs who are more likely to invoke images of patriotism than other types of organizations.
For more information on conducting quantitative research, we recommend reading Wrench, Thomas-Maddox, Richmond, and McCroskey’s Quantitative Research Methods for Communication: A Hands-On Approach.Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach. New York: Oxford. The accompanying sidebar contains an example of a social-scientific/quantitative study in organizational communication.
Example of Quantiative/Social Scientific Research
Individual Differences in Managers’ Use of Humor: Subordinate
Perceptions of Managers’ Humor
By Brian J. Rizzo, Melissa Bekelja Wanzer, and Melanie Booth-Butterfield (1999)Rizzo, B. J., Wanzer, M. B., & Booth-Butterfield, M. (1999). Individual differences in managers’ use of humor: Subordinate perceptions of managers’ humor. Communication Research Reports, 16, 360–369.
In this study, Rizzo, Wanzer, and Booth-Butterfield set out to examine subordinates’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in the workplace. The researchers recruited 151 participants in introductory communication courses, graduate communication courses, and MBA courses. All participants were either current or past part-time (less than 40 hours per week) or full time (40 hours per week or more) employees of some organization.
The researchers used three mental measures in this study: Self and Manager Humor Orientation (individual’s use of humor in interpersonal interactions—was completed once for self and once for their manager), Humor Behaviors (Individual’s use of humor strategies in the workplace—was completed once for self and once for their manager), Manager Affect (degree to which a subordinate likes her or his manager), and Manager Effectiveness (degree to which a subordinate perceives her or his manager as effective).
The researchers had four hypotheses in this study (taken from page 362):
H1: High humor oriented individuals will report using more humorous behaviors in the workplace than low humor oriented individuals.
H2: Hugh humor oriented individuals will perceive more types of humorous behaviors as appropriate for their manager to use in the workplace than low humor oriented individuals.
H3: Subordinates perceptions of managers’ humor orientation will be positively associated with liking toward these managers.
H4: Employees’ perceptions of mangers’ humor orientation will be positively related to perceptions of managerial effectiveness.
The Results
First, employees who rated themselves as using large amounts of humor in their daily interactions with others used more humorous behaviors in the workplace than those individuals who did not rate themselves as humorous.
Second, employees who rated themselves as using large amounts of humor in their daily interactions with others believed that managers could use a wider array of humor strategies in the workplace than those individuals who did not rate themselves as humorous.
Third, employees’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in her or his interactions with others was positively related to a subordinate’s liking of that manager.
Lastly, employees’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in her or his interactions with others was positively related to a subordinate’s perception of the effectiveness of that manager.
In essence, all four of this study’s hypotheses were supported.
Qualitative
Research generally divides methods into two different epistemologies, or ways of knowing: social-scientific and humanistic. We’ve briefly discussed the first approach, social-science, in the previous section and we’re going to explore the nature of this humanistic way of knowing, which is generally referred to as qualitative research.Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach. New York: Oxford. Qualitative research is “It is at best an umbrella term covering an array of interpretive techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate, and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world.”Van Maanen, J. (1979). Reclaiming qualitative methods for organizational research: A preface. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 520–526, pg. 520. Because of the variety of different approaches available under the larger title “qualitative,” researchers often break discuss two different qualitative lines of inquiry: interpretive and critical.Fink, E. J., & Gantz, W. (1996). A content analysis of three mass communication research traditions: Social science, interpretive studies, and critical analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 114–134. We’ll explore each of these in the rest of this section.
Interpretive
Interpretive research is not an easy idea to nail down, so any discussion of what interpretive research is must start by clearly distinguishing this approach from the social scientific one. According to Amedeo P. Giorgi, the social-scientific (often referred to as positivistic research by qualitative researchers) method can be broken into six general parts:
1. Reductionistic, the goal is to reduce phenomena into operational definitions for easy of study;
2. Deterministic, the belief that outcomes and phenomena are the result of causes that can be duplicated;
3. Predictive, the general goal of scientific research is to predict behavior;
4. Observer independent, researchers attempt to be as objective as possible and avoid influencing the data;
5. Empirical, only data that can be observed or obtained from participants is worthy of analysis;
6. Repeatable, research results should be replicated by other researchers; and
7. Quantitative, all phenomena should be numerically measured.Giorgi, A. (1971). Phenomenology and experimental psychology, In A. Giorgi, W. F. Fischer, & R. Von Echartsberg (Eds.), Duquesne studies in phenomenological psychology (vol. 1, part 1). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Fundamentally, Giorgi believed that social-scientific researchers are asking fundamentally wrong questions. Instead of asking how a phenomena should be measured, Giorgi believed that researchers should ask, “What do the phenomena mean?”Giorgi, A. (1971). Phenomenology and experimental psychology, In A. Giorgi, W. F. Fischer, & R. Von Echartsberg (Eds.), Duquesne studies in phenomenological psychology (vol. 1, part 1). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, pg. 21. Put a different way, interpretive research focuses on “how people communicate in their own natural environments, when they are guided by their own personal objectives, how they give meaning to their communication, especially when they are using communication for those pragmatic objectives that determine and control day-to-day existence.”Chesebro, J. W., & Borisoff, D. J. (2008). Interpretive research. In J. S. Wrench, C. Thomas-Maddox, V. P. Richmond, and J. C. McCroskey (Eds.), Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach (pp. 449–486). New York, NY: Oxford, pg. 451. Let’s break this definition down into its functional parts.
Communicating in Natural Environments
The first major goal of interpretive research is the desire to see how people communicate in their natural environments. By natural environment, interpretive researchers do not want to view people engaging in communication within a laboratory setting. Instead, interpretivists want to observe people going about their daily communicative routines with their coworkers in a fashion that resembles as normal a communication experience as humanly possible.Yanow, D., & Ybema, S. (2009). Interpretivism in organizational research: On elephants and blind researchers. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 39–60). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Interpretivists believe that communication that in one’s natural environment will be unforced and will resemble how people actually communicate instead of how they perceive their communication to be, which is an inherent problem with some social-scientific research (especially surveys).
Guided by Personal Objectives
Second, interpretivists want to observe participants as they go about their daily lives doing what they normally would do and not alter their behavior for the researcher(s). One of the inherent differences between social-scientific research and interpretivistic research is that interpretivists do not go into the research encounter expecting to “see” anything specific. Social-scientists set specific hypotheses, determine how to test those hypotheses, and test the hypotheses. By this purpose, social-scientists go into a research encounter expecting to “see” something very specific. Interpretivists, on the other hand, go into a research encounter to observe and learn and ultimately see what their participants show them. Instead of going in with a pre-set agenda, interpretivists watch how people behave when the participants are guided by their own personal objectives and not those of the researcher.
People Giving Meaning to their Own Communication
Lastly, interpretivists are interested in how people understand their own communicative behavior and give meaning to their own communicative behavior. Humans generally behave and communicate for a variety of reasons, and thus understand and prescribe a variety of meanings to their communication. An interpretivist is less concerned with attaching some kind of meaning to a researcher participant than they are with understanding how that research participant views her or his own communicative behavior. As an outsider looking in, we can ascribe all kinds of incorrect attributions to an individual’s communicative behavior. It’s only when we get inside a communicative interaction from the participant’s point-of-view, that we can truly begin to understand why someone is communicating a specific manner and how that communication is important to her or him. In the organizational environment, maybe a researcher is interested in understanding how people view the balance between their work lives and their personal lives. It’s only after someone engages with people that a researcher can start to develop a better idea of how people view this phenomenon of work-life balance answering the question, “what does this phenomena mean?” Renee Cowan and Mary F. Hoffman did just this in their study examining how people view their work and personal lives in the accompanying sidebar.
For more information on conducting interpretive research, we recommend reading Lindlof and Taylor’s (2002)Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. book on interpretive research methods in communication.
Example of Interpretive/Qualitative Research
The Flexible Organization: How Contemporary Employees Construct the Work/Life Border
By Renee Cowan and Mary F. Hoffman (2007)Cowan, R., & Hoffman, M. F. (2007). The flexible organization: How contemporary employees construct the work/life border. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 8, 37–44.
In this study, the researchers set out to qualitatively examine how individuals manage their work lives and their personal lives with each other. Specifically, the researcher had one overarching research question in this study:
RQ1: How do employees of today define the terms flexibility and permeability in regard to work/life balance?
The researchers recruited 30 participants. All of the participants had to be at least 18 years of age and currently employed in an organization that provided benefits (e.g., retirement, stock options, health care, etc.). 99 percent of the sample were permanent employees, 44 percent were female and 56 percent were male. 70 percent of the sample was married and 76 percent of the sample had children.
All of the participants agreed to take part in an interview about their “perceptions and definitions of work/life balance, what balancing work/life issues meant and looked like in their lives, what their company did that made it easy or difficult to balance work/life issues, and any stories they had heard about people using work/life benefits in their company” (p. 39). Ultimately, the 30 interviews generated 112 single-spaced pages of transcribed text for analysis.
Overall, the researchers found that the terms “flexibility” and “permeability” were used interchangeably by the participants. Furthermore, these issues can be broken into four distinct themes: time, space, evaluation, and compensation.
Time Flexibility. Employees wanted to have flexibility in how their time was calculated by the organizations. This included flex time issues (instead of coming in at 8 and leaving at 4, you could come in at 10 and leave at 6), and the possibility of examining time over a larger period (not always counting up 40 hours within one work week, but averaged over the entire year).
Space Flexibility. Employees saw space issues as a two prong construct: physical space and mental space. Physical space flexibility is the notion that individuals should have the ability to telecommute and work from home when capable. Mental space is the notion that individuals should be allowed to think about work at home and think about home at work.
Evaluation Flexibility. Employees believed that the evaluation of one’s work should be based on the quality of the work itself and not on the amount of time an individual spends in the office doing the work.
Compensation Flexibility. Employees believed that their quality work should receive extra financial compensation (bonuses, increase in pay, etc.) or time compensation (increased number of vacation days, telecommuting options, etc.).
Critical
Traditional social-scientific research wants to make hypotheses and test them interpretive research wants to study how people communicate in a natural environment and understand that communication. Critical research is less interested with explaining or understanding organizational communication than it is with “analyzing values and judging, or criticizing, them.”Fink, E. J., & Gantz, W. (1996). A content analysis of three mass communication research traditions: Social science, interpretive studies, and critical analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 114–134, pg. 115. As the word “critical” entails, critical research is about seeing how society, or for our purposes an organization, exists in a world of power imbalances. Within most groups there are those with power and those without power. Critical researchers strongly believe that those with power purposefully prevent those without from achieving equality. As such, “critical scholarship tends to stand on the side of ‘weaker’ parties when studying or commenting upon relations of dominance.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 61. According to Mats Alvesson and Karen L. Ashcroft, critical theory entails four specific parts:
1. The critical questioning of ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities (what might be called ‘the 4 I’s’) deemed dominate, in some way harmful, and/or unchallenged.
2. Through some form of denaturalization and/or rearticulation.
3. With the aim of inspiring social reform in the presumed interest of the less-privileged and/or majority—particularly resistance to ‘the 4 I’s’ that tend to fix people into unreflectively receiving and reproducing limited ideas, selves, motives, and practices.
4. While also maintaining at least some degree of recognition that ‘real’ (i.e., lived and living) conditions constrain choice and action in the contemporary organizational world. Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 63.
Questioning the 4 I’s
The first part of critical theory identified by Alvesson and Ashcroft is the idea that critical theory helps people question ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that appear dominant and are in some way problematic.Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Let’s look at these in turn. First, we have ideologiesThe beliefs, myths, and doctrines that guide an individual, group, or organization., which are the beliefs, myths, and doctrines that guide an individual, group, or organization. From the critical theorists perspective, they want to examine whether or not these ideologies that have been developed within an organization are fundamentally harmful (especially to workers). Furthermore, critical theorists question if specific ideologies have are unchallenged. By unchallenged, we mask whether or not a specific ideology is allowed to be pervasive and no questions the ideology or where it came from and how it stays. Often organizational leaders create ideologies that are inherently problematic for workers. If workers never question these ideologies, they’ll stay in place for years or decades without ever being challenged. Critical theorists attempt to look at a variety of ideologies that exist (and get communicated) within an organization in an attempt to shed the light on how ideologies function to keep workers subjugated by management.
Second, critical theorists examine various institutions that are dominant in society and examine them to see if they are harmful for the general worker. In fact, it’s this category of critical examination that really focuses its attention specifically on how modern organizations are institutions that attempt to create structures that keep workers subjugated. We’ll talk more about this idea in Chapter 4.
Third, critical theorists examine various interests to see if they are harmful to workers and remain unchallenged. By interestsWhether or not an individual (or group of individuals) has a clear advantage or advancement of a personal or group agenda that is not necessarily clearly articulated to everyone within an organization., we are specifically referring to whether or not an individual (or group of individuals) has a clear advantage or advancement of a personal or group agenda that is not necessarily clearly articulated to everyone within an organization. One of the more interesting and seedy aspects of modern organizational life is the issue of unarticulated or hidden interests that people (especially those in leadership positions) may have. Critical theorists attempt to seek out these interests and bring them to the light of day in an effort to show workers how they are being manipulated to help people in power achieve these interests. Furthermore, often the interests of those with power are not the same as those without the power.
Lastly, critical researchers attempt to examine various identities that could be harmful or under-challenged. For critical purposes, identityThe state of being or believing that you are the same person or thing described or claimed by those with power. refers to the state of being or believing that you are the same person or thing described or claimed by those with power. Under this premise, workers are often labeled with specific identities that are designed to subjugate the workers. For example, someone may be told that if he or she was a “good worker” then he or she wouldn’t question having to put in 50 of 60 hours a week at a job. Inherent in this use of “good worker” is often the veiled threat that bad workers get fired and good workers have prospects at getting promoted. As such, workers often adopt either the good or bad worker identity without ever realizing that it is a tool of managerial control.
Denaturalization and/or Rearticulation
After identifying relevant ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities, a critical researcher must “articulate an alternative position that challenges conventional representations and critically probes (rather than taking at face value) the reported views and experiences of research participants.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 64. In essence, the critical theorist attempts to show individuals that the specific ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that they believe are steadfast and unchangeable, are in fact creations of people in power and can be altered. Part of this process involves the critical theorists clearly articulating a new vision for ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that are more egalitarian or worker friendly.
Inspiring Social Reform
Further the notion of rearticulating ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities is taking those changes to a more societal level. The goal of a critical theorist is to not just notice problems that exist in society but to help people change the power imbalances that exist. Part of this process is helping people see new ideas, selves, motives, and practices. In the organizational context, the goal is to emancipate workers or “break away from structures and ideologies that tend to constrain forms of consciousness into prespecified routes that stifle imagination.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 64.
Constraining Choice and Action
While it would be wonderful if modern organizations could be utopian enterprises where everyone was truly equal, critical theorists must also realize that overly revolutionary or radical perspectives on organizing and the modern workplace may not be realistic or helpful.Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Instead, critical theorists should focus the real lives and experiences that people in modern organizations have. This isn’t to say that critical theorists must always be strictly “realistic,” but rather critical scholarship “seeks to acknowledge how realizing ideals such as class, gender, race, and ecological justice may have drastic consequences for the material functioning of organizations alongside effects on member subjectivities.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 65.
Overall, critical theory provides a very interesting and specific proactive perspective on organizational communication scholarship. For more information on conducting rhetorical/critical research, we recommend reading either Foss’ (2004)Foss, S. K. (2004). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice (3rd ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. or Swartz (1996)Swartz, O. (1996). Conducting socially responsible research: Critical theory, neo-pragmatism, and rhetorical inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. books on rhetorical/critical research methods in communication.
Example of Rhetorical/Critical Scientific Research
The Communicational Basis of the Organizational Text as Macroactor:
A Case Study of Multilevel Marketing Discourse
By Walter J. Carl (2005)Carl, W. J. (2005). The communicational basis of the organizational text as macroactor: A case study of multilevel marketing discourse. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 6, 21–29.
In this study, Carl wanted to examine a macroactor (an individual who is empowered to speak on behalf of a large number of people). In this specific analysis, the macroactor was a letter to the editor in Forbes magazine by Ken McDonald the managing director of Quixtar, Inc. Prior to this letter, Karen J. Bannan had written an article in Forbes magazine titled “Amway.com” discussing how the notorious multi-level marketing firm Amway was the sister company of Quixtar along with the perils of multi-level marketing. McDonald’s letter in response to the Bannan letter to the editor took issue with the article because it “’did not provide an accurate picture of the company,’ citing an inaccurate understanding of the corporate relationship among Amway, Quixtar, and Alticor, unfair representations of Quixtar business meetings as ‘cult-like,’ and only publishing accounts from dissatisfied ‘Independent Business Owners’” (p. 23).
The purpose of Carl’s analysis of McDonald’s letter was to demonstrate that the letter is a clear piece of organizational rhetoric. While the organization attempts to hide its actions in the voice of a single individual speaking out, the very act of this letter is clearly a message with backing from the institution itself. To aid in the development of his argument, McDonald examined four major issues “(1) the features of the text that make it a letter to the editor and not, for example, a press release or news story or some other kind of text [company logo, date, salutation, name of author, author identity, etc].; (2) the issue of authorship and its authorizing function [the signature on the letter with the company’s logo makes the letter act as a function of the organization itself]; (3) the presuppositions that, thought absent, are necessary for the text to ‘make sense’ to its audience [the primary presupposition is that the reporter did nto provide a fair, accurate, and objective account of Quixtar]; and (4) how the text is constructed to orient to these presuppositions and to build up a rhetorical case imputing motive to Forbes magazine [the letter systematically explains why Quixtar felt the need to respond]” (pp. 23–24).
Comparing the Three Types
Now that we’ve explained how each of the three methodological traditions approaches organizational communication, let’s see how the three compare when we put them side-by-side. Table \(PageIndex{1}\) provides an explanation for how the three methodological approaches differ in their understanding and approach to organizational communication.
Table \(PageIndex{1}\): How the Three Methods Compare Side-by-Side
Issue Methodological Traditions
Social Science Interpretive Critical
Basic Goal The goal of social scientific research is to classify organizational communicative phenomena, measure them, and construct statistical models to explain the phenomena. The goal of interpretive research is a complete, detailed description of the organizational communication phenomenon examined. The goal of critical research is to examine how organizations exists in a world of power imbalances.
View of Organizations Organizations are naturally existing phenomena open to description, prediction, and control. Organizations are social entities with day-to-day talk, rites, rituals, and stories that develop its own unique culture that has aspects that are similar to other cultures. Organizations are inherently places of power imbalances. Workers are typically subjugated by superiors who have implicit or expressed power.
Study Purpose Social Scientific researchers have a very clear idea what they are examining at the start of a research study. Interpretive researchers generally only have a vague idea of what they are looking for at the start of a research study and prefer to view organizational phenomena from the viewpoint of their participants. Critical researchers generally select artifacts from organizations or about organizations and analyze those artifacts in an effort to see how power is communicated and utilized within an organization.
Research Design Social Scientific research designs are very carefully planned before the data are ever collected. Interpretive research designs develop over the course of data collection. Critical researchers can follow very stringent ways of analyzing artifacts or create the ways of analysis while examining the data.
Tools of Research Scientific/quantitative researchers use a variety of measurement devices (e.g., questionnaires) as the primary tool of data collection. Interpretive/qualitative researchers collect their data themselves through interviews and observation, so the researcher is the primary tool of data collection. Rhetorical/critical researchers do not need data sources beyond the act (an actual communication event) or artifact (the record of a communication event) being analyzed.
Writing Style Numbers and statistics are the primary forms of data. Writing tends to be very formal. Words, pictures, and artifacts are the primary forms of data. Writing tends to be very narrative. Acts and artifacts are the primary forms of data. Writing tends to be narrative.
Research Scope Social Scientific research tends to be more succinct, quickly conducted, and can be generalized to larger groups than the sample utilized in the study. Interpretive research tends to be more detailed, time consuming, and limited to the group the researcher studied. Critical research tends to be detailed in its analysis, but the findings should help researchers understand organizational communication in an effort to move towards egalitarian power structures.
View of Research Social Scientific research is more objective and you are able to achieve a more detached view of the communication phenomena. Interpretive research is more subjective and you are able to achieve an insider’s point-of-view of the communication phenomena. Critical research is also highly subjective to the individual point of view of the critic. As such, critics with differing political persuasions will view the same acts and artifacts in differing ways.
Purpose of Theory Scientific/quantitative researchers view theory as the guiding metaphor for research. As such, research starts with theoretical ideas, poses hypotheses, tests them, and makes revisions to the theory. Interpretive/qualitative data collection ends with the creation of hypotheses and the generation of theory. Theory can either guide a critical study or be arrived at through the process of analyzing an artifact.
Critiques A lot of social scientific research is prescription based and looks at skills people need to have in modern organizations. However, the researcher is ultimately responsible for which skills are analyzed. Furthermore, there tends to be little research examining skills interculturally. Interpretive research is often very subjective. Furthermore, there is a serious debate as to whether the information gained from one organization can or should impact how we view another organization. Critical research is often very subjective and open to interpretation based on one’s political persuasion. Furthermore, critical research tends to err on the side of those without power and are in the minority, so the innate political bias can be problematic for some.
Source: Wrench, J. S. (in press). Communicating within the modern workplace: Challenges and prospects. In J. S. Wrench (Ed.), Workplace communication for the 21st century: Tools and strategies that impact the bottom line: Vol. 1. Internal workplace communication. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
At this point, you may be wondering about the state of organizational communication as a field today. Today there are still a wide range of scholars investigating organizational communication from a social-scientific, interpretive, and critical vantage point. In a 2007 article by Patric Spence and Colin Baker, the researchers set out to examine what types of methodologies modern organizational communication scholars were using. Spence, Patric, R., & Baker, C. R. (2007). State of the method: An examination of level of analysis, methodology, representation and setting in current organizational communication research. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 36, 111–124. Using a period from 1998 to 2004, the researchers located 153 articles discussing organizational communication in major communication journals published by regional, national, and international communication associations. Figure 1.4 demonstrates the basic findings from this study.
Source: Patric Spence & C. R. Baker, “State of the Method: An Examination of Level of Analysis, Methodology, Representation and Setting in Current Organizational Communication Research,” Journal of the Northwest Communication Association 36 (2007): 111-124.
Key Takeaways
• The social scientific approach to organizational communication is based on the notion that researchers start by desiring to test a specific theoretical idea about organizational communication, which leads to specific hypotheses being made, data is the gathered and interpreted, and lastly the data leads to further generalizations that help to refine the original theory. Social scientists typically conduct research using surveys, experiments, or content analysis that can be analyzed using statistical reasoning.
Exercise
1. Create an experiment testing the impact that verbal, nonverbal, or mediated messages have on ensuring employee understanding about a new organizational policy. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Communication/1.05%3A_Approaches_to_Organizational_Communication_Research.txt |
Real World Case Study
Around the world this nonprofit has many different names: Albania, Rruga Sesam, Egypt, Alam Simsim; India, Galli Galli Sim Sim; Indonesia, Jalan Sesama; Israel, Rechov Sumsum; Palestine, Shara’a Simsim; Serbia, Ulica Sezam; South Africa, Takalani Sesame; and The United States of America, Sesame Street. In all, there are 20 versions of Sesame Street being produced through the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. The goal of the Sesame Workshop is to improve the lives in children and their societies in four specific domains: health & wellness; respect & understanding; literacy & numeracy; and emotional well being.
In the 2006 documentary The World According to Sesame Street, the filmmakers introduce you to a world coping with violence (Kosovo), AIDS (South Africa), poverty (India), and gender inequality (Egypt). And all over the globe, the Sesame Workshop teaches students their alphabets and numbers because the Sesame Workshop realizes that the only way to ensure a child’s future is through education.
1. Of the four types of organizations discussed by Blau and Scott (1962), which type of organization is the Sesame Workshop? Why?
2. The Sesame Workshop is constantly attempting to address local issues with their international programs. If you were going to create a Sesame Street for corporations, what lessons do you think they need to learn?
3. If you were producing a new Sesame Street in Iraq, what kind of inputs from the environment do you think you would need?
Real World Case Study
Erik Lie and Randall Heron, two University of Iowa associate professors in finance, conducted a research study in 2005 that determined that many Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) were manipulating their stock-option accounting rules in order to increase their annual salaries. In fact, Lie and Heron found that upwards of 29 percent of all public corporations have major stock-option irregularities. Basically, organizations were delaying their stock paperwork for months in an attempt to look back and select the most lucrative dates for reporting, which is a violation of federal law. Lie and Heron found a way to actually determine whether or not an organization was perpetuating this type of fraud. When the researchers realized what they had found, they contacted the United States’ Securities & Exchange Commission and showed The Wall Street Journal how to use options records to look for fraud.
As a result of their research, Lie and Heron established a consulting firm that examines whether accounting irregularities are simple paper-work mistakes or something more fraudulent. The two make more than \$400 an hour examining corporations’ accounting records and working with plaintiffs’ lawyers as expert witnesses. In a world where CEOs are often being led out of their corporations in handcuffs, organizations and lawyers are forced to take Lie and Heron’s research findings very seriously.
1. While this specific case study examines accounting problems, do you think there are any communication problems that can lead to lawsuits?
2. Do you think a university researcher should be able to financially profit from her or his research?
3. While more than 2,000 organizations have been found to have options irregularities, Lie and Heron suspect that some of those organizations may be innocent. Could putting their research out into the public have a negative effect on innocent organizations? Do you think putting innocent organizations under more scrutiny in order to find guilty organizations justifiable?
Real World Case Study
On October 9th 2007, Harris Interactive found that in the United States (32%) and Spain (28%) the most important aspect of one’s job was their salary. While salary was found to be important elsewhere in Europe, Great Britain (33%), France (30%), Italy (29%), and Germany (25%); Europeans found the interesting nature of their jobs more important: Great Britain (36%), France (44%), Italy (37%), and Germany (44%). Whereas, in the United States (28%) and Spain (25%), lower percentages of people found the interesting nature of their job to be the most important.
The study also asked the international participants to what degree they liked their current Bosses. In the United States (65%), Great Britain (56%), and France (52%), the majority of individuals polled liked their bosses. However, in Italy (48%), Spain (34%), and Germany (47%), the majority of individuals polled did not like their bosses.
1. Why do you think individuals in the United States and Spain consider salary more important than the interesting nature of their job?
2. Why do you think individuals in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany find the interesting nature of their job more important than their salary?
3. Does it surprise you that individuals in the United States are considerably more satisfied with their bosses than the other countries polled?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. Joana works for an organization that prides itself on openness and transparency. However, the organization tends to actually insulate itself from what’s going on with its various competitors, its local community, and even governmental regulations. Based on this information, what can you say accurately about Joana’s organizations relationship with its external environment.
1. the organization has open boundaries
2. the organization has closed boundaries
3. the organization has a tall hierarchy
4. the organization has a flat hierarchy
5. the organization has limited outputs
2. Stewart sat down with a set of spreadsheet data and quickly realized that if his coffee shop was going to last the summer it really need to spend more time focusing on business from tourists because they were his only real potential for growth. Which of Edward Gross’s organizational goals is Stewart faced with?
1. output
2. adaptation
3. management
4. motivation
5. positional
3. Diana works for an organization that on the surface says it’s very creative and always looking for new ways of doing business. However, every time Diana brings up a new idea she’s immediately shot down with a “but we’ve always done it this way” attitude from her management. Which of the dialectical tensions of control is Diana facing?
1. systemization vs. autonomy
2. agreement vs. dissent
3. conventionality vs. innovation
4. organization vs. self-focused
5. organizational vs. individual rights
4. Who is considered to be the Father of Organizational Communication?
1. Elton Mayo
2. Chester Barnard
3. Lee Thayer
4. Fredric M. Jablin
5. W. Charles Redding
5. Which of the three methodologies used by organizational communication scholars uses survey, experiments, and content analyses to examine organizational communication phenomena?
1. social-scientific
2. qualitative
3. interpretive
4. critical
5. rhetorical
1. b
2. b
3. c
4. e
5. a | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Communication/1.06%3A_Chapter_Exercises.txt |
Thumbnail: Ethics sign. (CC BY-SA 4.0 International; Madhumathi S V).
02: Organizational Communication Ethics
In this chapter we examine how the philosophical world of ethics can be applied to organizational communication. When people hear the word “ethics” used in modern society, many different images and incidents quickly come to mind. Sadly, the 21st Century has already been plagued with many ethical lapses in the business sector. Turn on any major global news station, newspaper, magazine, or podcast and you’re likely to hear about some business that is currently in a state of crisis due to lapses in ethical judgment. Table 2.1 contains a short list of organizations and their various ethical lapses in judgment.
Table \(1\): Modern Ethical Lapses
Organization Ethical Lapse
Arthur Andersen Accounting Fraud & Shredding documents wanted in a criminal investigation
Boeing Industrial Espionage
Bridgestone-Firestone Delaying a recall of defective tires
Catholic Church Sex Abuse and cover up
Coca-Cola Taking groundwater from local farmers in India
Enron Accounting Fraud
Halliburton Overbilling for products and services
Martha Stewart, Inc. CEO committed insider trading with her sell of her ImClone stock.
McDonald’s 8 individuals provided winning game pieces from McDonald’s Monopoly game to family and friends.
Merrill Lynch Lying to investors
Napster Digital copyright violations
Parmalat Italian dairy company’s fraudulent accounting practices
Sanlu Group Co. Chinese based company knowing distributes tainted baby formula.
Tyco CEO was caught embezzling funds.
US Military Prisoner Abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan
WorldCom Accounting Fraud
Xerox Exaggerating Revenues
In this chapter, four distinct areas of ethical understanding will be explored: nature of ethics, business ethics, communication ethics, and organizational communication ethics.
2.02: Nature of Ethics
Learning Objectives
• Define the term “ethics” and how it relates to both means and ends.
• Explain the four different ethical frameworks discussed in the ethical matrix.
• Differentiate among the eleven philosophical perspectives of ethics and how they apply to both business ethics and communication ethics.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1963)The Oxford English Dictionary. (1963). Oxford, Britain: At the Clarendon Press., the word “ethicsThe philosophical study and evaluation of the means and ends of human behavior.” is derived from the Greek ethos or the nature or disposition of a culture. Ethics is further characterized as both a field of study concerned with moral principles and the moral principles that govern or influence human behavior. Parhizgar and Parhizgar (2006)Parhizgar, K. D., & Parhizgar, R. (2006). Multicultural business ethics and global managerial moral reasoning. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. define ethics as the:
…critical analysis of cultural values to determine the validity of their vigorous rightness or wrongness in terms of two major criteria: truth and justice. Ethics is examining the relation of an individual to society, to the nature, and or to God. How do people make ethical decisions? They are influenced by how they perceive themselves in relation to goodness and/or excellence. (p. 77)
Based on this definition, the study of ethics is “concerned with cultural value systems that are operable, either with intending to do something or actually doing something in the realm of goodness” (Parhizgar & Parhizgar, 2006, p. 77). As we shall see in this chapter, making this determination of “goodness” is not always black and white. To help illustrate this point, we will now examine four scenarios:
1. In an effort to win a new client for your business, you deliver a presentation about how your business is more suited for the client than your competitors. You develop a well-honed argument based on the facts at hand. Ultimately, your business is able to really help the client expand her or his market share.
2. In an effort to win a new client for your business, you lie to a prospective client during a presentation. The client is impressed with your presentation and decides to sign a contract with your business. Unfortunately, the lying catches up with you and you end up doing the client more harm than good and the client starts to lose part of her or his market share.
3. In an effort to win a new client for your business, you lie to a prospective client during a presentation. The client is impressed with your presentation and decides to sign a contract with your business. Even though you lied to your client, your business is ultimately able to really help the client expand her or his market.
4. In an effort to win a new client for your business, you deliver a presentation about how your business is more suited for the client than your competitors. You develop a well-honed argument based on the facts at hand. After the client signs a contract with your business, you discover that one of your competitors is better suited for the client’s specific interests. Ultimately, your business ends up doing your client more harm than good and the client starts to lose part of her or his market share.
When examining these four ethical scenarios, you’ll notice that each scenario can be broken down into two clear parts: means and ends. According to McCroskey, Wrench, and Richmond (2003)McCroskey, J. C., Wrench, J. S., & Richmond, V. P. (2003). Principles of public speaking. Indianapolis, IN: The College Network. “meansComponent of ethical analysis where one examines the tools or behaviors that an individual or group of individuals employ to achieve a desired outcome.” are the tools or behaviors that one employs to achieve a desired outcome, and “endsComponent of ethical analysis where one examines the outcomes that an individual or group of individuals desire to achieve.” are those outcomes that one desires to achieve. Both “means” and “ends” can be evaluated as either good or bad. Remember, the definition of ethics by Parhizgar and Parhizgar (2006) involves the intention to behave or actual behavior in the realm of goodness. McCroskey (2006)McCroskey, J. C. (2006). An introduction to rhetorical communication: A Western rhetorical perspective (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. takes the idea of ethics one step further and explains that examining the intent of the behavior is only half of the ethical equation. McCroskey believes that examining the “goodness” of the outcome of the behavior is also important when examining ethics. McCroskey’s (2006) ethical frame work, which was later expanded upon by McCroskey, Wrench, and Richmond (2003), can be seen as the combination of “good vs. bad means” and “good vs. bad ends” (Figure 2.1).
Good Means—Good End—Ethical Behavior
The first ethical dilemma discussed earlier is an example of a “good” mean leading to a “good” end, or what is termed ethical behaviorComponent of the ethical matrix where an individual employs good means that lead to a good end. in the ethical matrix. In this case, the presenter developed a clear argument based on facts in an attempt to persuade a client (mean). As a result of signing on with the presenter’s company, the client increased her or his share of the market (end). In essence, the presenter had a good mean (persuasive argument) that lead to a good end (increased market share). Behavior that contains both a good mean and a good end is considered ethical behavior.
Bad Means—Bad End—Unethical Behavior
In the second ethical dilemma, we have an example of a “bad” mean leading to a “bad” end, or what is termed unethical behaviorComponent of the ethical matrix where an individual employs bad means that lead to a bad end. in the ethical matrix. Specifically, in order to gain business, the presenter lied to the client (mean). Unfortunately, after the client was duped into signing with the presenter’s company, the client lost part of the market share he or she had before getting involved with the presenter’s company (end). In this case, the presenter had a bad mean (lied to client) that lead to a bad end (decreased market share). When a bad mean leads to a bad end, the behavior is considered unethical.
The first two quadrants in the ethical matrix are obvious and are easily discerned in the world of business. Often times, however, determining the ethical nature of behavior is not as clear as the first two examples. The next two examples provide the last two variations of means and ends combinations.
Bad Means—Good End—Machiavellian Ethic
In the third example, there was a “bad” mean that lead to a “good” end, or what is termed the Machiavellian ethicComponent of the ethical matrix where an individual employs bad means that lead to a good end. in the ethical matrix. In this case, the presenter purposefully lied to the client in an effort to sign the client. After the client signed with the presenter’s business, the client’s share of the market increased. Here we have a situation where there was a bad mean (lied to client) that lead to a good end (increased market share). When a bad mean leads to a good end, we refer to this as the Machiavellian ethic. According to Wrench, Thomas-Maddox, Richmond, and McCroskey (2008)Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Quantitative methods for communication researchers: A hands on approach. New York: Oxford University Press., the term “Machiavellian ethic” derives its name from:
…Niccolò Machiavelli [who] believed that the ends justify the means. Machiavelli’s greatest work, The Prince, written in 1513, created much controversy because Machiavelli wrote that princes should retain absolute control of their lands and should use any means necessary to accomplish this end, including deceit. This notion was so outlandish that Pope Clement VIII described it as heretical. (pp. 27–28).
Some ethicists claim that a bad mean is always unethical while others claim that the end result is what matters when determining the goodness of a behavior.
Good Means—Bad End—Subjective Ethic
In the final ethical scenario, there was a “good” mean that lead to a “bad” end. In this case, the presenter developed a clear argument based on facts in an attempt to persuade a client (mean), or what is termed the subjective ethicComponent of the ethical matrix where an individual employs good means that lead to a bad end. in the ethical matrix. Unfortunately, after the client signed with the presenter’s company, the client lost part of the market share he or she had before getting involved with the presenter’s company (end). When a good mean (well-honed argument) leads to a bad end (decreased market share), we refer to this as the subjective ethic. This specific ethical stance is deemed “subjective” because the intent of the presenter is ultimately only known to the presenter. In essence, under the subjective ethic, there are two possible implications. In one case, the presenter used a perfectly good mean (well-honed and honest argument) to sign the client and then purposefully decreased the client’s market share; whereas in the second case the presenter used a good mean and the subsequent decreased market share was an unintended outcome. In the first case there is evidence of malice on the part of the presenter, and in the second case there are uncontrollable outcomes.
While a discussion of means and ends is a helpful way to frame ethical thoughts, there are many philosophical traditions that have explored the nature of ethics. Table 2.2 lists eleven major philosophical perspectives used to determine what is and what is not ethical.
Table \(1\): Major Ethical Perspectives
Ethical Perspective Basic Premises Business Application Communication Application
Altruism The standard is based on doing what is best or good for others. Ethical business behavior must be good for other people. Communicative behavior must lead to a good end for the receiver.
Categorical Imperative / Deontology The standard is based on the notion that moral duties should be obeyed without exception. This perspective is very clear on what is good and what is bad—no middle ground. There are clear business behaviors that are and are not ethical, so all individuals should avoid behaving unethically in business. There are some communicative behaviors that are never ethical (e.g., deception).
Communitarianism The standard is based on whether behavior helps to restore the social fabric of society. Business must behave in a manner that helps the social fabric of society. Communicative behavior must help the social fabric of society.
Cultural Relativism The standard is an individual’s cultural or legal system of values. These standards differ from culture to culture. 1) The law determines business ethics. Our legal system and cultures/co-cultures define ethical communication.
2) One’s nationalistic culture determines what is ethical.
3) One’s organizational culture determines what is ethical.
Ethical Egoism The standard is an individual’s self-interest. Emphasis is on how one should behave, or it encourages people to look out for their own self-interests. People in business should behave in whatever manner is most effective to achieve their self-interests. People should communicate in whatever manner is most effective for achieving their communicative goals.
Justice The standard is based on three principles of justice: 1) each person has a right to basic liberties; 2) everyone ought to be given the same chance to qualify for offices and jobs; and 3) when inequalities exist, a priority should be given to meeting the needs of the disadvantaged. Business decisions should be made on how the decisions will affect all relevant stakeholders equally. However, when stakeholders’ needs are in conflict, priority should be given to meeting the needs of those in subjugated stakeholder groups. People should communicate in a manner that is consistent with a range of stakeholders.
Nihilism Ethics innately prevent individuals from creating new ideas and values that challenge the status quo, so individuals of superior intellect should disavow any attempt by others to subject them to an ethical perspective. Smart business people should not be hampered in their behavior by any archaic or contemporary notions of good and bad business behavior. Smart communicators know that what matters is achieving one’s communicative goals, so they should not adhere to any prescribed notions of good and bad communicative behavior.
Psychological Egoism The standard is an individual’s self-interest. Emphasis is on how one actually behaves, or in everything we do is influenced by self-interested motives. People in business actually behave in whatever manner is most effective to achieve their self-interests. People actually communicate in whatever manner is most effective for achieving their communicative goals.
Social Relativism The standard is the interests of my friends, group, or community. People in business should behave in a manner that is consistent with the interests of their social networks and communities. People in business should communicate in a manner that is consistent with the interests of their social networks and communities.
Subjectivism The standard is based on an individual’s personal opinion of moral judgment. For this reason, perceptions of ethics differ from person to person. Whatever an individual in business determines is ethical for her or his behavior is ethical for that individual. Individual communicators determine what is and is not ethical from their own individual vantage point.
Utilitarianism The standard is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. People in business should behave in a manner that does the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. People should communicate in a manner that does the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.
The eleven philosophical traditions discussed in Table 2.2 help to illustrate how varied the perspectives on ethics have been by various philosophical thinkers (Lewis & Speck, 1990). Unfortunately, there is not one clear determination for what is or what is not ethical. The rest of this chapter will focus on three contexts where ethical thought has been applied: business, human communication, and organizational communication.
Key Takeaways
• The term “ethics” is a complicated one and has been defined by a wide range of scholars over the years. Ultimately, ethics is an examination of whether an individual uses “good” or “bad” means in an attempt to achieve a desired outcome that could be deemed “good” or “bad”. As simplistic as this may sound, actually studying and determining whether behavior is ethical can be a daunting task.
• The ethical matrix examines the intersections of means and ends by examining four distinct categories where ethical behavior may occur. First, behavior is deemed ethical if an individual uses a good mean to achieve a good end. Second, behavior is deemed unethical if an individual uses a bad mean to achieve a bad end. Third, behavior is referred to as the Machiavellian ethic when an individual uses a bad mean to achieve a good end. Lastly, when an individual uses a good mean to achieve a bad end, the behavior is referred to as the subjective ethic.
• There are many different philosophical traditions in the study of ethics. Table 2.2 above outlines eleven different ethical perspectives. This table is designed to briefly explain the philosophical perspective and then demonstrate how it can be applied in both a business context and to organizational communication specifically.
Exercises
1. Look at a recent copy of Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, or any other business-oriented publication. Find articles that specifically discuss ethical areas in modern business. How would you apply the definition of ethics to these articles?
2. Look at a recent copy of Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, or other business-oriented publication. Find examples of each of the four different types of ethical possibilities described by the ethical matrix.
3. Look at the list of major ethical lapses in business discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Analyze one of the ethical lapses listed using three of the eleven philosophical perspectives on ethics. How does filtering one’s ethical framework based on a specific philosophical perspective alter how you view those ethical lapses? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/02%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics/2.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Identify Cherrington and Cherrington’s (1992) typology of ethical lapses in business.
• Understand how Cherrington and Cherrington’s (1992) typology of ethical lapses applies to the modern workplace.
In Table 2.1 at the beginning of this chapter, we listed a number of ethical lapses that have been perpetrated by various organizations during the first decade of the 21st Century. Business ethics has become such a hot item that there have been over 1,000 books written with the phrase “business ethics” in the title since the 21st Century began. One could easily be misled into thinking that the idea of ethical business behavior and practices is a creation of the 21st Century, but the discussion of ethical and unethical business behavior is as old as the marketplace itself. As for the formal study of business ethics, the Center for Business Ethics was founded in 1976 at Bentley College, which then held the first academic conference on the subject in 1977 (Hoffman, 1982) Hoffman, W. M. (1982). Introduction. Journal of Business Ethics, 1, 79–80.. The information generated at that first conference was bundled into a text titled The Proceedings of the First National Conference on Business Ethics: Business Values and Social Justice—Compatibility or Contradiction?, which was the first business ethics text and an international best-selling book (Hoffman, 1977)Hoffman, W. M. (1977). The proceedings of the first national conference on business ethics: Business values and social justice—compatibility or contradiction? Waltham, MA: Center for Business Ethics.. In 1982, The Journal of Business Ethics began publishing four issues per year devoted to the analysis and understanding of ethics in modern organizations. We mention this brief history in order to illustrate that the idea of ethics and ethical violations in organizations is hardly a new academic endeavor or a new corporate phenomenon. To help us more fully understand the arena of business ethics, we will examine the most common ethical lapses in organizations and then we will discuss the current state of business ethics.
Typology of Ethical Lapses
While most organizations believe that their specific ethical dilemmas are unique, J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992) found that most organizations face very similar ethical dilemmasCherrington, J. O., & Cherrington, D. J. (1992). A menu of moral issues: One week in the life of the Wall Street Journal. Journal of Business Ethics, 11, 255–265.. Specifically, J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington found that most organizations will face a specific list of twelve different ethical issues.
1) Taking things that do not belong to you (stealing)
Whether stealing a package of Post-It ® notes for home use or skimming millions of dollars out of a corporate account, the first major ethical hurdle many organizations have to face is theft. Sometimes the issue of theft is not clear cut. For example, is using company time for personal business theft (J.O. Cherrington & D. J. Cherrington, 1992, p. 256)? One area that has recently received attention is the use work computers for non-work/personal business, such as playing games online or chatting on Facebook.
2) Saying things that you know are not true (lying)
Gregory House, main character on the hit Fox television series House, frequently utters his basic mantra, “Everyone lies.” Whether someone is lying to get a job, keep a job, or advance in a job, people often use deception as a method for enhancing occupational options. Some occupations even require deception as an integral part of the occupation (Shulman, 2007)Shulman, D. (2007). From hire to liar: The role of deception in the workplace. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.. Could a spy really commit espionage without a little deception?
3) False impressions (fraud and deceit)
For the purposes of the list of 12 ethical issues, J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992) differentiate between general lying and what they refer to as “false impressions.” False impressions occur when an individual purposefully represents herself or himself as something that he or she is not. The authors note, “Are you responsible for correcting others’ false impressions such as not accepting unearned praise or not letting others take the blame for your mistakes? … Are you being deceitful when you dress for success or pretend to be successful so clients will have confidence in you?” (p. 256).
4) Conflict of interest and influence buying (bribes, payoffs, & kickbacks)
According to Desjardins (2009)Desjardins, J. (2009). An introduction to business ethics (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill., a conflict of interest occurs when an individual’s personal interest in a business decision interferes with her or his professional judgment. Influence buying, on the other hand, is when an external party offers a bribe, payoff, or kickback to a decision maker in order to influence her or his decision.
5) Hiding versus divulging information
Information is one of the most important commodities in any organization. Ultimately, who has information and how they chose to disseminate that information can have very positive or negative ramifications for an organization and its stakeholders. For example, would you sell a product to a client, allowing them to believe that the version you are selling them is the latest technology, when you know a newer, better version is being released the following week? When is divulging information about your corporation “whistleblowing” and when is it “industrial espionage?”
6) Unfair advantage (cheating)
The idea of unfair advantage occurs when one person clearly has more power to control the outcome of a situation. For example, if you are dying of a disease and a business has the only cure, they hold all the cards. In essence, they have the ability to charge anything they want for their “magical pill” because the patient has no other options. Is this practice fair and ethical? Is it fair when CEOs are paid multi-million dollar bonuses when thousands of employees are being laid off? Is it fair when a CEO promotes her son, when the son is not the most qualified applicant in the pool? In all three of these situations, we see individuals taking advantage of the positions they hold.
7) Personal decadence
In the summer of 2008, the major players in the United States’ auto industry flew on their private jets to Washington, DC to ask for a multi-billion dollar bailout from the U.S. Congress. When most people think of personal decadence, this type of over-the-top self-indulgent behavior comes to mind. However, decadence can also include the process of decreasing the state of oneself. For example, in the business world there are many people who work slower than necessary, turn in sloppy work, use drugs or alcohol at work, and engage in many other behaviors that clearly impact an organization’s ability to perform.
8) Interpersonal abuse
While some actions within the organization, like personal decadence, impact the larger organization, other actions directed at coworkers have direct effects on personal performance. J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992) note that “physical violence, sexual harassment, emotional abuse, abuse of one’s position, racism, and sexism” are all examples of interpersonal abuse occurring in modern organizations (p. 256).
9) Organizational abuse
While interpersonal abuse includes targeted action from one member of an organization toward another member of the organization, organizational abuse stems from the organization toward the organizational members. For example, “inequity in compensation, performance appraisals that destroy self-esteem, transfers or time pressures that destroy family life, terminating people through no fault of their own, encouraging loyalty and not rewarding it, and creating the myth that the organization will benevolently protect or direct an employee’s career” are examples of how organizations abuse employees (J.O. Cherrington & D. J. Cherrington, 1992, p. 256–257).
10) Rule violations
Every person within a society or within an organization is governed by a long list of rules. Some of these rules come in the form or religious commandments and other rules come in the form of laws set down from the judicial or legislative system. Other rules are created for specific organizational settings and are handed down in the form of an employee manual. Are there ever legitimate reasons to break these rules? Are some rules more important than other rules? When the rules in one set of documents (workplace policies) contradicts the rules in another set of documents (religious tenants), which rules should be followed?
11) Accessory to unethical acts
An accessory to an unethical act is an individual who knows that an ethical violation has occurred by another individual. This knowledge of ethical violation could come either in the form of witnessing the ethical violation or somehow helping the individual commit the ethical violation. Ultimately, individuals who find themselves in the accessory position are faced with the ethical dilemma of whether or not to report the ethical violation.
12) Moral balance (ethical dilemmas)
The idea of “moral balanceThe philosophical debate that occurs when an individual is faced with the possibility that the outcome of her or his behavior or decisions will lead to a secondary outcome that is equally bad.” stems from a philosophical debate about individuals who are faced with the possibility that a good outcome of her or his behavior or decisions will lead to a secondary outcome that is bad. For example, an issue of moral balance is at stake when an organization wants to produce a new product that will save hundreds of thousands of lives (primary outcome), but will destroy the fragile ecosystem of a village and make it uninhabitable for the indigenous people who live there (secondary outcome). An inverse moral dilemma could also exist: if the company does not produce the product, the fragile ecosystem of the village will be saved (primary outcome) but hundreds of thousands of lives will not be saved by the product (secondary outcome). How do you decide which option is ethical? Unfortunately, these types of ethical decisions are often the most complicated to make.
Business Ethics Today
In the previous section, we introduced you to J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) typology of organizational ethical issues. In this section, we will examine how these different issues are played out in the modern organization. The following statics are derived from the annual Ethics & Workplace Survey conducted by Deloitte (2006Deloitte. (2006). Business ethics and compliance in the Sarbanes-Oxley era: A survey by Deloitte and Corporate Board Member magazine. Online Available at: www.deloitte.com, 2007Deloitte. (2007). Leadership counts: Deloitte & Touche USA 2007 Ethics & Workplace survey results. Online Available at: www.deloitte.com, 2008Deloitte. (2008). Transparency matters: Deloitte LLP 2008 Ethics & Workplace Survey results. Online Available at: www.deloitte.com, 2009Deloitte. (2009). Social networking and reputational risk in the workplace: Deloitte LLP 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey results. Online Available at: www.deloitte.com, 2010Deloitte. (2010). Trust in the workplace: Deloitte LLP 2010 Ethics & Workplace Survey results. Online Available at: www.deloitte.com).
1) Taking things that do not belong to you (stealing)
• 30% of employees believe there is nothing unethical about taking office supplies for personal use.
• 66% of employees see no ethical problems with taking a sick day when they are not actually ill.
• 72% of individuals see no ethical problems with using company technology for personal use in the workplace.
• 4% of employees admit to misusing company finances.
• 15% of employees use social networking websites for personal reasons during work hours.
2) Saying things that you know are not true (lying)
• 13% of employees have admittedly lied about the number of hours they have worked on a time-card.
3) False impressions (fraud and deceit)
• 6% of employees have admittedly taken credit for someone else’s work.
4) Conflict of interest and influence buying (bribes, payoffs, & kickbacks)
• 43% of full-time workers and 47% of part-time workers report that they make unethical workplace decisions because of financial rewards (e.g., bonus or salary increase).
5) Hiding versus divulging information
• 84% of respondents believe that openness of leadership with information contributes to an ethical workplace culture.
• 15% of employees would have no problem posting company information online if they disagreed with their employer.
6) Unfair advantage (cheating)
• 65% of individuals note that when it comes to flex-time options, leaders tend to set different rules for themselves.
• 20% of employees have admittedly treated subordinates differently due to their personal relationships and not the subordinate’s performance.
7) Personal decadence
• Only 33% of employees have never seen their supervisors performing unethical behaviors.
• 24% of employees believe there is nothing unethical about coming into work hung-over.
8) Interpersonal abuse
• 25% of employees believe it is ethical to tell a racist/sexist/heterosexist/ageist joke in the workplace.
• 9% of employees have harassed a fellow employee at work.
9) Organizational abuse
• While 92% of individuals believe that having work-life balance leads to ethical behavior, 30% of employees believe that their job does not offer them enough time to achieve work-life balance.
• 28% of individuals believe their organization causes high levels of stress.
• 13% of individuals report rigid, inflexible schedules.
10) Rule violations
• 9% of individuals believe that their personal values conflict with their organization’s values.
• 67% of employees do not see an ethical problem with dating a subordinate in the workplace.
11) Accessory to unethical acts
• Employees regularly see a variety of ethical violations in the workplace: personal advantage (57%), misuse of company property (51%), taking credit for someone else’s work (49%), lying about worked hours (39%), interpersonal abuse (32%), and misuse of company finances (18%).
• However, when confronted with an ethical violation in the workplace, 17% of employees would do nothing about the violation, 42% would inform an immediate supervisor, 17% would call a company ethics hotline, and only 4% would go so far as to contact someone outside of the organization.
12) Moral balance (ethical dilemmas)
This category is more difficult to quantify because the balancing of decisions is very much entrenched in many of the other categories. According to the 2007 Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Ethics & Workplace Survey, workers engage in ethical behavior for five basic reasons: behavior of management (42%), behavior of direct supervisor (35%), positive reinforcement of ethical behavior (30%), compensation (29%), and behavior of peers (23%). The study also noted five basic reasons why employees engage in unethical behavior: lack of personal integrity (80%), job dissatisfaction (60%), financial rewards (44%), pressure to meet goals (41%), and ignorance of ethical codes of conduct (39%). Overall, 87% of workers surveyed believed that a company’s values can promote an ethical workplace environment.
Key Takeaways
• J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) created a typology of 12 ethical lapses that are common in modern business: (1) stealing, (2) lying, (3) false impressions, (4) conflicts of interest, (5) hiding/divulging information, (6) cheating, (7) personal decadence, (8) interpersonal abuse, (9) organizational abuse, (10) rule violations, (11) accessory to unethical acts, and (12) moral balance.
• In a series of studies conducted by Deloitte Development from 2006 to 2010, the researchers found examples of all of J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) typology of ethical lapses. While some of the ethical lapses are clearly more common (e.g., 77% of participants admitted to stealing corporate time by using technology for personal uses), others did not appear to be frequent ethical lapses (e.g., 6% took credit for someone else’s work, 4% misused corporate finances, etc.).
Exercises
1. Which of the ethical lapses in modern business described by J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992) contain communication components?
2. Of the 12 ethical lapses discussed by J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington, which one is the most systematic in your current workplace? Which one is the least systematic in your current workplace? If you were the CEO of your organization, what you would you do to combat the ethical lapses you identified as most systematic?
3. Look at a recent copy of Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, or any other other business-oriented publication. Find examples of the different ethical lapses discussed by J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992). | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/02%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics/2.03%3A_Business_Ethics.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain Johannesen, Valde, and Whedbee’s (2008) three factors for understanding ethics in human communication.
• Understand Andersen’s (2007) three audiences for communication ethics.
• Differentiate among the three ways individuals understand ethics described by Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell (2009).
Johannesen, Valde, and Whedbee (2008) note that ethical issues may arise in human communication when three factors exist: 1) when the communicative behavior “could have a significant impact on other persons;” 2) when the communicative behavior “involves conscious choice of means and ends;” and 3) when the communicative behavior “can be judged by standards of right and wrong” (p. 1). The notion that human communication ethics is multi-faceted is also noted by McCroskey (2006) who wrote that an endless debate about means and ends is not sufficient for a “viable systems for evaluating the ethics of human communication” (p. 239). Andersen (2007) also notes that “ethics is a dimension in all the communication process” (p. 132).Andersen, K. E. (2007). A conversation about communication ethics with Kenneth E. Andersen. In P. Arneson (Ed.), Exploring communication ethics: Interviews with influential scholars in the field (pp. 131–142). New York: Peter Lang. Andersen goes on to explain, “It [ethics] is a dimension that is relevant to all the actors in the communication process—the source or the originator, the person that initiates communication; the person who receives, interprets, hears, reads the communication; and the people who, in effect, are further agents of transmission” (p. 132). In essence, Andersen sees communication ethics as something that needs to be examined from both the source and receiver’s point of view, but he also realizes that understanding ethics from a societal viewpoint is important.
The source’s ethical choices involve her or his basic intent toward her or his receiver(s). The first individual to really write about the ethical nature of communication from a source’s perspective was Aristotle. Aristotle realized that depending on the originator of the message, a message could be either virtuous or used for mischief. Aristotle’s writings on source ethics were summed up by McCroskey (2006) who noted, “The effect of a message cannot be used as the primary means of evaluating the ethical quality of an act of communication. Furthermore, the means of persuasion themselves are ethically neutral” (p. 295). Instead, “ethical judgments in rhetorical communication should be based exclusively on the intent of the source toward the audience” (p. 295). In other words, when determining whether a specific communicative interaction was ethical from a source’s perspective, the goodness of the source’s intent is what should be examined instead of examining the message itself.
The receiver’s ethical choices involve how the individual decides to process the message being sent by the source. The idea of a receiver ethic starts with the notion that being a receiver of a message should be an active process and not a passive process. As Andersen (2007) notes, “So you [the receiver] have a 100% responsibility to listen, to be critical, to evaluate, to reject, to demand more information, to reject, whatever the case may be” (132). However, there is another aspect to receiver ethics that must also be considered. As noted by McCroskey, Wrench, and Richmond (2003), receivers must attend to a message objectively. Quite often receivers attend to messages depending on either their initial perception of the message or their initial perception of the sender. When these initial perceptions interfere with our ability as a receiver to listen, be critical, evaluate, or reject a message, we are not ethically attending to a message.
The larger society is the term Andersen (2007) uses to discuss the idea of third-party individuals who are not directly involved in the communicative exchange, but nonetheless are ethically attending to messages being sent by a source to a receiver. Whether eavesdropping on a conversation at a table next to you in a restaurant or inadvertently hearing the neighbors fighting at 3AM in the morning, third-party receivers of messages also have ethical considerations. In both of these cases, the overarching ethical dilemma is what should one do with the information they are receiving. If you overhear gossip at the table next to you, is it ethical to pass on that information to others? If you hear one partner physically abusing another partner, do you have an ethical obligation to call the police? Andersen (2007) realizes that these situations call for different responses, “Now those responsibilities in every case will be unique to the situation, unique to one’s ability to fulfill the role of intermediary” (p. 133).
Overall, Andersen (2007) summarizes his position by stating, “So, one begins to say that in all the activity of communication, in whatever role we may happen to be in at the moment, there is an ethical dimension” (p. 132). While clearly each of the roles described by Andersen has different ethical responsibilities, an individual’s perception of her or his ethical responsibilities created differently. Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell (2009) believe that an individual’s ethical schemata is derived by a combination of commonsense, theories, and learningArnett, R. C., Harden Fritz, J. M., & Bell, L. M. (2009). Communication ethics literacy: Dialogue and difference. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage..
Common Sense
The term “commonsense” is used quite readily in modern society. Whether the issues are commonsense to drive on the right side of the road or commonsense to not lie to a police officer, individuals rely quite heavily on their perceptions of commonsense. Arnett et al. (2009) define commonsense“The commonly understood, taken-for-granted assumptions about the way the world works and expected communicative behaviors one will meet in navigating that world in daily life” (Arnett et al., 2009, p. 62). as “the commonly understood, taken-for-granted assumptions about the way the world works and expected communicative behaviors one will meet in navigating that world in daily life” (p. 62). Unfortunately, commonsense can be historically and culturally based assumptions. Commonsense communicative behaviors of the 1300’s are not the same behaviors that are perceived as commonsense today. Furthermore, what is considered commonsense can vary greatly from culture to culture. It is commonplace in many Middle Eastern cultures for woman to not speak to men that they do not know. One of our co-authors favorite examples of the problem of “commonsense” comes from the MTV television show Road Rules: The Quest. In one episode, one of the contestants, Ellen, is walking around in Marrakech, Morocco wearing very short shorts. In an Islamic country, woman wearing revealing clothing is a violation of Islamic law. Ellen was clearly violating the culture’s “commonsense” dress code. To this end, some of the villagers in Marrakech took it upon themselves to correct Ellen’s nonverbal behavior by throwing rocks at her. Ultimately, the “loss of agreed-upon commonsense expectations is neither good nor bad, but simply a defining reality of our time” (Arnett et al., 2009, p. 68).
Theories
Ethical theories are an abstract step above the commonsense approach to communication ethics. “A communication ethics theory, like any theory, both opens the world, permitting us to see with clarity, and simultaneously occludes our vision. A theory both illuminates and obscures” (Arnett et al., 2009, p. 70). As we saw in Table 2.2, there are many different theoretical perspectives an individual can adhere to when determining whether a communicative behavior is ethical. Each of these different theories shapes how communicative behavior is viewed and understood.
Learning
Arnett et al. (2009) argue that learning is the first principle of communication ethics because “we cannot trust the old ‘commonsense’ notions” of ethics. “If we fail to connect the loss of agreed-upon commonsense with learning, we fall prey to discounting or making fun of those different from ourselves, those with dissimilar backgrounds, experiences, and practices” (p. 68). In essence, ethical communicators must avoid perceiving their commonsense perceptions of ethics as being universal perceptions of ethics adhered to by all people. Therefore, individuals need to seek out and analyze how varying cultures perceive and understand communicative ethics. Ultimately, ethical communicators need to see that “learning and understanding different standpoints is a pragmatic communication ethics act” (p. 62).
Clearly, the study of communication ethics is simply not a black-and-white endeavor. Often there are clear-cut, easy answers to determining ethical communicative behavior. For example, while some may think lying is always unethical (this is the 9th Commandment of the Bible after all), is it always unethical to lie? Would it be ethical to lie to someone to save his or her life? While having ethical absolutes may make life easier, in today’s world drawing these fabricated lines in the sand make no sense. As Arnett et al. (2009) discussed, the best way to learn how to be an ethical communicator in today’s world is to explore and learn. To help with this learning process, the National Communication Association (NCA) approved a Credo for Ethical Communication in 1999. In Note 2.22 "National Communication Association Credo for Ethical Communication", you will see a copy of the NCA credo. While more fully fleshed out in this form, most of the items discussed within the credo have been referenced earlier in this section.
National Communication Association Credo for Ethical Communication
Questions of right and wrong arise whenever people communicate. Ethical communication is fundamental to responsible thinking, decision making, and the development of relationships and communities within and across contexts, cultures, channels, and media. Moreover, ethical communication enhances human worth and dignity by fostering truthfulness, fairness, responsibility, personal integrity, and respect for self and others. We believe that unethical communication threatens the quality of all communication and consequently the well-being of individuals and the society in which we live. Therefore we, the members of the National Communication Association, endorse and are committed to practicing the following principles of ethical communication:
• We advocate truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason as essential to the integrity of communication.
• We endorse freedom of expression, diversity of perspective, and tolerance of dissent to achieve the informed and responsible decision making fundamental to a civil society.
• We strive to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages.
• We promote access to communication resources and opportunities as necessary to fulfill human potential and contribute to the well-being of families, communities, and society.
• We promote communication climates of caring and mutual understanding that respect the unique needs and characteristics of individual communicators.
• We condemn communication that degrades individuals and humanity through distortion, intimidation, coercion, and violence, and through the expression of intolerance and hatred.
• We are committed to the courageous expression of personal convictions in pursuit of fairness and justice.
• We advocate sharing information, opinions, and feelings when facing significant choices while also respecting privacy and confidentiality.
• We accept responsibility for the short- and long-term consequences for our own communication and expect the same of others.
For the purposes of this chapter, we are concerned with providing guidance about organizational communication ethics. Previously, the basics of the philosophical field of ethics, business ethics, and communication ethics were discussed. In the next section, we will turn our attention toward organizational communication ethics.
Key Takeaways
• Johannesen, Valde, and Whedbee’s (2008) noted three factors for understanding ethics in human communication: (1) when communicative behavior impacts others, (2) when communicative behavior is a conscious choice of means and ends, and (3) when communicative behavior can be judged as either right/wrong, good/bad, moral/immoral, etc.
• Andersen (2007) argues that ethical decisions about communicative behavior must analyzed at the source of the message’s level of understanding and interpretation of ethical behavior., the receiver of the message’s level, and the greater society’s level.
• Differentiate among the three ways individuals understand ethics described by Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell (2009).
Exercises
1. Look at a recent copy of Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, or another business-oriented publication. Find an example of communication ethics and then evaluate that example through each of the three levels of ethical understanding (source, receiver, & society) discussed by Andersen (2007).
2. Why do you think Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell (2009) argue that learning is the first principle of ethics? Why is learning more valuable than either commonsense or theories? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/02%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics/2.04%3A_Communication_Ethics.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain Reinsh’s (1990) nine basic ethical findings in organizational communication.
• Differentiate among the components of Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication.
• Understand the four phases of the feminist perspective of organizational communication ethics proposed by Mattson and Buzzanell (1999).
• Describe why Montgomery and DeCaro (2001) believe that human performance improvement can help organizations in improving organizational communication ethics.
• Assess the implementation of an organizational communication ethics intervention using a human performance improvement model.
The preponderance of everyday problems that plague all organizations is either problems that are patently ethical or moral in nature, or they are problems in which deeply embedded ethical issues can be identified. And this proposition is ethically significant, of course, when we recall the axiom that communication is a prerequisite for the very existence of any organization. (Redding, 1996, p. 18).
W. Charles Redding published this statement in a book he wrote about organizational communication ethics shortly before his death. While Redding did not believe that organizational communication students and researchers need to become trained ethicists, he did believe that anyone studying organizational communication should have a working knowledge of the differing theoretical perspectives of ethics (as were proposed earlier in this chapter). Redding’s call for increased attention to ethics includes four basic questions:
1. “What messages or other communication events are perceived by which perceivers as unethical?”
2. “Why? That is, what criteria are cited for making specific ethical evaluations?”
3. “In what respects do these criteria appear to be grounded in organizational (or other) cultures?”
4. “What are the consequences of unethical communication? What, in other words, are the relationships between unethical communication and other organizational and societal phenomena?” (Redding, 1996, p. 24).
Redding’s four questions are very similar to the list Johannesen, Valde, and Whedbee (2008) provided for examining human communication as a general construct. Seeger (2001)Seeger, M. W. (2001). Ethics and communication in organizational contexts: Moving from the fringe to the center. American Communication Journal, 5 (1), Retrieved from: acjournal.org/holdings/vol5/i...ial/seeger.htm noted that applying ethics in the organizational communication context, “focuses on norms and guidelines of professional practice, methodologies for promoting ethical decision-making, various codes of conducts and how these function to promote discussion, informal decisions, and resolve practical ethical problems” (18). To help us achieve Seeger’s concept of applied organizational communication ethics, the rest of this section will focus on Reinsh’s (1990) nine basic ethical findings in organizational communication, Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication, Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) extension of Redding’s Typology, and Montgomery and DeCaro’s (2001) ethical performance improvement perspective.
Reinsh’s Nine Basic Ethical Findings in Organizational Communication
In 1990, ReinschReinsch, N. L., Jr. (1990). Ethics research in business communication: The state of the art. The Journal of Business Communication, 27, 251–272. examined the state of ethics research in business communication by examining the empirical research conducted on this subject. Based on his analysis of 28 different research articles, Reinsch found nine basic areas of agreement:
1. Communication behaviors vary in moral worth, and various groups (e.g., advertising executives, general public) demonstrate a relatively high level of consensus about the moral weight of many specific practices.
2. Blatantly unethical behaviors sometimes occur in business organizations.
3. Unethical business communication can be effective in the short run.
4. A person’s behavior is related to his or her ethical beliefs.
5. The concept of business communication ethics is relevant to many different aspects of business including direct mail marketing, management, and consulting.
6. The concept of business communication ethics is related to other significant concepts such as honesty and trust.
7. Persons differ in ethical values, beliefs and behaviors, and the differences may be associated with variables such as gender, age, perceptions of an employer as typical or “generous,” and the values, beliefs and behaviors of one’s cohorts.
8. Ethical analysis in business communication has sometimes been impressionistic; consistent, careful attention to the work of ethicists in other fields (e.g., philosophy, interpersonal communication) is desirable.
9. Business communication ethics should encompass oral communication as well as written. (p. 265)
In light of the earlier discussions in this chapter, the majority of this list is consistent with other perspectives on ethics. However, there is one major idea in this list that had not been previously discussed in this chapter. Reinsch (1990) concluded that sometimes unethical communicative behavior can be effective in the short-run. If unethical behavior was never effective, there would be no reason for anyone to engage in unethical behavior. The simple fact is, quite often unethical behavior can help people get ahead in life and in business. Reinsch noted that individuals interested in organizational communication ethics tend to agree that unethical behavior is effective in the short-run, but there is disagreement about the effectiveness of unethical behavior in the long-run. Basically, the longer someone engages in unethical communicative behavior, the greater the likelihood that others will start to notice, thus establishing clear diminishing returns to unethical behavior (to use an economics term).
Redding’s Typology of Unethical Organizational Communication
As part of Redding’s (1996)Redding, W. C. (1996). Ethics and the study of organizational communication: When will we wake up? In J. A. Jaksa & M. S. Pritchard (Eds.), Responsible communication: Ethical issues in business, industry, and the professions(pp.17–40). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. call for the field of organizational communication to “wake up” and start studying ethics, he created a basic typology of unethical organizational communication. The resulting typology of unethical organizational communication consisted of six general categories: coercive, destructive, deceptive, intrusive, secretive, and manipulative-exploitative.
Coercive
The first category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is coercive acts. He defined coerciveCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior reflecting abuses of power or authority resulting in the diminishing of another person’s autonomy. acts as:
…communication events or behavior reflecting abuses of power or authority resulting in (or designed to effect) unjustified invasions of autonomy. This includes: intolerance of dissent, restrictions of freedom of speech; refusal to listen; resorting to formal rules and regulations to stifle discussion or to squash complaints, and so on. (pp. 27–28)
When one looks at this list of unethical communicative behaviors, the clear pattern of supervisor abuse of power is evident. In essence, the supervisor is either preventing messages from being sent by her or his subordinates or is refusing to attend to messages that her or his subordinates are sending. Notice that this process is being done mindfully on the part of the supervisor, which goes back to the intent issue raised by Andersen (2001) and McCroskey (2006).
Destructive
The second category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is destructiveCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior that attacks a receivers’ self-esteem, reputation, or deeply held feelings. acts. He defined destructive acts as:
Communication events or behavior attack receivers’ self-esteem, reputation, or deeply held feelings; reflecting indifference toward, or content for, basic values of others. This includes: insults, derogatory innuendoes, epithets, jokes (especially those based on gender, race, sex, religion, or ethnicity); put-downs; back-stabbing; character-assassination; and so on. It also includes the use of “truth” as a weapon (as in revealing confidential information to unauthorized persons, or in using alleged “openness” as a façade to conceal the launching of personal attacks. It also can include silence: failure to provide expected feedback (especially recognition of good work), so that message senders (e.g. managers) are perceived as being cold, impersonal, unfeeling, self-centered, and so on. (pp. 28–29)
When looking at Redding’s explanation of destructive communicative acts, there are clearly two parts: aggressive communication and use of information. The first part of his definition focuses on how individuals can use aggressive forms of communication in an attempt to make others feel inferior. These types of communicative acts are commonly referred to as verbally aggressive acts and we will explore them in more detail in Chapter 15. The second aspect of destructive communication is about how people use information within an organization. Information is commonly seen as a commodity in many organizations, so the hoarding of information as well as using information in manipulative manners is quite common. This category is similar to the fifth typology of business ethics created by J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington (1992). Issues related to destructive uses of information will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5.
Deceptive
The third category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is deceptiveCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior reflecting a willful perversion of the truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud. acts. He defined deceptive acts as:
…communication events or behavior reflecting a “willful perversion of the truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1998, s.v. “dishonesty”). This includes: evasive or deliberately misleading messages, which in turn includes equivocation (i.e., the deliberate use of ambiguity) …; also bureaucratic-style euphemisms designed to cover up defects, to conceal embarrassing deeds, or to “prettify” unpleasant facts. (p. 30).
In this category of unethical behavior, we have non-truthful and misleading messages. The first part of this definition examines how some individuals lie in order to get what they want at work. The second part of the definition examines how some individuals within organizations use messages in order to alter a receiver’s perception of reality. The messages, in this case, are not explicitly not-true, but are manipulated in a fashion to alter how receivers interpret those messages. This category encompasses the second and third categories of J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) typology of business ethics.
Intrusive
The fourth category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is intrusiveCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior that are used by someone in attempt to monitor another person. acts. He defined intrusive acts as:
…communication behavior that is characteristically initiated by message receivers. For example,…the use of hidden cameras, the tapping of telephones, and the application of computer technologies to the monitoring of employee behavior; in other words, surveillance. The fundamental issue, of course, revolves around the meaning and legitimacy of “privacy rights.” (p. 31)
The issue of intrusion has become important in the 21st Century because modern technology has made intrusion into individuals’ private lives very easy. Whether potential employers are looking at your private Facebook information prior to interviewing you or employers install software on your computer that monitors every key stroke you make, corporate “big-brother” is definitely watching you. According to a 2005 survey conducted by the American Management AssociationAMA E-Policy Institute. (2005). 2005 electronic monitoring and surveillance survey. American Management Association. Retrieved from: http://www.amanet.org, 36% of respondents had some amount of monitoring of their computer key-strokes by their organizations and 50% of respondents had some or all of their computer files monitored by their organizations. 76% of respondents noted that their workplace monitored their internet activity. In fact, 26% of the respondents indicated that their organizations had fired workers for misusing the internet and another 25% had terminated employees for e-mail misuse. Corporate intrusion does not stop with computer activity. 3% of the respondents said that all of the employees in their organization have their telephone calls recorded while 19% said that only selected job categories had their telephone calls recorded. Some companies go so far as to track their employee’s physical whereabouts via global positioning systems and satellite technology in company vehicles (8%), company cell phones (5%), and employee identification cards (8%). We should mention that there are court cases within the United States that have legalized all of these processes without requiring a forewarning to employees. In the European Union, however, employees must be notified prior to monitoring, but organizations can still legally monitor their employees.
Secretive
The fifth category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is secretiveCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior that is undisclosed even when disclosing the information could be in an organization’s best interest. acts. He defined secretive acts as:
…various forms of nonverbal communication, especially (of course) silence and including unresponsiveness. It includes such behaviors as hoarding information (I call this “culpable silenceWhen someone purposefully prevents information from being given to receivers who need the information.”) and sweeping under the rug information that, if revealed, would expose wrongdoing or ineptness on the part of individuals in positions of power. (p. 32)
In essence, this category is a further break down of J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) fifth category of business ethics. However, Redding goes further than J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington by noting that even nonverbal unresponsiveness can be a form of unethical communication. For example, if the sender of the message purposefully manipulates her or his nonverbal behavior in an attempt to skew how a receiver interprets a message, then the sender of the message is preventing the receiver from completely and accurately interpreting the message. Furthermore, Redding believes that many employees engage in culpable silence, which occurs when someone purposefully prevents information from being given to receivers who need the information. While culpable silence is not lying in the strictest of senses, culpable silence is clearly a version of deception.
Manipulative-Exploitative
The final category of unethical organizational communication discussed by Redding (1996) is manipulative-exploitativeCategory of unethical acts descrbied by W. Charles Redding (1996) that describes communication events or behavior that takes place when the source purposefully prevents the receiver from knowing the source’s actual intentions behind a communicative message. acts. He defined manipulative-exploitative acts as those where the source purposefully prevents the receiver from knowing the source’s actual intentions behind a communicative message. A term that Redding finds closely related to these unethical acts is demagogueryPerson who has no concern for the best interests of a receiver or group of receivers and seeks to gain compliance by exploiting people’s fears, prejudices, or areas of ignorance.:
Of central importance is the notion that a demagogue is one who, without concern for the best interests of the audience, seeks to gain compliance by exploiting people’s fears, prejudices, or areas of ignorance. Closely related to, if not a variant of, demagoguery is the utterance of messages that reflect a patronizing or condescending attitude toward the audience—an unstated assumption that audience members are dull-witted, or immature, or both. (pp. 33–34)
As you will learn in Chapter 3, much of the early writing on how managers should interact with their employees centered on the clearly manipulate-exploitative organization.
Mattson and Buzzanell’s Feminist Organizational Communication Ethic
In 1999, Mattson and Buzzanell used Redding’s (1996) Mattson, M., & Buzzanell, P. M. (1999). Traditional and feminist organizational communication ethical analyses of messages and issues surrounding an actual job loss case. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 27, 49–72. organizational communication ethic typology to analyze a specific case study. Through using the specific case, Mattson and Buzzanell came to believe that Redding’s “system is linked to managerialist outcomes of individual and organizational effectiveness (i.e., to communicate unethically would create situations in which managers do not receive crucial information and would leave the firm vulnerable to productivity problems, strikes, and litigation)” (p. 62). Mattson and Buzzanell believe that some individuals would focus primarily on Redding’s categories and not see the possible positive outcomes of some of the unethical communicative behavior. In essence, is there ever a time when deception is ethical and profitable? For this reason, Mattson and Buzzanell followed Steiner’s (1997)Steiner, L. (1997). A feminist schema for analysis of ethical dilemmas. In F. L. Casmir (Ed.), Ethics in intercultural and international communication (pp. 59–88). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. approach to understanding feminist ethical dilemmas. Mattson and Buzzanell opted for the feminist ethical approach because feminist ethics “differ from other ethical approaches in their vigilance toward a vision of value transformation (equitable power sharing and decision making) and instance on present community (meaning that “doing” ethics involves being a part of the envisioning and struggling)” (p. 62). We should note that the Mattson and Buzzanell perspective clearly falls in line with the critical perspective of organizational communication research discussed in Chapter 1. Ultimately, Mattson and Buzzanell created a four phase framework for ethical analysis.
Definition of the Situation
The first phase of Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) framework for ethical analysis is the definition of the situation. Mattson and Buzzanell explain what occurs in this phase when they write “identification of problematic ethical issues in context; description of power struggles, particularly those cause by gender imbalances; attempts to silence and marginalize vulnerable individuals and groups” (p. 63). The first phase of this framework focusses specifically on ethical dilemmas and then examines how some people within the dilemma are being subjugated by those with power. One of the fundamental issues in critical theory is the innate existence of power imbalances within organizations. Therefore, finding where these imbalances exist is important for determining ethical behavior.
Values and Ideals
The second phase of Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) framework for ethical analysis is examining values and ideals. Mattson and Buzzanell explain what occurs in this phase when they write “identification of feminist values and ideals relevant to a particular case: voice, community, and fairness” (p. 63). Voice is “the ability both to construct and articulate knowledge and to make choices and act in situations” (Mattson & Buzzanell, 1999, p. 64). In essence, this perspective believes that any time an individual is forced to withhold her or his opinion, knowledge, and perspectives, her or his voice is being muted by those individuals with power, and thus creates an unethical situation.
The second value discussed by Mattson and Buzzanell is community, which recognizes that “there are diverse standpoints but common issues—commitment to multiple stakeholders, caring behaviors, and community-maintaining strategies.” These commitments to others, self, values, and to the organization “challenge members to engage in authentic dialogue” (p. 65). Unethical communicative behaviors that would violate the standard of community standards include messages that “maintain boundaries, trivialize or diminish others contributions (e.g., humor, put-downs, terms of address), patronize individuals, and exclude members from participating in discussions about organizational concerns” (p. 65).
The final feminist value is that of fairness, or how the decision making process influences all stakeholders involved. According to Mattson and Buzzanell, “Decision making that does not contribute to the empowerment of marginalized persons and to the visibility of power imbalances is unethical” (p. 66).
Ethical Principle
The third phase of Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) framework for ethical analysis is applying the ethical principle. Mattson and Buzzanell explain what occurs in this phase when they write “inclusion of emotion in ethical considerations; refusal to develop or use single rules for identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas; utilization of values and ideas that empower, give voice, and emancipate people” (p. 63). According to Steiner (1997), “feminist inquiry is generally unsympathetic to rule-based ethical theories or theories that—as they usually do—exclude consideration of emotion” (p. 74). Mattson and Buzzanell argue that it is important to include individual’s emotional responses when thinking about ethical dilemmas because “these responses indicate what people care about and might be willing to change” (p. 66). In the end, many aspects of organizational life are accompanied with complex emotions, which should be considered when examining the ethical nature of organizational communication.
Development of a Solution
The final phase of Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) framework for ethical analysis is developing a solution. Mattson and Buzzanell explain what occurs in this phase when they write “reanalysis of options so that those most vulnerable entail the least harm; exclusion of alternatives based on ethical principles and probable harm to major stakeholders” (p. 63). The first part of this phase is the generation of possible solutions. At this point, all solutions are taken seriously. However, once the different solutions have been proposed, the next step is to eliminate any solutions that either violate ethical principles or could cause harm to vulnerable stakeholders. The differing solutions should then be analyzed in terms of both stakeholder needs and corporate success.
While the Mattson and Buzzanell (1999) four phase framework for organizational communication ethical analysis is theoretically intriguing, we are still left with ambiguity about the difference between ethical vs. unethical behavior. On the other hand, if Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication behavior is concrete, we are still left with an absolutist perspective on ethics that may not always match the intent of the source. Unfortunately, this is the nature of ethics; there will always be ambiguity when examining and understanding ethics. The final section of this chapter proposes a brief process that can be implemented when attempting to increase ethical communication within an organization.
Montgomery and DeCaro’s (2001) Ethical Performance Improvement Perspective
While the previous section introduced you to both concrete and abstract views of determining the ethicality of organizational communication, this section will examine a perspective on increasing ethical organizational communication as proposed by Montgomery and DeCaro (2001). Montgomery and DeCaro proposed that one of the best ways increasing organizational communication ethics is to use a human performance improvement approach. “Ethical problems or dilemmas have behavioral consequences. Analysis can measure and monitor the behaviors leading to the unethical act, or the act, itself. By analyzing the antecedents and consequences, they can then design an intervention to correct the behavior” (32). Often, human performance interventions related to ethics happen in hindsight: an ethical violation occurs first and then the human performance improvement experts backtrack to determine how and why the ethical violation occurred. At other times, human performance interventions related to ethics start with a code of ethics (e.g., National Communication Association’s Ethical Credo in Note 2.22 "National Communication Association Credo for Ethical Communication" or the International Association of Business Communicators Code of Ethics in Note 2.35 "International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Code of Ethics") and then follow with suggestions for action in order to ensure that the ethical codes are followed.
International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Code of Ethics
Preface
Because hundreds of thousands of business communicators worldwide engage in activities that affect the lives of millions of people, and because this power carries with it significant social responsibilities, the International Association of Business Communicators developed the Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators.
The Code is based on three different yet interrelated principles of professional communication that apply throughout the world.
These principles assume that just societies are governed by a profound respect for human rights and the rule of law; that ethics, the criteria for determining what is right and wrong, can be agreed upon by members of an organization; and, that understanding matters of taste requires sensitivity to cultural norms.
These principles are essential:
• Professional communication is legal.
• Professional communication is ethical.
• Professional communication is in good taste.
Recognizing these principles, members of IABC will:
• Engage in communication that is not only legal but also ethical and sensitive to cultural values and beliefs;
• Engage in truthful, accurate and fair communication that facilitates respect and mutual understanding;
• Adhere to the following articles of the IABC Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators.
Because conditions in the world are constantly changing, members of IABC will work to improve their individual competence and to increase the body of knowledge in the field with research and education.
Articles
1. Professional communicators uphold the credibility and dignity of their profession by practicing honest, candid and timely communication and by fostering the free flow of essential information in accord with the public interest.
2. Professional communicators disseminate accurate information and promptly correct any erroneous communication for which they may be responsible.
3. Professional communicators understand and support the principles of free speech, freedom of assembly, and access to an open marketplace of ideas and act accordingly.
4. Professional communicators are sensitive to cultural values and beliefs and engage in fair and balanced communication activities that foster and encourage mutual understanding.
5. Professional communicators refrain from taking part in any undertaking which the communicator considers to be unethical.
6. Professional communicators obey laws and public policies governing their professional activities and are sensitive to the spirit of all laws and regulations and, should any law or public policy be violated, for whatever reason, act promptly to correct the situation.
7. Professional communicators give credit for unique expressions borrowed from others and identify the sources and purposes of all information disseminated to the public.
8. Professional communicators protect confidential information and, at the same time, comply with all legal requirements for the disclosure of information affecting the welfare of others.
9. Professional communicators do not use confidential information gained as a result of professional activities for personal benefit and do not represent conflicting or competing interests without written consent of those involved.
10. Professional communicators do not accept undisclosed gifts or payments for professional services from anyone other than a client or employer.
11. Professional communicators do not guarantee results that are beyond the power of the practitioner to deliver.
12. Professional communicators are honest not only with others but also, and most importantly, with themselves as individuals; for a professional communicator seeks the truth and speaks that truth first to the self.
Source: www.iabc.com/about/code.htm
According to Beich, Holloway, and McGraw (2006), human performance improvementA results-based, systematic process used to identify performance problems, analyze root causes, select and design actions, manage workplace solutions, measure results, and continually improve performance within an organizations” (Beich, Holloway, & McGraw, 2006, p. 1) (HPI) “is a results-based, systematic process used to identify performance problems, analyze root causes, select and design actions, manage workplace solutions, measure results, and continually improve performance within an organizations” (p. 1)Beich, E., Holloway, M., & McGraw, K. (2006). Improving human performance: ASTD learning system—Module 3. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development.. In essence, HPI is the field of study concerned with how individuals take academic information from various fields that study business and then help individuals within organizations apply those ideas in actual practice. One area that HPI professionals can be instrumental is “in identifying knowledge gaps when it comes to business ethics. Does the workforce know how the organization’s code of ethics applies to them? Do they know what to do if they become aware of a violation of the code of ethics? Does the organization’s code of ethics meet accepted standards? Does a code of ethics even exist?” (Rothwell, Hone, & King, 2007, pp. 180–181)Rothwell, W. J., Hohne, C. K., & King, S. B. (2007). Human performance improvement: Building practitioner competence (2nd ed.). Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.. In essence, human performance improvement is ideally situated within many organizations to help organizations adopt a more ethical approach to organizational communication.
According to Willmore (2004)Willmore, J. (2004). Performance basics. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development. HPI professionals commonly take on four basic roles: analyst, intervention specialist, change manager, and evaluator. The first role an HPI professional takes on is that of analystRole taken on by a human performance improvement specialist when he or she helps determine relevant gaps that exist in individuals’ behavior, knowledge, and/or attitudes, which helps determine relevant gaps that exist in individuals’ behavior, knowledge, and/or attitudes. When determining relevant gaps in behavior, knowledge, and/or attitudes, an HPI professional must first make sure that the analyzed gaps adhere to the organization’s larger goals and values. If the identified gaps do not coincide with the organization’s goals and values, the HPI professional will have a much harder time attempting to achieve buy-in later on in the improvement process. For example, if an HPI professional is working to improve organizational communication ethics, the individual would start by analyzing any ethical lapses in organizational communication and where the organization should be in terms of ethical communication. In addition to determining what the knowledge and behavioral gaps are, the HPI professional needs to determine what the causes of the gaps are. For example, people in the organization communicating may be engaging in an unethical manner because they are unfamiliar with the organization’s code of conduct. Another possibility is that people may be communicating unethically because the organization rewards them for success and not ethics. A last possibility is that people may communicate unethically because they do not have a predisposition towards ethical communication. Depending on which root-cause an HPI practitioner finds, the resulting intervention strategy will differ.
Once an analysis has been completed, the HPI professional slips into the second role or the intervention specialistRole taken on by a human performance improvement specialist when he or she determines what would be the most appropriate method for getting the organization to its goal or decreasing the performance gap.. In the intervention specialist role, the HPI professional determines what would be the most appropriate method for getting the organization to either reach its goal or to at least decrease a performance gap. Generally, it is important for the HPI professional to have expertise in the area of interest or to consult with subject matter experts. For example, if you are a student of organizational communication, you would be ideally situated to help an organization think through its intervention if the topic related to organizational communication. Some common types of interventions include training, the creation of employee policies and procedures, process mapping, etc. For the purpose of organizational communication ethics, the intervention may come via training in organizational communication ethics or developing an organization-wide code of organizational communication ethics.
The third role an HPI professional takes on is that of change manager. A change managerRole taken on by a human performance improvement specialist when he or she coordinates implementation and execution of solutions while building buy-in and support from all levels of an organizaiton’s hierarchy. “coordinates implementation and roll out of solutions, especially complex or big efforts that may involve multiple initiatives. A change manager also works to build buy-in and support” (Willmore, 2004, p. 20). In the interventionist role, the HPI professional determines what should be done, in the change manager role the HPI professional actually implements the intervention. One of the most important aspects of this phase is getting buy-in from the people who matter within the organization. If an HPI professional attempts to roll-out a new code of organizational communication ethics while top management does not support the new code, the intervention will never take hold and will eventually fail. For this reason, it is very important for HPI professionals to first ascertain which stakeholders must support the intervention and then get that support prior to rolling-out an intervention.
The last role an HPI professional inhabits is that of evaluatorRole taken on by a human performance improvement specialist when he or she: (1) examines if intervention is actually improving performance, and (2) demonstrates the effectiveness of the intervention to the organization.. Interventions can be very useful, but the success of the intervention must also be determined. HPI professionals must evaluate the intervention for two reasons: to improve the intervention and to determine organizational value. The first reason HPI professionals must evaluate an intervention is to determine whether or not the intervention is actually improving performance. For example, if you measure an organizational communication ethics intervention and find that people are just as unethical in their communication as they were before the intervention, the intervention has not worked and must be reevaluated. In this case, the data that you gather about the intervention can help the HPI professional make changes to improve the next the intervention. Often interventions are organic and change periodically in order to keep us with changing human performance. This can only be determined by evaluating interventions. The second reason HPI professionals should evaluate an intervention is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the intervention to the organization. In world that is marked by discussions of “the bottom-line,” most aspects of the modern organization need to clearly demonstrate a return on investment, including how the time and money spent on an intervention actually helped the organization.
Now that the basics of Human Performance Improvement have been discussed, we can articulate a basic model for improving organizational communication ethics within an organization (Figure 2.2). The following model is based on both the American Society for Training and Development’s (ASTD) HPI Model and the International Society for Performance Improvement’s (ISPI) Human Performance Technology Model (for a description of both models, see Rothwell, 2000)Rothwell, W. J. (2000). ASTD models for human performance improvement: Roles, competencies, and outputs (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press..
Key Takeaways
• Reinsh’s (1990) developed nine basic ethical findings in organizational communication: (1) communication behaviors vary in moral worth, (2) unethical behaviors sometimes occur in organizations, (3) unethical communication can be effective in the short run, (4) a person’s behavior is related to her or his ethical beliefs, (5) communication ethics is relevant to a wide range of business activities, (6) there are many closely related concepts to ethics (e.g., honesty, trust, etc.), (7) persons differ in ethical values, beliefs and behaviors and these differences can be culturally based, (8) studying communication ethics must involving looking at how other fields discuss ethics, and (9) communication ethics is concerned with both oral and written communication.
• Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication consists of six distinct types of communicative acts: (1) coercive, abuse of power or authority; (2) destructive, behavior that attacks a receiver; (3) deceptive, behavior that is intentionally false; (4) intrusive, monitoring behavior; (5) secretive, purposefully not disclosing information; and (6) manipulative-exploitative, .
• Mattson and Buzzanell (1999) proposed that organizational communication should be examined through four basic phases. First, you should define the situation by identifying ethical issues in context. Second, examine values (voice, community, & fairness) and ideals. Third, apply the ethical principle while paying attention to a person’s emotional reaction. Last, develop a solution paying special attention that vulnerable people are least effected.
• Montgomery and DeCaro’s (2001) argue that human performance improvement can help organizations with improving organizational communication ethics because this perspective is designed to help organizations systemically think through change.
• The Human Performance Improvement (HPI) Model provides organizations with a specific and systematic tool for determining the effectiveness of organizational change. When applied to changing an organization’s approach to ethical communication, the model can help ensure that the project is analyzed, articulated, and evaluated to ensure the best results possible for an organization.
Exercises
1. In today’s world of social media and technological advances in human communication, are Reinsh’s (1990) nine basic ethical findings in organizational communication still applicable? Why or why not?
2. Thinking about your own organization, which of Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication do you think is the most common? If you were the top leader in your organization, how would you go about stopping this specific lapse in ethical communication?
3. Look at a recent copy of Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes Magazine, or another business-oriented publication. Look for a discussion of an issue that has ethical overtones and then walk through Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) four phases of feminist thinking when determining a specific solution. How do you think Mattson and Buzzanell’s (1999) four phases would lead you to different decisions than if you took a more traditional stance on decision making?
4. Using an organization that you belong to, think about a specific business or communication ethical dilemma your organization is facing. Walk through the Human Performance Improvement Model and think about how you could implement a change in your organization’s thinking about ethics. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/02%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics/2.05%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics.txt |
Real World Case Study
In the February 6–12, 2012, edition of the business magazine Business Week the editors decided on a shocking cover. The cover story for the magazine was about the merger of United and Continental Airlines. In an interesting twist, the cover of the magazine had a United Airlines plane being mounted by a Continental Airlines plane with the tag line “Let’s Get it On” (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/12_06.html). Sexual overtones of this cover shocked many readers. In the following weeks, many readers wrote into Business Week conveying their dismay at the organization’s choice run this cover.
One reader put it this way, “Offensive … displeasing … indecent … abominable … obscene … objectionable … that’s what I have to say about your Feb. 6–12 cover. You should be ashamed.”Feedback: Out cover story on United-Continental merger draws some pationate reactions. (2012, February 20). Business Week. iPad version. Another subscriber had this to say, “Your cover page is so subtle it should have a condom over the dominant top plane (should be United) and a diaphragm shield inside the tail of the submissive bottom one (should be Continental) You will lose several subscriptions … Who was the genius who sent this around legal without thinking?” Furthermore, Joseph T. Cirillo, VP for reporting and planning at Blyth, had this to say about the cover “Your Feb 6–12 cover page was in extremely poor taste. You made it even worse with the headline ‘Let’s Get It On.’ Surely you could have described the business events going on between Continental and United in a better fashion, and not by showing two planes having sex with each other on the cover of an important business magazine.” While there were some people who found the cover humorous, the negative reactions to the cover clearly outnumbered the positive.
1. Why do you think so many people reacted so negatively to the sexual portrayal of a merger of two major airlines? Was this move unethical or just in bad taste on the part of the editors of Business Week?
2. Using Andersen’s (2007) three audiences f or ethics (sender, receiver, and society-at-large), analyze this cover from an ethical perspective.
3. Would this cover have received as many negative responses if it had been on the cover of a fitness magazine, comic book, etc...?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. Paul is preparing to deliver an address to his board of directors. He knows that if he explains the full costs of a new project, the board will block the project. However, Paul realizes that the project will have a huge return on its investment. As such, Paul decides not to disclose the actual cost of the project. Which of the types of ethics discussed in the Ethical Matrix is Paul representing?
1. Ethical Behavior
2. Unethical Behavior
3. Machiavellian Ethic
4. Subjective Ethic
5. Rejective Ethic
2. When Maxine interacts with various stakeholders in her company, she is always very even handed and treats everyone the same. In fact, people often remark at how consistent her communicative behavior is with all people. What philosophical perspective most closely resembles Maxine’s approach to communication?
1. Communitarianism
2. Altruism
3. Ethical Egoism
4. Justice
5. Social Relativism
3. Hiro knows that his coworker is stealing from the petty cash fund at work. However, reporting this behavior to his superiors will only result in increased paperwork and decreased trust from his peers around the office. As such, Hiro decides not to tell anyone and instead just wait for his coworker to get caught. Hiro’s behavior is an example of which of J.O. Cherrington and D. J. Cherrington’s (1992) typology of 12 ethical lapses common in modern business?
1. accessory to unethical acts
2. rule violations
3. stealing
4. false impressions
5. unfair advantage
4. As a CEO, Danna believes everyone under her is an idiot. As such, her primary mode of leadership involves manipulating people to do her bidding by exploiting her followers’ fears, prejudices, or areas of ignorance. Which of Redding’s (1996) typology of unethical organizational communication is Danna illustrating?
1. coercive
2. destructive
3. deceptive
4. intrusive
5. manipulative-exploitative
5. Which of the three values described by Mattson and Buzzanell (1999) refers to the ability to both construct and articulate knowledge?
1. community
2. fairness
3. hope
4. voice
5. wisdom
1. c
2. d
3. a
4. e
5. d | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/02%3A_Organizational_Communication_Ethics/2.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
In this chapter, we are going to explore classical theories in organizational communication. Classical theories focus on organizational structure, analyzing aspects such as optimal organizational performance plans, organizational power relationships, and compartmentalizing different organizational units. Fisher, D. (2000). Communication in organizations (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Jaico. As organizational communication scholars these theories help us better appreciate, recognize, and comprehend interactions and behaviors. We will discuss how these theories work and apply to effectiveness of organizational communication.
• 3.1: What is Theory?
What is theory? The word “theory” originally derives its name from the Greek word theoria, θεωρία, which roughly translated means contemplation or speculation. Modern understandings of the word “theory” are slightly different from the ancient Greeks, but the basic idea of contemplating an idea or speculating about why something happens is still very much in-line with the modern definition. A theory is a “group of related propositions designed to explain why events take place in a certain way.”
• 3.2: The Classical Perspective
The main idea of the classical perspectives of organizational communication is that organizations are similar to machines. Hence, if you have a well-built and well-managed machine, then you will have a very productive and effective organization. The assumption is that each employee is part of a large machine, which is the organization. It one part fails then the entire machine fails.
• 3.3: Human Relations Theories
During the 1930’s, it was noted that the world was in the middle of the worst economic depressions. During this period, workers started to dislike and question scientific methods and bureaucracy in organizational settings. In this section, we will introduce the human relationship approach. We will discuss the historical and cultural backgrounds of this approach.
• 3.4: Human Resources Theories
In the previous section, you were introduced to the research of Elton Mayo and Kurt Lewin under the banner of human relations theories. In this section, we’re going to further our understanding of theory in organizations by examining those theoretical perspectives that fall into the human resources camp.
• 3.E: Exercises
03: Classical Theories of Organizational Communication
In this chapter, we are going to explore classical theories in organizational communication. Classical theories focus on organizational structure, analyzing aspects such as optimal organizational performance plans, organizational power relationships, and compartmentalizing different organizational units.Fisher, D. (2000). Communication in organizations (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Jaico. As organizational communication scholars these theories help us better appreciate, recognize, and comprehend interactions and behaviors. We will discuss how these theories work and apply to effectiveness of organizational communication.
What is theory? The word “theory” originally derives its name from the Greek word theoria, θεωρία, which roughly translated means contemplation or speculation. Modern understandings of the word “theory” are slightly different from the ancient Greeks, but the basic idea of contemplating an idea or speculating about why something happens is still very much in-line with the modern definition. A theory is a “group of related propositions designed to explain why events take place in a certain way.”Infante, D., Rancer, A., & Womack, D. (2003). Building communication theory (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, pg. 356. Let’s break this definition down into its basic parts. First, a theory is a “group of related propositions,” which is a series of statements designed to be tested and discussed. Ultimately, these statements propose an explanation for why events take place and why the occur in specific fashions. For example, Sir Isaac Newton (of the claimed apple falling on his head) created the modern theory of gravity to explain why the different planets and stars didn’t go crashing into each other (very simplistic summation of his theory). While Newton’s theory of gravity was pretty good, it couldn’t account for everything so ultimately Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity came on the stage to further our understanding of how gravity actually works. In both cases, we have two well-respected researchers attempt to understand a basic phenomenon of our physical world, gravity. Just like physicists have been trying to understand why the planets rotate and don’t crash into each other, organizational scholars have attempted to create theories for how and why organizations structure themselves the way they do; why people behave the way they do in organizations; why leaders and followers interactions lead to specific outcomes, etc…
Eric Eisenberg and Lloyd Goodall wrote that “the way we talk about a problem directly influence the solutions we can articulate to address the problem. Theories of organization and communication should enhance our ability to articulate alternative ways of approaching and acting on practical issues (pg. 53).” They further noted that theories have two basic qualities: metaphoricalThe notion that theories provide a linguistic means of comparing and describing organizational communication and function. and historicalThe notion that we perceive theories in terms of the period in which they were created and were popular..Einsenberg, E. M., & Goodall, H. L., Jr. (1993). Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. When we say that theories are metaphorical, we mean that theories provide a linguistic means of comparing and describing organizational communication and function. As you know from English, a metaphor is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object or action, but the word does not literally apply to the object or action. In this chapter and Chapter 4 we’ll see theories comparing organizational phenomena to machines and biological organisms. On the other hand, when we say that theories are historical, we perceive theories in terms of the period in which they were created and were popular. Theories are historical because they are often a product of what was important and prevalent during that time. In this chapter, we’re going to examine three different theoretical periods commonly referred to as the classical perspective, human relations, and human resources. Each of these three groupings exist primarily as an opportunity of retrospective analysis. In other words, when we look back over the history of theoretical development in organizational communication, these three periods jump out as being uniquely different, so we ultimately group different ideas and important thought leaders together because of similarities in their theoretical approaches to organizing. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/03%3A_Classical_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/3.01%3A_What_is_Theory.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Understand Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management
• Explain the Bureaucratic Theory
• Describe Max Weber’s of Authority
• Discuss the implications of each classical perspective
To understand classical theories, a brief history of industrialization is really necessary. Industrialization, or the industrial revolution, refers to the “development and adoption of new and improved production methods that changed American and much of Europe from agrarian to industrial economies.”Scott, D. L. (Ed.). (2009). Industrial revolution. The American heritage dictionary of business terms. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pg. 259. So, how did both Europe and American transform themselves from agrarian, or farming, based economies to industrial ones? To pinpoint a single event or invention that really created the industrial revolution is almost impossible. From approximately 1750 to 1850 a variety of innovations in agriculture, manufacturing (both iron and textiles), mining, technology, and transportation altered cultural, economic, political, and social realities. For the first time in history people stopped working on family farms or in small family owned businesses and started working for larger organizations that eventually morphed into the modern corporation. While there had been models of large organizations with massive influence, like the Catholic Church, these organizations had been very limited in number. As more and more people left the family farm or local weaver in hopes of bettering their lives and the lives of their families through employment in larger organizations, new tools and models for managing these workers had to be developed.
Perhaps, the most widely known theories of organizational communication are those during the classical period that stemmed out of the industrial revolution. The main idea of the classical perspectives of organizational communication is that organizations are similar to machines. Hence, if you have a well- built and well-managed machine, then you will have a very productive and effective organization. The assumption is that each employee is part of a large machine, which is the organization. It one part fails then the entire machine fails.
Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management
In 1913, Frederick Taylor published Principles of Scientific Management Taylor, F. (1913). Principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper. ushering in a completely new way of understanding the modern organization. Frederick Taylor was trained as an engineer and played a prominent role in the idea of scientific management. Scientific managementThis type of organization emphasizes management oriented and production-centered perspective of organizational communication. This approach believes that organizations should be run like machines. Worker must do labor and managers must do the thinking. There is limited communication. is a management oriented and production-centered perspective of organizational communication.Einsenberg, E. M., & Goodall, H. L., Jr. (1993). Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Taylor believed that the reason why most organizations failed was due to the fact that they lacked successful systematic management. He wrote that “the best management is true science resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation.”Taylor, F. (1913). Principles of scientific management. New York: Harper, pg. 19.He further noted that “under scientific management arbitrary power, arbitrary dictation ceases, and every single subject, large and small, becomes question for scientific investigation, for reduction to law (p. 211).” Taylor believed that any job could be performed better if it was done scientifically. Taylor created time and motion studies that resulted in organizational efficiency.
Working as a foreman at on for the Bethlehem Steel Works in the 1900s, Taylor observed how workers could do more with less time. He analyzed coal shoveling at the organization. He noticed several workers would bring different size shovels from home. Workers who brought small shovels could do more but it took them longer and workers who brought big shovels could do less but it was faster. He observed that the best size shovel was one that weighed about twenty pounds. Hence, he ordered the organization to provide all the workers with the same size shovel. He also provided pay incentives for workers who could shovel more coal. By making these changes, the organization was able to increase production drastically.
In order to have a more productive organization, Taylor believed that there were several steps involved. First, one must examine the job or task. Second, one needs to determine the best way to complete the job or task. Third, one must choose the most appropriate person for the task at the same time properly compensating that person. Lastly, one must be able to train the person to do the task efficiently. Taylor believed that by using these scientific steps, then organizations would have fewer misuses of human effort.
Taylor’s idea of scientific management originated during the time in history when most training of workers was based on apprenticeship models. In an apprenticeship, a person would be taught and skilled by a more experienced person, who would illustrate the task so that the inexperienced person could model the behavior. Taylor believed that this was a very ineffective way of training because he felt that workers would differ in terms of tasks that were performed and the effectiveness of the tasks would be dependent on the type of training received. Taylor argued that the there should be only one way to explain the job and one way to execute the task. He did not believe that it should be left up to the expert to train apprentices on the task.
Overall, Taylor felt that employees were lazy and needed constant supervision. He posited that “the tendency of the average [employee] is toward working at a slow easy gait.” In other words, he noted that this tendency is called natural soldiering, which is affected by systematic soldiering, which occurs when employees decrease their work production based on input or communications from others. According to Taylor, systematic soldiering happens when employees feel that more production will not result in more compensation. In addition, if employees are paid by the hour and wanted to increase their income, then they might demonstrate that it takes more time in order to get compensated more than they would if they exerted more effort. Because Taylor feels that employees are inherently lazy, he feels that employees also impact the rate of production.
Taylor is known for his idea of time and motionThese are methods for calculating production efficiency by recording outcomes and time to produce those outcomes. A researcher can determine how long a worker needs to yield an expected result by measuring workers’ movements over time.. In other words, time and motion referred to a methods for calculating production efficiency by recording outcomes and time to produce those outcomes. Taylor believed that if each task was designed scientifically and the workers could be trained, then production could be measured by timing the labor the workers performed. It was his intention to create a work benchmark that could be quantified to improve efficiency and production outcomes. We should also mention that Taylor’s ideas on time and motion were ultimately furthered by the research of Frank Gilbreth who furthered the notion of time and motion by filming workers in action in an effort to gain a better idea of physical movements.Nadworny, M. J. (1957). Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth: Competition in scientific management. Business History Review, 31, 23–34. In the following video, you can see the work of Frank Gilbreth, along with his wife Lilian, as they attempted to use time and motion techniques to make bricklaying more effective, productive, and profitable.
In this video, the original configuration of the scaffolding required a lot of bending motion on the part of the bricklayers. The bending motion not only took more time but also increase fatigue of the workers over a long day, which would make them less effective and productive. After completing the time and motion study, you see the second half of the video where the workers have actually created scaffolding for the bricks that does not involve bending over to pick up the bricks. Ultimately, this simple example clearly illustrates the impact that time and motion study techniques could have on making workers better.
Taylor felt that if organizations were run like machines, then it would be ideal, because all tasks were clear-cut and simple. At the same time, these tasks typically did not allow for flexibility, creativity, or originality. In addition, there is a clear cut distinction between managers who think and workers who labor. Thus, this perspective does not account for work motivations, relationships, and turbulence in organizations.
Another key factor about Taylor’s scientific method is the style of communication. Taylor did not feel the need to build rapport among workers. Rather, he felt that managers needed to communicate in a clear-cut and candid manner. Further, employees do not need to provide input, they just need to know how to execute their jobs.
While Taylor’s ideas quickly took off like wild fire, they were not without their detractors. As early as 1912, the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations was raising skepticism about scientific management or what many were just calling Taylorism:
To sum up, scientific management in practice generally tends to weaken the competitive power of the individual worker and thwarts the formation of shop groups and weakens group solidarity; moreover, generally scientific management is lacking in the arrangements and machinery necessary for the actual voicing of the workers ideas and complaints and for the democratic consideration and adjustment of grievances.U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations (1912). A government evaluation of scientific management: Final report and testimony. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, pg. 136.
Bureaucratic Theory
Max Weber and Henri Fayol were also two theorists known for their work in the classical perspectives to organizational communication. These two theories focuses on the structure of the organization rather than the organizational activities. Many of their ideas are around today.
Max Weber termed bureaucracy as the ideals that organizations should try to attain. It also refers to selecting authority based on criterion and standards rather than by popularity or family relation. Hence, it makes organizational decisions harder to execute but it also protects’ workers from mistreatment, because there is order and structure to the communication. as the ideals in which organizations should aim for and aspire. Weber was influenced by socialist philosophy. He developed the idea of bureaucracy when he noticed several corrupt and unethical behaviors of leaders. He felt that organizational leaderships should center on task proficiency and impersonal relationships. Even though many people associate bureaucracy with red tape and ineffective organizations, this is not the outcome of bureaucracy. According to Weber, bureaucracy should be synonymous with order, consistency, reason, and reliability. In order to aspire to these traits, organizations need to have specific rules and emphasize impersonality. He noted that bureaucratic organization much have the following characteristics:
• Specialization & Division of Labor: Specific set tasks allow employees to achieve its own objective. Thus, every worker did not have to do many jobs, but an exclusive task that was assigned to that worker. This helped to alleviate multiple trainings and increase production.
• Rules & Procedures: Written policies help manage and direct the organization. Managers spend a majority of their time on how these policies help to guide and function in the organization. These procedures would serve as a guide and resource for the organization.
• Hierarchy of Authority: Organizations need to have a chain of command that is shaped like a pyramid. There are levels of supervisors and subordinates. Each worker will answer to their corresponding superior. This would assist in having a direct line of communication and better efficiency in the organization.
• Formal Communication: All decisions, rules, regulations, and behaviors are recorded. This information and communication will be shared in terms of the chain of command. Hence, everything is documented and accounted. There is no question in what needs to be done, because it is written down.
• Detailed Job Descriptions: The organization has clear and concise definitions, directions, and responsibilities of each position. Each worker is aware of their task and how to employ.
• Employment Based on Expertise: The organization will assign workers in positions that would fit their competencies. Hence, workers will be placed in the organization were they can maximize production.
Impersonal Environment
Relationships need to be impersonal and separate so that workers’ personal thoughts or feelings would not affect bias or decisions. Workers just need to work and they do not need to interact with others. Interpersonal relationships may jeopardize the organization’s outcomes.
Weber (1947)Weber, M. (1947). Essays on Sociology. New York: Oxford Press, pp. 196–198. categorized three types of authority: traditional, bureaucratic, and charismatic. Traditional authority is related to the backgrounds and traditions of an environment. This leadership is usually passed down from one family member to another without little regard to who is more apt or capable. Thus, authority is given to another based on custom or tradition. Think of family owned businesses and how those businesses usually do not let outsiders infer with it unless they are related to the family.
Charismatic authority is founded on the idea that the best candidate for this position will be the one who can exert authority. This person is usually charismatic, hence the name. If this person ever leaves the position, then their authority does as well. According to Weber, charismatic leaders are ones that lead to insecure and unpredictable organization because there is a vague idea of who will replace their position.
Another type of authority is bureaucratic. Weber felt that bureaucratic was the best way to delegate authority in an organization. Bureaucratic authority is founded on set objectives and criterion. Hence, the best leaders were bureaucratic leaders because they were picked in terms of the guidelines set out for that organization’s mission. Weber believed that bureaucratic authority was the ideal way to select authority because it neutralize thwarted ideas of nepotism, preferential treatment, prejudice, and discrimination. Hence, a candidate would be selected in terms of their job competency and not their linage or personality.
Table \(1\): Weber’s Types of Authority
Types of Authority
Traditional Charismatic Bureaucracy
Based on Family lineage Personality Rules & actions
Specialization None Charisma Technically qualified
Hierarchy Seniority Preferences Authority
Leadership Succession Family Popularity Most appropriate for the position
Communication Depends Depends Is written and has numerous records
Viewed as Nepotism Partisan Systematic
Henri Fayol
Henri Fayol managed a French mining company, called Comambault, which he was able to transform from almost a bankrupt organization to a very successful one. Originally, he worked there as an engineer then moved into management, and later leadership. Similar to Weber, Fayol felt that their needed to be division of labor, hierarchy, and fair practices. Fayol believed that there were principles of management which included:
• Unity of Direction: The organization should have the same objectives, one plan/goal, and one person of leadership/authority.
• Unity of Command: Employees should get orders from only one person. Therefore, there would not be a chain in command. One person would be the person in charge and be responsible.
• Authority: Managers have the entitlement to provide orders and obtain compliance. No other individuals in the organization have the privilege of power.
• Order: The organization must have set places for workers and resources. These should be in the right place at the correct time.
• Subordination of Individual Interest to the General Interests: The interest of the organization is most significant and not those of the group or individuals working for the organization.
• Scalar Chain: There is a hierarchical order of authority. There is a sequence and succession to how communication is transferred from one person to the other. This is similar to horizontal communication where workers of the same level communicate with each other.
Even though Fayol’s principles may appear to be strict, he was one of the first theorists to grasp the idea that having unconditional compliance with an organization may lead to problems. Hence, he also noted that each organization must determine the most favorable levels of authority.
All in all, communication in the classical perspective has two functions: control and command. Fayol believes that organizations must limit their communication to precise and explicit words for task design and implementation. Thus, communication is not spontaneous and is more centralized in a classical organization.
Fayol also believed there were certain management activities. He felt there were five activities that are applied to the administration unit of an organization. These activities included: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling and controlling. As explained by Fayol, planning is where managers create plans for the organization and predict future organizational needs. Next, organizing occurs when organizations employ people and materials to complete their plans. Commanding is what managers do to get the optimal output in production and efficiency. Coordinating is where managers bring together the labors of all of its employees. Last, controlling is to determine the accuracy of the organization’s efforts and its plan. Fayol’s impact still has a big influence on many of today’s organizations’ climate, structure, and leadership.
Key Takeaways
• Theories help us understand and predict communication and behaviors.
• Frederick Taylor created the idea of “scientific management”, which is a management style that focuses on producing outcomes and high orientation on management.
• Max Weber felt that bureaucracy was the best way to select authority. It is based on criterion and standard for the task rather than other variables such as family relationship or popularity.
• Henri Fayol believed that there are principles of management, which include: unity of direction, unity of command, authority, order, subordination of individual interest to the general interests, scalar chain. He also felt that classical perspectives have two functions: control and command.
Exercises
1. In groups, determine how these classical perspectives and similar and dissimilar from each other. Create a chart or table to highlight these differences.
2. In groups, discuss the pros and cons of utilizing each classical perspective in your current occupation and/ or your dream job. Is the classical perspective effective or ineffective? Why or why not?
3. Contact someone who is currently part of or has been a part of the military. Ask them specific questions regarding the military as an organization and types of communications in the military. Do you see relationships between the military and the organizational theories presented in this chapter?
4. Divide the class into small groups, each group must select a classical organizational perspective. They will act out their role in front of the class and the class must guess which perspective is being acted. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/03%3A_Classical_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/3.02%3A_The_Classical_Perspective.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Learn about the human relations approach
• Learn about key people in the human relations approach
• Learn about the implications of the human relations approach
During the 1930’s, it was noted that the world was in the middle of the worst economic depressions. During this period, workers started to dislike and question scientific methods and bureaucracy in organizational settings. In this section, we will introduce the human relationship approach. We will discuss the historical and cultural backgrounds of this approach.
The Great Depression, which occurred between 1929 -1940, caused many economic and social struggles for many Americans. Many governmental policies were changing, such as social security, welfare, and public improvement projects. The depression caused many families to move from drought, dry farming areas to the West Coast and from poor Southern cities to more enriched areas of the North. These families were looking for a better life. However, the increase of workers to these areas led to more competition. Moreover, it led to many types of worker abuse by corrupt and immoral managers. It was during this time, that many people had advocated for human rights, labor unions, better wages, and improved work conditions. “Fair wages” were defined NY worker output. In turn, this increased output usually lead to more injuries, illnesses, and deaths. Human rights were defined as having twelve hour work days, working six days a week, and a thirty minute break for lunch. These perspectives concerning “fair” and “human rights” were seen differently by managers and employees. The difference in perspectives caused tense and strained relationships between managers and workers.
Later World War II changed everything. There was an increase of employment in the private sector and the military. These changes resulted in a more human relations approach to communication in organizations, because there was an increase in well-educated workers. These new workers encouraged an awareness of worker’s needs, such as feeling important and appreciated as a worker and an individual. To better understand how new management ideas ultimately started to transform the face the workplace, we will first discuss a number of key ideas in the group of theories labeled under the term “human relations” followed by an analysis of two of the major theorists in this category: Elton Mayo and Kurt Lewin.
Key Ideas in Human Relations
Before we can jump right in and discuss the major theoretical thinkers that spawned the human relations movement, we first need to understand the basic characteristics of the theoretical developments in this time period. As with many theoretical movements, the notion of “human relations” is one that is drawn by researchers after the fact. Specifically, a business professor at the University of California at Berkley named Raymond E. Miles is responsible for much of the work on crystalizing the notion of “human relations.”Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157.
Miles, in a famous article in the Harvard Business ReviewMiles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157., discussed human relations as the natural knee-jerk reaction that many management theorists (along with workers and managers as well) had to Fredrick Taylor’s scientific management. Where Taylor viewed people as parts of a working machine, the human relations approach shifted the viewpoint from the task to the worker. For the first time, workers were viewed as an important part of the organization that should be viewed holistically instead of bundles of skills and aptitudes. As Miles noted, managers “were urged to create a ‘sense of satisfaction’ among their subordinates by showing interest in the employees’ personal success and welfare.”Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157.Most importantly, the goal of human relations was to make workers feel like they belonged to something bigger than themselves, and thus the worker’s work was important to the overall effort of the organization.
For communication scholars, the human relations approach is important because it is the first time that two-way communication was encouraged, or communication between a worker and her or his manager was like a dialogue instead of unidirectional communication from the manager targeted at the worker. Furthermore, the human relations perspective sees communication as a tool that can be used by management to “buy” cooperation from subordinates. Robert DubinDubin, R. (1958). The world of work. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. coined the term “privilege payA tool managers can utilize with subordinates when the manager provides subordinates departmental information and allows the subordinate to engage in open communication about various departmental issues with the manager.” to refer to a tool managers can utilize with subordinates when the manager provides subordinates departmental information and allows the subordinate to engage in open communication about various departmental issues with the manager. Dubin sees this as a form of payment a manager makes in order to “buy” cooperation from subordinates because the manager is having to give up some of her or his access to private information and control over subordinates because this process enables subordinates to engage in some self-direction.
In sum, the human relations perspective on organizational management notes that the world would be easier for managers if they could just make decisions and have subordinates follow those decisions. However, because employees are more productive when they are satisfied, it becomes the job of the manager to open engage with subordinates. As Miles notes, “this model suggests, the manager might do better to ‘waste time’ in discussing the problem with subordinates, and perhaps even to accept suggestions that he believes may be less efficient, in order to get the decision carried out.” Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157, pg. 150.
Key People in Human Relations
Now that we’ve explore some of the theoretical underpinnings of the human relations approach to management, we’re going to explore two of the most important thinkers who are seen as falling into this category: Elton Mayo and Kurt Lewin.
Elton Mayo
Elton Mayo was a Harvard Professor who had a huge interest in Federick Taylor’s work. He was interested in learning about ways to increase productivity. In 1924, Elton Mayo and his protégé Fritz Roethlisberger were awarded a grant by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Science to study productivity and lighting at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company. The Hawthorne experiments, as Elton Mayo’s body of work became known as, are a series of experiments in human relations conducted between 1924 and 1932 at Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois.
Illumination Study
The first study at Hawthorne Works was designed to explicitly test various lighting levels and how the lighting levels affected worker productivity. The original hypothesis of the illumination study was the as lighting increased worker productivity would increase. The opposite was also predicted, as lighting decreased, worker productivity would decrease. The original push behind the study was the electric power industry who believed that if they could demonstrate the importance of artificial lighting, organizations around the country would adopt artificial lighting in place of natural lighting to ensure worker productivity.
The research began in the fall of 1924 and continued through the spring of 1927 as three different groups of workers were put through the experiment: relay assembly workers, coil winding workers, and inspectors.Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. After three different testing conditions were concluded, the researchers were perplexed by their findings. It did not matter if the researchers increased or decreased light in the company; the workers’ productivity increased. This finding was even true when the researchers turned down the lights to wear the workers could barely see. The researchers later realized that lighting did not affect worker productivity, rather the researchers’ presence had an impact. That's why, production outcomes were similar to the lighting study because workers were influenced by the attention they got by the researchers.Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. This incident was labeled the Hawthorne EffectWorkers behaviors were affected by the attention they receive rather than by other variables like lighting or temperature. Once workers felt like they were being noticed or recognized, it influenced their productivity. Group norms were also affected..
Relay Assembly Study
In order to further clarify the impact of a variety of factors on productivity, a second set of tests were designed to evaluate rest periods and work hours on productivity. The goal of this study was really to determine how fatigue impacted worker productivity. Six women operators volunteered to participate in the relay assembly study. The women were given physical examinations at the beginning of the study and then every six weeks in order to ensure that the experiment was not adversely affecting their health.
The six women were isolated in a separate room away from other Hawthorne workers where it was easier to measure experimental conditions like output and quality of work, temperature, humidity, etc… The specific task in the relay assembly test was an electromagnetic switch that consisted of 35 parts that had to be put together by hand.
The experimenters introduced a variety of changes to the workers’ environment: pay rates, bonuses, lighting, shortened workdays/weeks, rest periods, etc… Surprisingly, as the test period quickly spanned from an original testing period of a couple of months to more than two years, no matter what the experimenters did, productivity increased. In fact, productivity increased over 30 percent during the first two and a half years of the study and then plateaued during the duration of the tests. The physicals the workers received every six weeks also showed that the women had improved physical health and their absenteeism decreased during the study period. Even more important, the women regularly expressed increased job satisfaction.
Once again the researchers were stumped. The researchers quickly tried to determine what was causing the increased productivity. The researchers quickly ruled out all of the manipulated conditions and settled on something considerably more intangible, employee attitudes.
Employee Interview Study
During the middle of the relay assembly studies, a group of Harvard researchers led by Elton Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger joined the team of engineers at Hawthorne Works to add further expertise and explanation to the studies underhand. One of the most important contributions Mayo makes is during the follow-up to the illumination and relay studies when they interviewed workers at Hawthorne Works.
From 1928 to 1931 the Harvard researchers interviewed over 21,000 workers in attempt to gage worker morale and determine what job factors impacted both morale and job satisfaction. The researchers predicted, based on the illumination and relay studies, that if they could increase worker morale and satisfaction then the workers would be more efficient and productive as well. The interview study definitely posed some new challenges for the researchers. Mayo not that the “experience itself was unusual; there are few people in this world who have had the experience of finding someone intelligent, attentive, and eager to listen without interruption to all that he or she has to say.”Mayo, E. (1945). The social problems of an industrial civilization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, pg. 163. To this end, Mayo trained a series of interviewers to listen and not give advice as they took descriptive notes of what was being told to them by the workers.
After the interviewing study was completed, the researchers attempted to make sense of the mounds of data they had accumulated. One interesting side effect was noted. After being interviewed by a researcher about the employee’s working conditions, the employee reported increased satisfaction. Ultimately, the vary act of being asked about their working conditions made the employees more satisfied workers and more ultimately more productive. One of the interesting outcomes of this study is the practice of employee reaction surveys, which are still widely used in organizations today.
Bank Wiring Observation Study
One of the findings of the interview study was that workers had a tendency of creating an informal standard for output that was predetermined by the group but never clearly stated. These productivity standards were never really in-line with the ones communicated by either efficiency engineers or managers. To examine the influence that informal group rules had on worker productivity, Mayo and his team created the bank wiring observation study.
Fourteen bank wiremen (nine wirers, three solderers, and two inspectors) were placed in a separate room and told to complete their individual tasks. The men in the room were putting together automatic telephone exchange components that consisted of 3,000 to 6,000 individuals terminals that had to be wired. The workers spent a lot of time on their feet. To ensure that the men were not affected by the Hawthorne effect, the researchers never let the men know they were being studied. However, a researcher named W. Lloyd Warner, a trained anthropologist with an interest in group behavior, was present in the room, but he acted like a disinterested spectator and had little direct interaction with the wiremen. In the experimental condition, pay incentives and productivity measures were removed to see how the workers would react. Over time, the workers started to artificially restrict their output and an average output level was established for the group that was below company targets. Interestingly enough, the man who was considered the most admired of the group also demonstrated the most resentment towards management and slowed his productivity the most, which led to the cascading productivity of all of the other men in the group.
The researchers ultimately concluded that the wiremen created their own productivity norms without ever verbally communicating them to each other. For the first time, the researchers clearly had evidence that within any organization there exists an informal organization that often constrains individual employee behavior. The bank wiring observation study was stopped in spring of 1932 as layoffs occurred at Hawthorne Works because of the worsening Great Depression.
Conclusion
The Hawthorne Studies and the research of Mayo and Roethlisberger reinvented how organizations think about and manager workers. Unlike Taylor’s perspective, Mayo and Roethlisberger felt that interpersonal relationships were important. Moreover, they felt that society was composed on groups and not just individuals, individuals do not act independently with their own interests but are influenced by others, and most workers decisions are more emotional than rational. One cannot overstress the importance that Mayo and Roethlisberger have had on management theory and organizational academics. Overall, these studies demonstrated the importance that communication is in subordinate-supervisor interactions, the importance of peer-relationships, and the importance of informal organizations.
While the Hawthorne Studies revolutionized management theory, they were also quite problematic. For example, most of the major studies in this series consisted of very small samples of workers (6 in the relay study; 13 in the bank wiring study), so these results are definitely suspect from a scientific vantage point. Furthermore, some people would argue that Hawthorn effects were really the result of workers who were more afraid of unemployment rather than communication relationships.Rice, B. (1982). The Hawthorne Defect: Persistence of a flawed theory. Psychology Today, 16(2), 70–74. Regardless of potential errors of the studies, the conclusion that Mayo, Roethlisberger, and Dickson found was quite extraordinary. Relationships have a significant impact on the quality of organizational performance.
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin was another person who explored the human relations side to organizational communication. Lewin was a refugee from Nazi Germany. He adored democracy and had a passion for applying psychology to improving the world.Tannenbaum, A. S. (1966). Social psychology of the work organization. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, p. 86. During World War II, Lewin was at the University of Iowa. The U.S. government asked him to research ways to advise against housewives from purchasing meat, because there was such a short supply.Lewin, K. (1958). Group decision and social change. In E. F. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, and E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in social psychology (pp. 197–211). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Lewin felt that there was a huge barrier because housewives were expected to buy meat because of their families, friends, and parents, who anticipated to be served meat. Lewin hypothesized that if housewives were able to talk with other housewives about their meat buying tendencies, that they would be able to overcome this barrier. Lewin and his cohorts performed the experiments and found support for his hypothesis. Housewives who were able to talk about their meat purchasing with other housewises were ten times more likely to change their behavior.
Lewin felt like he could analyze these same principles in an organization. Lester Coch and John R.P. FrenchCoch, L., & French, J. R. P., Jr. (1948). Overcoming resistance to change. Human Relations, 1, 512–532. found that workers in a pajama factory were more likely to espouse new work methods if they were given the opportunity to discuss them and exercise some influence on the decisions that affected their jobs. These new findings helped organizations realize the benefits of group formation, development, and attitudes. Lewin’s ideas helped influence future organizational communication theorists by emphasizing the importance of communication. Lewin helped identify the fact that workers want to have a voice and provide input in their tasks.
Key Takeaways
• Elton Mayo and his research associates studied how lighting effects production. They later realized that the workers were not affected by lighting rather the researchers presence.
• Kurt Lewin felt that group dynamics impacted behavioral outcomes. If workers can talk about their tasks with others it impacts the organization.
• Workers usually had a tendency of creating an informal standard for output that was never stated but also predetermined by the group.
Exercises
1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the human relations approach.
2. Discuss how group dynamics impacts behavior outcomes. Is this true from your experience? How so?
3. Do you believe that group dynamics are important in an organization? Why or why not? Can you provide some specific examples? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/03%3A_Classical_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/3.03%3A_Human_Relations_Theories.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Define and understand the differences between human relations vs. human resources.
• Identify key people in human resources theories.
• Discuss and learn about motivation theories.
• Discuss and explain Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y and Theory X.
• Analyze Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making Theory
In the previous section, you were introduced to the research of Elton Mayo and Kurt Lewin under the banner of human relations theories. In this section, we’re going to further our understanding of theory in organizations by examining those theoretical perspectives that fall into the human resources camp.
The notion of human resources as a general category for a variety of management related theories was originally proposed by Raymond Miles.Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157. First and foremost, Miles’ human resource theories posits that all workers are reservoirs of untapped resources. Miles believed that each and every worker comes into an organization with a variety of resources that management can tap into if they try. “These resources include not only physical skills and energy, but also creative ability and the capacity for responsible, self-directed, self-controlled behavior.”Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157, pg. 150.
Under this perspective then, managers should not be focused on controlling employees or getting them to “buy-in” to decisions, which are the hallmarks of scientific management and human relations. Instead, the primary task of management should be the creation of a working environment that fosters employee creativity and risk taking in an effort to maximize and tap into the resources employees bring to the job. As such, communication in this perspective must be constant and bi-directional and participation in decision-making must include both management and workers. Miles explains that his human resources model “recognized the untapped potential of most organizational members and advocated participation as a means of achieving direct improvement in individual and organizational performance.” Miles, R. E., & Ritchie, J. B. (1971). Participative management: Quality vs. quantity. California Management Review, 13(4), 48–56., p. 48. To help us understand human resources, we are going to describe how human resources differ from human relations and discuss some key people in human resources.
Human Relations vs. Human Resources Theories
To understand the notions of human relations and human resources is to understand Raymond Miles (Miles, R. E. (1965)). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157. original ideas on both concepts. Miles, as explained above, articulated a very clear theoretical perspective that was high on communication, high on tapping into employee resources, and high on employee input in decision making. These ideas were not his, but he did create a clear categorization scheme where he delineated between two groups of researchers whom he labeled human relations and human resources. While Miles believes these two groups exist, he also admits that these groups exist primarily in how managers interpret and apply various pioneers of the field of management, so the researchers who fall into the human relations camp often discuss concepts that seem to fall within Miles’ own human resources framework. Table \(1\): provides a list of the major differences that Miles believed existed between human relations and human resources.
Table \(1\): Human Relations vs. Human Resources
Human Relations Human Resources
Worker Needs Workers need to belong, be liked, and be respected. While workers need to belong, be liked, and be respected, workers also want to creatively and effectively contribute to worthwhile goals.
Worker Desires Workers really desire to feel as though they are a useful part of the organization. Workers really desire to exercise initiative, responsibility, and creativity, so management should allow for these.
Outcomes If worker needs and desires are filled, they will willingly cooperate and comply with management. Management should tap into worker capabilities and avoiding wasting untapped resources.
Job Satisfaction When employee needs and desires are met, they’ll be more satisfied. When employees feel that they have self-direction and control and are able to freely use their creativity, experience, and insight they will be more satisfied.
Productivity Job satisfaction and reduced resistance to formal authority will lead to more productive workers. When employees feel that they have self-direction and control and are able to freely use their creativity, experience, and insight they will be more productive .
Management Goal Managers should strive to ensure that all employees feel like they are part of the team. Managers should help employees discover hidden talents and ensure that all workers are able to fully use their range of talents to help accomplish organizational goals.
Decision Making Management should allow employees to offer input on routine decisions and be willing to discuss these decisions, but management should keep important decisions to themselves. Management should allow and encourage employees to freely participate in the decision making process with all types of decisions. In fact, the more important the decision is, the more the manager should seek out his employee resources in the decision making process.
Information Sharing Information sharing is a useful tool when helping employees feel like they are part of the group. Information sharing is vital for effective decision making and should include the full range of creativity, experience, and insight from employees.
Teamwork Management should allow teams to exercise moderate amounts of self-direction and control. Management should encourage teamwork and continually look for greater areas where teams can exercise more control.
Source: This table is based on Mile’s models of participate leadership. Miles, R. E. (1965). Human relations or human resources? Harvard Business Review, 43(4), 148–157, pg. 151.
Key People in Human Resources Theories
As we see in Table \(1\): , there some key differences between human relations and human resources theories. These differences can be broken down into two basic categories: motivation and decision making. The rest of this section is going to both of these areas and the key people who researched these phenomena.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Many other theorists tried to explain the importance of the human resources approach. One of these individuals was Abraham Maslow.Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96. He is widely known for his creation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsModel that suggests there are certain levels of human motivation and each level must be met before moving to the next level. Shaped like a pyramid, the model shows that human’s most basic need from lowest to highest is physical, then safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.. In order to get employees to work, he tried to understand what motivates people. He came up with five needs that need to be satisfied at one stage before moving on to another stage. Malsow felt that needs vary from person and person and that individuals want their need fulfilled. One must determine what is the motivational factor (Figure 3.1).
Physiological Needs. The first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is psychological, which means that physical needs such as food and water need to be met before moving to the next level. If workers do not make enough money to buy food and water, then it will be hard for them to continue working.
Safety Needs. The second level is called safety. Workers need to be in a safe environment and know that their bodies and belongings will be protected. If workers don’t feel secure, then they will find it hard to work efficiently. Think of the many occupations that are highly unsafe. According to an article on the CNN Money websiteChristie, L. (2011, August 26). America’s most dangerous jobs: The 10 most dangerous jobs in America. In CNNMoney [website]. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/...obs/index.html, the top ten most dangerous jobs in the United States are as follows:
1. Fisherman
2. Logger
3. Airplane Pilot
4. Farmer and Rancher
5. Mining Machine Operator
6. Roofer
7. Sanitation Worker
8. Truck Driver/Deliveryman
9. Industrial Machine Repair
10. Police Officer
According to Maslow’s basic theoretical premise, these individuals will have a harder time worrying about needs at the higher levels unless they can overcome the inherent lack of safety within these jobs.
Love, Affection, and Belongingness Needs. The third layer is called love, affection, and belongingness needs. Maslow believed that if an individual met the basic physiological and safety needs, then that individual would start attempting to achieve love, affection, and belongingness needs next, “He [or she] will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his [or her] group, and he [or she] will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381. Maslow believed that organizations would have better worker retention and satisfaction if they kept their employees in a cohesive environment. Furthermore, if a worker feels isolated or ostracized from their environment, then he or she would feel less motivated to work, which will lead to a decrease in overall productivity.
Esteem Needs. The fourth layer is called esteem, and is represented by two different sets of needs according to Maslow. First, individuals are motivated by the “desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381. Maslow goes on to discuss a second subset of esteem needs, “we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381–382. While Maslow originally separated these two lists from each other, they clearly have more in common than not. If employees do not feel that their input is valued at the organization, they will seek out other places of employment that will value their input, because humans have an intrinsic need to be appreciated for their efforts.
Self-Actualization Needs. The fifth layer is called self-actualization, and it is the hardest to attain. Self-actualization “refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for [a person] to become actualized in what he [or she] is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” Maslow goes on to explain, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he [or she] is to be ultimately happy. What a man [or woman] can be, he [or she] must be. This need we may call self-actualization [emphasis in original].”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 382. Maslow felt that if individuals can have their needs met in order of the layers, then they would be both motivated and seek opportunities to excel.
All in all, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us understand how to motivate workers to strive for more in the organization. Hence, communication is very important, because we need to understand what our employees need in order to motivate them to work more proficiently and productively.
Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory
Another researcher to enter into the fray of human motivation was Frederick Herzberg. Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, over the course of Herzberg’s career he switched focused and became one of the first researchers in the growing field of industrial psychology. The original notion of Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene TheorySimilar to Maslow’s Heirarachy of Needs, but focuses on what motivated humans to work. He also focus on what demotivated workers to have a positve or negative job attitues. was that traditional perspectives on motivation, like Maslow’s, only looked at one side of the coin—how to motivate people. Herzberg and his original colleaguesHerzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. S. (1959). The motivation to work. New York, NY: Wiley. theorized that what ultimately motivated individuals to work were not necessarily the same factors that led to demotivation at work. In Herzberg’s worldview, motivation on the job should lead to satisfied workers, but he theorized that satisfaction and dissatisfaction were not opposite ends of one continuum. Instead, he predicted that the factors that lead to positive job attitudes (and thus motivation) were different from the factors that lead to negative job attitudes (and thus demotivation). For the purposes of his theory, he called the factors that led to positive job attitudes motivatorsThe list of factors that lead to positive job attitudes according to motivation theorist Frederick Herzberg. and those factors that led to negative job attitudes hygiene factorsThe list of factors that led to negative job attitudes according to motivation theorist Frederick Herzberg.. In Table 3.3 the basic motivators and hygiene factors are listed. Notice that the motivators are all centered around ideas that are somewhat similar to the esteem needs and self-actualization needs of Abraham Maslow. On the other hand, the hygiene factors all examine the context of work.
Table \(2\): Motivators and Hygiene Factors
Motivators Hygiene Factors
Achievement Policy and administration
Recognition Micromanagement
Advancement Relationships (Supervisor, Peers, & Subordinates)
The work itself Job security
Responsibility Personal life
Potential for promotion Work conditions
Potential for personal growth Status
Salary
Upon looking at Table 3.3, you may notice that Salary is centered between both motivators and hygiene factors. In The Managerial Choice Herzberg reversed his previous thinking that salary was purely a hygiene factor, “Although primarily a hygiene factor, it [salary] it also often takes on some of the properties of a motivator, with dynamics similar to those of recognition for achievement.” Herzberg, F. (1976). The managerial choice: To be efficient and to be human. Homewood, IL: Dow-Jones-Irwin, pg. 71.
Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
As we discussed earlier, the classical perspective felt that leadership should control and order subordinates. Then, in the human relations approach, we learned that superiors need to cultivate and support their employees. Douglas McGregor (McGregor, D. (1960) The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill), a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s and 1960s, felt that there are two different perspectives, which he termed as Theory X, which is similar to the scientific management approach, where workers are expected to only work. In this perspective, managers believe that workers are apathetic towards work and people need direction. In addition, managers believe that workers are not smart, do not seek advancement, and avoid responsibility. and Theory YThis approach is similar to the human relations approach. In this perspective, managers believe that people want to succeed and they can excel if you give them the right to be creative. In addition, people want to work, seek direction, and are ambitious.. These theories were based on assumptions that managers have about their workers.
McGregor defined a Theory X manager who believes that most people do not like work. Workers are not smart or creative. People do not care about the organization, and will adequately work when there are promises for rewards and potential punishments. Moreover, Theory X manager believes that people want to have direction in order to evade responsibility.
On the other hand, Theory Y managers feel that people want to do what is best for the organization and can direct themselves under the right conditions. Table \(3\): illustrates the differences between Theory X and Theory Y.
Table \(3\): Differences between Theory X & Theory Y
Theory X Theory Y
People dislike work and find ways to avoid it People perceive work as natural and find it enjoyable
Workers want to avoid responsibility People want responsibility
Want direction Prefer self-direction
Resists change Wants to work toward organizational goals
Not intelligent Have the potential to develop & adapt
Not creative Are intelligent
Managers must control, reward, and/or punish employees to maintain performance Are creative
Work conditions need to be set to achieve worker & organizational goals
Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making Theory
The last major theorist we are going to explore related to the human resources side of management theory is Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making (PDM) TheoryThis model has four systems that are based on effectively functioning groups that are related throughout the organization. Hence, Likert felt that with accurate understanding of human performance in variability and contrasts, then organizations could be more productive.. Likert originally explored the idea of how organizational leaders make decisions in his book The Human Organization.Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and value. New York: McGraw-Hill. Likert’s ideas were based in the notion that supervisors with strong worker productivity tended to focus on the human aspects of subordinate problems while creating teams that emphasized high achievement. In other words, these supervisors were employee centered and believed that effective management required treating employees as humans and not just worker bees. Likert further noted that these highly productive leaders also tended to involve subordinates in the decision making process. Out of this basic understanding of productive versus unproductive management, Likert created a series of four distinct management styles.
System 1: Exploitive Authoritative. System 1, exploitative authoritative management, starts with the basic issue of trust. Under this system of management, the manager simply does not trust subordinates and has no confidence in subordinate decision making capabilities. Because of this lack of trust, all decisions are simply decided upon by people at the upper echelons of the hierarchy and then imposed on the workers. Communication under these leaders is typically unidirectional (from management to workers), and employees are motivated to comply with management dictates out of fear.
System 2: Benevolent Authoritative. System 2, benevolent authoritative management, starts with the basic notion that decision making should be situated with those in managerial positions. Because managers believe that decision making should be theirs and theirs alone, managers believe that workers will simply comply with managerial dictates because of the manager’s legitimate right to make decisions. This type of management almost takes on a master-servant style relationship. As for communication, subordinates are not free to discuss decisions or any job-related matters with their superiors. Ultimately, employ motivation to comply with managerial dictates is done through a system of rewards.
System 3: Consultative. System 3, consultative management, starts with a lot more trust in employee decision making capabilities. However, the manager may either not have complete confidence in employee decision making or may have the ultimate responsibility for decisions made, so he or she does not allow workers to just make and implement decisions autonomously. Typically, the manager seeks input from workers and then uses this input to make the ultimate decision. Under consultative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is fair, and employees tend to be more motivated and satisfied than the previous two styles of management. However, consultative management can be very effective if, and only if, the input process is conducted legitimately. One of the biggest mistakes some managers make is to use pseudo-consultative practices where they pretend to seek out input from subordinates even though the actual decision has already been made. Pseudo-consultative decision making is just a different flavor of benevolent authoritative management.
System 4: Participative. System 4, participative management, is built on the goal of ensuring that decision making and organizational goal attainment is widespread throughout the organizational hierarchy. In these organizations, organizational leaders have complete confidence in worker ability to make and implement decisions, so workers are constantly encouraged to be very active in the decision making process. Under participative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is good, and employees tend to be motivated and satisfied.
These four different systems characterize many of the classical theories discussed in this chapter. For instance, System 1 is similar to the scientific management approach t and System 4 has characteristics from the human relations approach. Likert believed that an organization’s performance is based on the systems or structures in place for the workers. Thus, Likert believed that organizations could incorporate some aspects from the scientific management approach, human relations, and human resource approach in order to maximize organizational outcomes.
Key Takeaways
• Human Resources encourages an environment where employees have the ability to be creative and take risks in order to maximize outcomes.
• Human resources places an emphasis on more communication than human relations.
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs help us to understand what motivates people in organizations.
• Herzberg’s theory focuses on what motivates individuals to work and he also focused on what factors lead individuals to demotivation at work.
• McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y are assumptions that managers have about their employees. They differ in the type of communication involved as well as the expectations of workers.
• Rensis Likert’s ideas were based on the idea that supervisors are employee centered and to treat all employess as unique humans rather than just another worker.
Exercises
1. What do you think are the most important characteristics between human relations and human resources? Which do you prefer? Why?
2. Which motivation theory is more applicable in the workplace? Why?
3. Create your own hypothetical Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What would motivate you to work in an organization. Use Figure 3.1 as a guide when creating your pyramid. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/03%3A_Classical_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/3.04%3A_Human_Resources_Theories.txt |
McDaniel’s Burger Case Study
McDaniel’s Burger Restaurant is a family owned restaurant in the Southwestern part of the United States. It is located in a small town in Texas. The family has had the restaurant for three generations. People come from far and wide to eat at the restaurant, because they take pride in cooking each burger to the customer’s wants and needs. The restaurant prides itself in having the most selections for meat and vegetarian burgers. In addition, they carry a wide variety of toppings, such as ordinary toppings like tomatoes, bacon, cheese, onions, lettuce, but also unique toppings like cucumbers, salsa, salad dressing, pineapple, and sprouts. Customers can decide on how they would like their burger cooked: grilled or fried. Everyone in town loves McDaniel’s Burgers because they are personalized and delicious.
Lately, business has been increasing because the population has increased. The McDaniel family can longer keep up with the demand and decide to sell their business to a bigger firm, the Burger Business. Burger Business has many establishments and is used to catering to large crowds. Burger Business executives liked McDaniel’s burgers but felt that it was not very efficient, because customers would have to wait a long time before their order was completed. Over time, the executives and consultants of Burger Business felt that they needed to have five different stations. The first station was for meat selection. For instance, the customer can choose their meet selection of: beef, bison, elk, chicken, veggie patty, etc. The second station was for meat preparation. The customer can choose if they want their meat fried or grilled and to what degree. The third station was for toppings on the burger. An attendant would help the customer with the toppings for their burger. The fourth station was the side bar, where customers could choose what sides such as drinks and French fries with their burger. The last station was the cashier, where customers would pay for their meal. Most of the employees of McDaniel’s Burgers were already trained in all areas of operations. Hence, they could work in any station and in any order. The Burger Business executives felt that this would help with employee satisfaction because they could work in a variety of stations and they could have more flexible .
However, over time, the profits for McDaniel’s Burgers were not very high. Moreover, employee retention was at an all time high. However, executives felt they could replace workers, because the task was so simple. In addition, several customers did not prefer dining in the restaurant as in the past. More customers were requesting to take home their orders. The executives were confused because they felt they made productive and efficient changes. Initially, the executives felt that the reason customers felt negatively about the business was because there were certain stations that tended to have longer lines, such as the toppings and sides bar. Hence, they divided the toppings stations into original toppings and unique toppings. In addition, they divided the sides bar into fries and drinks. The executives also decided to get rid of toppings that customers rarely ordered such as anchovies and sauerkraut. Overall, the executives were happy with the changes they made and felt that they could open more McDaniel’s Burgers in other locations.
Case Analysis Discussion Questions:
1. In the end, the Burger Business executives had an positive perspective of the future of McDaniel’s Burgers. Do you agree? Why? What are some potential risks or pitfalls that the executives need to be cautious about? What could they do to motivate workers?
2. Can you identify some of the classical theories presented in this case study? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of these theories in this case study?
3. Let’s pretend the Burger Business hired you as a communication consultant for McDaniel’s Burgers, what information would you collect? How will this information help you predict the future outcome of this business? What would you expect the findings to be? How would you use this information to make suggestions to the executives?
4. Pretend that you are a customer of McDaniel’s Burgers. How do you feel communication can be improved for the customers of McDaniel’s Burgers? What would customers prefer or dislike with this establishment?
5. Pretend that you are an employee of McDaniel’s Burgers. How do you feel that communication can be improved? Why is there such a high employee turnover rate? How can executives help with the employee retention rate?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. The word “theory” originally derives its name from a Greek word theoria, θεωρ ία, which roughly translated means:
1. generalization
2. affiliation
3. contemplation
4. harmonization
5. actualization
2. Sara gets a job where she has to stamp letters all day. She is given no other task or opportunity to talk with others. What classical perspective best describes her job?
1. scientific management
2. bureaucracy
3. Theory Y
4. Hawthorne effect
5. authority
3. Weber stated that the best way to select authority was:
1. bureaucracy
2. traditional ways
3. charismatic
4. b & c
5. all of the above
4. Fayol believed that there is a hierarchical order of authority. There is a sequence and succession to how communication is transferred from on person to the other. This is known as:
1. scalar chain
2. subordination of individual interests to general interest
3. order
4. authority
5. unity of command
5. All of the following are characteristics of the human relations approach EXCEPT:
1. workers desire to feel as though they are useful part of the organization
2. if workers’ need are filled, they will comply
3. when employee needs and desires are met, they are more satisfied
4. management should tap into worker capabilities
5. management should allow employees to offer input, but keep important decisions to themselves
1. c
2. a
3. a
4. a
5. d | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/03%3A_Classical_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/3.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
In this chapter, we will expand our view of organization and communication in ways that allow us to consider some new perspectives: Did your boss yell to assert power over you? Was this assertion of power rooted in historical prejudices or in attitudes that prevail in the surrounding society? Is aggression tied to the very nature of organizing itself? Or is aggression rooted in the culture of your particular organization, a pattern that employees past and present have established, so that yelling is way that people “make sense” of a super-competitive work environment?
• 4.1: Introduction
Yet by expanding your view of “organization” and “communication,” you can better understand the often bewildering and messy realities of everyday life on the job. Modern theories of organizational communication—the subject of this chapter—are driven by a recognition that “real life” in the workplace seldom conforms to such ideals as smoothly operating hierarchies and clearly transmitted messages.
• 4.2: Rethinking the Organization
When you think of an “organization” you probably think of it as an object with its own existence. Most people do. A corporation, for example, is considered a “person” under United States law for purposes ranging from taxation to free speech. Clearly, however, thinking of an organization as an object is a metaphor. Nevertheless, the way that we conceptualize an “organization” has very real consequences for organizational communication theory.
• 4.3: Rethinking Communication
In this section we will consider the two questions: how communication works and what communication is. The SMCR model, for example, suggests communication works by traveling in a straight line from source to receiver. But scholars have largely moved beyond this simple linear model and have described communication as an interactional model of communication which holds that communication travels in a circle as a sender transmits a message and then the receiver responds with feedback.
• 4.4: Representative Modern Theories
To speak of “interpretive organizational theory,” or “critical organization theory,” or “postmodern organization theory” is not to speak of any one single theory. Rather, each is—along with the postpositive perspective—a general approach to the looking at the problem of organizational communication. Each approach is informed by its own ontology (belief about the how things exist), epistemology (belief about how things can be known), and axiology (belief about what is worth knowing). Then, out of
• 4.E: Exercises
Thumbnail: international model of communication. (CC BY-SA-NC; anonymous).
04: Modern Theories of Organizational Communication
Expanding Your View
Up to now, your introduction to organizational communication has been fairly straightforward. The definition of an “organization” presented in Chapter 1 emphasized aspects of the workplace that you probably expected—structure, goals, personnel, etc., and the definition of “communication” featured elements that can be easily understood—source, message, channel, receiver. Then in Chapter 3 we explored classical theories of organizational communication that are driven by attitudes you have likely encountered on the job—your supervisor’s desire for machine-like efficiency, your company’s view of employees as “human resources” that must be beneficially managed.
In this chapter, however, we are going to complicate these pictures. Yet by expanding your view of “organization” and “communication,” you can better understand the often bewildering and messy realities of everyday life on the job. Modern theories of organizational communication—the subject of this chapter—are driven by a recognition that “real life” in the workplace seldom conforms to such ideals as smoothly operating hierarchies and clearly transmitted messages.
For example, has your boss ever yelled at you? Irrational behavior can be difficult to square with classical theories of organization and communication. Though a message is obviously being transmitted from a source (your boss) to a receiver (you), insults generate far more mental stimulation than is necessary and, in fact, introduce inaccuracies that will likely cause you to misinterpret the message. Cursing hardly reflects the scientific management advocated by Frederick Taylor, the impersonal environment espoused by Max Weber, and the precise wording of commands favored by Henri Fayol. So by these lights, your boss’s yelling is inefficient and counterproductive. Neither are curses and insults conducive to good human relations in the workplace—or to satisfying your hierarchy of needs, or giving you positive motivation and enjoyment in your job, or encouraging your involvement in workplace decisions. By all these accounts, yelling and cursing is bad management—and yet, as we will see in Chapter 13, it occurs daily in organizations worldwide. One study estimated that 37 percent of workers will be subjected to workplace bullying in the course of their careers. In the United States alone, that amounts to more than 56 million people.Namie, G. (2010). Workplace Bullying Institute 2010 U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved April 22, 2012, from http://www.workplacebullying.org/wbi...ational-survey
In this chapter, we will expand our view of organization and communication in ways that allow us to consider some new perspectives: Did your boss yell to assert power over you? Was this assertion of power rooted in historical prejudices or in attitudes that prevail in the surrounding society? Is aggression tied to the very nature of organizing itself? Or is aggression rooted in the culture of your particular organization, a pattern that employees past and present have established, so that yelling is way that people “make sense” of a super-competitive work environment?
Learning about modern theories of organizational communication will help us explore such questions. Before describing these theories, however, we must first revisit the assumptions that we have built up in the preceding chapters. This is because modern theories are often based on different assumptions about the nature of organizations and communication than are classical theories. We are not asking you to discard classical thinking; the theories developed by Taylor, Weber, Fayol, and scholars in the human relations and human resources traditions address real issues in the workplace and remain influential. Rather, we are asking you to build on the foundation of classical theory and now expand your view. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/04%3A_Modern_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/4.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate among the four approaches to theorizing about organizations: postpositive, interpretive, critical, and postmodern.
• Understand how these approaches are driven by three decisions: about ontology (how things exist), epistemology (how things are known), and axiology (what is worth knowing).
In Chapter 1 we read fifteen representative definitions of “organization” (see Table 1.1). All fifteen contained one or more of the following words (or their variants): system, structure, unit, collective, pattern, coordination.
When we think of a “system” or “structure” we usually think of an object, a thing that exists independently of the people in it. People come and go, but the system endures. Yet when we think of a system as a “thing” we are thinking metaphorically. As noted in the introduction to Chapter 3, a metaphor is not a literal description but rather a linguistic means to grasp a concept by comparing it to something from the real world. Thus, we think of time as an object in such metaphors as “time flies” and “time is money.”Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In the same way, although a system is not an actual, literal, physical object which you can hold in your hands, thinking of it that way helps you picture how a system functions.
Similarly, when you think of an “organization” you probably think of it as an object with its own existence. Most people do. A corporation, for example, is considered a “person” under United States law for purposes ranging from taxation to free speech. Clearly, however, thinking of an organization as an object is a metaphor. Nevertheless, the way that we conceptualize an “organization” has very real consequences for organizational communication theory.
Three Decisions about Theory
The assumption that an organization is an object with an independent existence—that is to say, it has an “objective” rather than “subjective” reality—is characteristic of the postpositiveAn approach to organizational communication which holds that organizations have objective existences. Since the imperative to optimize performance governs the organization, individual mindsets ultimately are superfluous. Organizational behaviors are therefore best studied in the aggregate through empirical observations that leads to measurable results. (sometimes called positivist or functionalist) tradition in organizational communication scholarship. Below we will review the postpositive perspective and then, as alternatives, introduce the interpretiveAn approach to organizational communication which holds that organizations have subjective existences and, in fact, are constitued through their members’ communication. As such, it is not enough to observe aggregate behaviors; individual mindsets must be also be interpreted., criticalAn approach to organizational communication that employs theory as a framework to expose the hidden power structures in organizations and the ways that dominant interests distort meaning, thought, consciousness, and communicative action to maintain their domination by marginalizing alternative expressions., and postmodernAn approach to organizational communication which holds that organizations come into existence as temporary combinations of interests against the threatening fluidity of larger historical and cultural discourses. As a reflection of these discourses, the organization is a “text” that can be “read” in order to trace back how its hidden power relations were formed. perspectives on organizations. Each approach to how we conceive of organizations involves different assumptions. For theorists, their assumptions imply three decisions: ontology, epistemology, and axiology.
Ontology
Our ontologyPhilosophy of how things have being. Some theorists believe an organization exists independently from how people perceive it; others believe an organization exists only in relation to the perceptions of its people or in relation to society. is how we think about the nature of being. Do we think of an organization as having its own existence and own behaviors that continue independently of the various managers and employees who come and go over time? Or do we believe these individuals create and continuously re-create the organization and therefore drive its behaviors? Or is our concept of the organization, and our expectations for the form it should take and what it should do, determined by larger historical and cultural forces?
Epistemology
Our epistemologyPhilosophy of how things are known. Some researchers believe it is sufficient to observe and measure an organization’s aggregate behaviors; others believe that the mindsets and interactions of individuals must also be interpreted. is our philosophy of how things come to be known. Do we believe that knowledge about an organization is attained by observing collective actions and measuring aggregate behaviors? Or by listening to individual members of an organization and interpreting organizational life on their terms? Or by tracing the historical and cultural forces that have shaped people’s expectations for what an organization should be and the roles that managers and employees should play?
Axiology
Our axiologyPhilosophy of what is worth knowing. Some researchers only accept knowledge gained empirically through observation and measurement of aggregate behaviors; others believe that people’s perceptions must be analyzed. is what we believe is worth knowing, a decision that involves a value judgment. Many social scientists believe that only empirical evidence, or what can be directly and impartially observed and measured, is worth knowing. Others ask whether any research is truly value-neutral or can be based on “just the facts.” Does not the choice of research method influence what is found? Indeed, is not a decision to accept only what can be measured in itself a value judgment? Where some scholars strive to produce impartial knowledge, which organizational management can use to improve results, others believe such a goal implicitly supports the current system and those in power. Furthermore, where some researchers measure aggregate responses, others strive to hear organizational members on their own terms while giving voice to the powerless and thereby effecting social change.
All three issues—ontology, epistemology, and axiology—are deeply implicated in both classical and modern theories of organizational communication.
Four Questions about Organizations
What is now called the postpositive (or sometimes positivist or functionalist) approach dominated organization studies through the 1970s.Redding, C., & Tompkins, P. (1988). Organizational communication—Past and future tenses. In G. Goldhaber & G. Barnett (Eds.), Handbook of organizational communication (pp. 5-34). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Most scholars in the field took it for granted that organizations could, and should, be studied through scientific methods. Then in 1979, Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan published an influential work that proposed new paradigms for organizational studies.Burrell, G., & Morgan, G. (1979). Sociological paradigms and organizational analysis. London: Heinemann. They started with four basic questions about the assumptions of social science:
• Do social realities, such as organizations, have objective or subjective existence; i.e., do they exist on their own or only in people’s minds?
• Can one understand these social realities through observation or must they be directly experienced?
• Is knowledge best gained by scientific methods or by participating in a social reality from the inside?
• Do people have free will or are they determined by their environments?
According to Burrell and Morgan, these issues boil down into two fundamental debates: whether social realities exist objectively or subjectively, and whether their basic state is order or conflict (what Burrell and Morgan called “regulation” or “radical change”). These two questions form the axes of a 2 × 2 matrix which we have adapted from Burrell and Morgan and show in Figure \( 1 \) below.
During the 1980s and beyond, scholars used Burrell and Morgan’s matrix to flesh out new approaches for organizational research.For example, see Redding & Tompkins, op. cit.; Putnam, L. (1982). Paradigms for organizational communication research. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 46, 192-206. More recently, Stanley Deetz took stock of how the field has developed since Burrell and Morgan’s original analysis.Deetz, S. (2001). Conceptual foundations. In F. M. Jablinb & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 3-46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. See also Deetz, S. (1994). Representative practices and the political analysis of corporations. In B. Kovacic (Ed.), Organizational communication: New perspectives (pp. 209-242). Albany: State University of New York Press. He proposed a new matrix that retains the order-versus-conflict axis (what Deetz called “consensus” versus “dissensus”) but substituted a new second axis. For Deetz, the two basic questions are: (1) is order or conflict the natural state of an organization; and (2) should researchers apply “knowledge to,” or derive “knowledge from,” an organization—that is, should they start with an existing theory and see how an organization might fit, or study an organization on its own terms? (Deetz called these the “elite/a priori” versus the “local/emergent” approach.) By adapting Deetz’s two questions, we can construct the matrix shown in Figure \( 2 \) below. Though Deetz preferred the terms “normative” and “dialogic” for postpositive and postmodern, we use the latter terms because they are widely recognized among organizational communication scholars.
Thus, postpositive researchers believe that order is the natural state of an organization, and postpositive researchers look to fit a given organization into an existing theory of how order is produced. Interpretive researchers likewise believe that order is the natural state of an organization, but they study each organization on its own terms and how its members establish patterns of conduct. Critical researchers, on the other hand, believe that conflict is the natural state of an organization and bring existing theories about conflicts over power to their analyses of a given organization. Postmodern researchers also believe that conflict is the natural state of an organization, but they look to deconstruct the particular power relations that have emerged in a given organization.
In our view, two questions originally posed by Burrell and Morgan can be recast to provide one more helpful framework for understanding the differences between the postpositive, interpretive, critical, and postmodern approaches. Those questions are: (1) what is the nature of reality; and (2) what is the source of structure? As to the first question, Steven Corman contrasted the realistThe belief that a thing, including a social phenonemon such as an organization, has an existence independent from people’s perception of it. belief “that things (including social phenomena) have a reality that is independent of their being perceived by someone,” with the relativistThe belief that a thing, including a social phenomenon such as an organization, has an existence only in relation to some point of view. view that “things (especially social phenomena) exist only in relation to some point of view.”Corman, S. R. (2005). Postpositivism. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research: Multiple perspectives (pp. 15-34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; pg. 25. As to the second question, theorists draw a distinction between structure and agencyThe debate among theorists about whether people are determined by their environments (structure) or have free will (agency).. As Burrell and Morgan noted, some theorists believe that people are determined by their environments (structures), while others hold that people have free will (agency). Applied to an organization, the question becomes whether its structures are determined by socio-historical processes that operate outside the organization or are created through agency of its members. Again, these two questions about reality and structure can form the axes of the matrix shown in Figure \( 3 \).
Thus, postpositive theorists believe the structures established by an organization’s members literally take on a life of their own, attaining an objective reality that endures independently over time. Critical theorists also believe that organizational structures have a fixed reality, but they see these structures originating in socio-historical processes that operate outside the organization. On the other hand, interpretive theorists believe that an organization has a subjective reality and exists only in relation to the viewpoints of the people inside the organization. Postmodern theorists also believe an organization has a subjective reality, but they see this reality existing in relation to socio-historical points of view that originate outside the organization.
As we will describe at the conclusion of this section, your task is not to choose one “best” approach to organizational communication over another, but to appreciate and draw from each. Toward that end, let us now explore the respective approaches in more detail. In so doing, we will concentrate on their respective ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies. For the moment, we are only describing the approaches, and not specific theories within each approach.
Postpositive Approach
In the classic disaster-move spoof Airplane!, passengers and crew start to become mysteriously ill. A doctor on board exclaims, “This woman has got to be taken to a hospital.” The chief flight attendant anxiously asks, “A hospital! What is it?” To this the doctor replies, “It’s a big building with patients. But that’s not important right now.”Davison, J., Koch, H. W. (Producers), & Abrahams, J. Zucker, D. & Zucker, J. (Directors). (1980). Airplane! [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount. Similarly, we will not spend much time here discussing the difference between positivism and postpositivism. That’s not important right now. Suffice it to say that, as Steven Corman explained, where positivistic scientists of the early twentieth century took the antirealistposition that existence only mattered insofar as what meets the eye, today’s postpositivists hold the realist belief that reality exists independently of perception.Corman, op cit.
Lex Donaldson succinctly captured this perspective by suggesting that “in any situation, to attain the best outcome, the decision-makers must choose the structure that best fits that situation . . . with the ideas of the decision-makers making no independent contribution to the explanation of the structure.” In other words, since an organization can survive only if it performs well, managers are ultimately forced to choose the course of action that gets the best results. Even when managers choose lesser options, the resulting performance deficit creates its own pressure to either correct the mistake or go out of business. In the end, “the consciousness of the actors [is] superfluous” because “there will be an irresistible tendency for organization managers to choose options that conform to the situational imperative . . . with no moderation by managerial ideas.”Donaldson, L. (2003). Organization theory as a positive science. In H. Tsoukas & C. Knudsen, The Oxford handbook of organizational theory: Meta-theoretical perspectives (pp. 39-62). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; pgs. 44-45. The same holds true when managers communicate; they are forced, in the end, to choose messages and channels that best contribute to the bottom line. In the postpositive view, then, the purpose of organizational communication is instrumental—that is, an instrument for achieving results. Accurate messages and precise instructions are therefore seen as the best guarantors of optimal performance.
Given this conception of the organization, we can see how postpositivism fits together with its own distinctive ontology (its belief in how things exist), epistemology (its belief in how things are known), and axiology (its belief in what is worth knowing). Because the organization has an independent reality, its imperatives—to survive, to get the best results—drive what people do (rather than vice versa). And because individual mindsets ultimately do not matter, then researchers learn about an organization by observing its aggregate behaviors.
Thus, for example, Frederick Taylor’s classical theory of scientific management is based on the assumption that what comes out of the organization is a function of went in. This idea is expressed in popular acronym GIGO for “garbage in, garbage out.” The task for managers who observe poor output is to scientifically adjust input. If so, their metaphorical well-oiled machine can work at maximum capacity. The goal, not only for managers but for postpositive organizational theorists, is to move from description and explanation to prediction of causes and effects—which implies the ability to control effects by adjusting causes. Figure \( 4 \) below illustrates this progression. In organizational research, studies undertaken from a postpositive perspective are often intended to generate knowledge that can be applied to improving management practices.
Even as Frederick Taylor did a century ago with his time and motion studies, those today who study organizations from a postpositive perspective see themselves as social scientists. They practice nomotheticAn approach to knowledge that emphasizes scientific testing of hypotheses and employs quantitative tests, such as surveys, which generate numerical data. The ultimate goal of nomothetic research is to discover laws that can be generally applied across many cases. research methods that emphasize scientific testing of hypotheses and employ quantitative methods, such as surveys and experiments, which generate numerical data. For postpositive researchers, this is the only data worth knowing; they disfavor the ideographicAn approach to knowledge that takes each case on its own terms by considering qualitative data such as ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, journals, and diaries. data generated by such qualitative methods as ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, journals, and diaries because postpositivists find these methods inherently subjective and unable to describe what they perceive as the objective reality of organizational communication. The ultimate goal of nomothetic research is to discover general laws that are applicable across different cases. Classical examples of the nomothetic approach to research are described in Chapter 3, including the Hawthorne Studies of Elton Mayo and the pajama factory study of Kurt Lewin.
As an interesting caveat to this discussion, people who conduct what we are labeling “postpositive” research generally do not describe their work as such. Because the field of organizational communication research grew out of the social-psychological and business research of the first part of the 20th century, today’s postpostive researchers follow their counterparts in fields like industrial psychology or organizational behavior and categorize themselves as social scientists. While social-scientific researchers in organizational communication do not discount what other researchers in the larger field of organizational communication are doing, they do see themselves and their research as very distinct from the work of interpretive, critical, and postmodern researchers. As Patric Spence and Colin Baker noted in their article examining the types of organizational communication research published within the field, postpositive research still accounts for almost half of the research published today.Spence, P. R., & Baker, C. R. (2007). State of the method: An examination of level of analysis, methodology, representation and setting in current organizational communication research. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 36, 111–124.
Table \( 1 \) summarizes our discussion about the components of the postpositive perspective on organizational communication.
Table \( 1 \) The Postpositive Approach
Ontology (how things exist) Epistemology (how things are known) Axiology (values for research) Purpose of Org. Communication
Realism Observation Intervention Instrumental
Organizations have an objective existence that is independent of the people in them. People come and go but the organization endures. Since people ultimately must choose actions that get the best organizational results, individual mindsets do not matter. Thus, to learn about an organization it is sufficient to observe its aggregate behaviors. Social-scientific research generates knowledge that can be used to make predictive theories and applied to management practices. Organizational imperatives that force people to choose the most effective actions apply to communication actions. Thus, accurate and precise communications are most effective.
Interpretive Approach
Where postpositive theorists believe the organization drives what its people do, interpretive theorists believe the reverse: that people drive what their organizations do—and, in fact, what their organizations are. As Dennis Mumby and Robin Clair put it, “organizations exist only in so far as their members create them through discourse,” with discourse being “the principal means by which organization members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who they are.”Mumby, D. K., & Clair, R. P. (1997). Organizational discourse. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as structure and process, Vol. 2 (pp. 181-205). London: Sage; pg. 181. In other words, communication is not just one activity, among many others, that an organization “does.” Rather, the organization itself is constituted through its members’ communication; it does not exist objectively, but only in relation to its members’ points of view.
This explains the ontology of interpretive theorists, their belief in how organizations have being. Their epistemology, or how these theorists believe knowledge is gained, is expressed by the word “interpretive.” Recall that postpositive theorists believe the mindsets of individuals do not matter since they are irresistibly forced choose the most effective courses of action; thus, to know an organization it is sufficient to observe its aggregate behaviors. By contrast, interpretive theorists believe that simple observation is insufficient; the mindsets of organization members must also be interpreted. Hence, this approach to studying organizational communication is called interpretivism. (Some theorists also use the term “social constructionism” to emphasize how social phenomena, such as organizations, are constructed through social interaction.)
But how do you interpret what is going on inside someone’s mind? Many methods are used. These usually begin by collecting primary data—interviews with people at various levels of the organization, and copies of organizational documents such as mission statements, annual reports, policy manuals, internal memoranda, and the like. Researchers who engage in organizational ethnographyThe word literally means “writing the culture.” Organizational ethnographers conduct fieldwork, perhaps spending a year or more to directly experience an organization through participation and observation. The goal is to describe the organizational culture in terms that are faithful its members’ understandings. do fieldwork in which they may spend a year or more visiting an organization, attending weekly staff meetings, participating in rituals such as office parties and company picnics, joining in ordinary conversations around the water cooler, and then recording their observations. Techniques for analyzing these ideographic data are also varied and include discourse analysis, conversation analysis, genre analysis, rhetorical analysis, and other methods.
These analytical methods involve an examination of how organization members use language to construct a shared social reality. By interpreting how language is used (e.g., company slang, recurring phrases, common metaphors, use of active and passive voice, what arguments employees find persuasive, how people address one another, how people take turns in talking) researchers uncover the underlying assumptions within an organization that its people take for granted and may not explicitly verbalize. Interpretive researchers, then, believe that organizational communication is not merely an instrument for getting results. Rather, people in organizations communicate with each other to make sense of their workplace and negotiate their places within the organization. Though managers may believe that precise instructions maximize productivity, directives that ignore employee perceptions can be disregarded, misinterpreted, and even counterproductive.
The axiology of interpretive scholars is evident from their research. Where postpositive researchers do not regard organization members’ individual mindsets (which cannot be directly observed or measured) as worth knowing, interpretive researchers believe these data and their interpretation are essential to understanding organizational life. Moreover, where the goal of postpositive researchers is to move from description and explanation to prediction of organizational behaviors, interpretive scholars believe that studying an organization on its own terms means producing a description and interpretation of organizational life that is faithful to its members’ own understandings. Interpretive researchers can, and do, make their findings about an organization’s communication and culture available to their subjects; in turn, organizations may use this information to address negative perceptions and to change a dysfunctional company culture into a more humane one. Interpretive researchers see their role not as changing the status quo but describing it. Yet identifying the unspoken assumptions that circulate within an organization may be the first step in addressing inhumane practices.
A summary of our discussion about the interpretive approach to organizational communication is presented in Table \( 2 \) below.
Table \( 2 \) The Interpretive Approach
Ontology (how things exist) Epistemology (how things are known) Axiology (values for research) Purpose of Org. Communication
Relativism Interpretation Description Negotiation
Organizations come into existence and are then maintained through their members’ communication. Thus, organizations exist in relation to its members’ points of view. To learn about an organization, simple observation of aggregate behaviors is insufficient. The mindsets of members must also be interpreted. Research aims to describe the organization on its members’ own terms, although knowledge can be used to develop general theories and applied to management practices. People in an organization use communication to make sense of the work environment, establish shared patterns, negotiate their own identities, and enact their roles.
Critical Approach
A generation ago you might have read a company manual that stated, “When an employee is late to work, he must report immediately to his supervisor.” Today we read that sentence and, right away, notice its use of sexist language. But at the time, it was common to use the masculine pronoun as an inclusive reference for both genders. For decades, even centuries, the practice was so widely accepted as natural and self-evident that people did not question this use of the masculine pronoun. In the 1960s, for example, the mission of the starship Enterprise in the Star Trek television series was “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Not until a sequel series debuted in the late 1980s was the mission statement rephrased, “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Living in the twenty-first century, we now wonder how an earlier generation could have accepted sexist language without question. Yet consider: Which of our own assumptions will someday seem “unenlightened” to our children and grandchildren?
Think of some things we take for granted about the workplace. If someone asked you who “owns” the company you work for, you would answer with the name of person who is the “owner” in a financial sense. It just seems natural and self-evident that the one who holds the purse strings is the owner—even though you too have a tangible stake in the company and help make its activities possible. And in a free enterprise economy, we take for granted the notion that increased profits benefit everyone. Even college students, before they enter the workforce, accept this premise. Most young people attend college to “make more money” by learning job skills which will fit them into the needs of moneymaking corporations. Therefore, as corporations and their employees all make more money, everyone wins.
These assumptions illustrate what critical theorists call the reification and universalizationAccording to critical theory, the process by which dominant interests are represented as identical to everyone’s interests. Thus, to speak of “company interests” is, in reality, to speak of managerial interests. of managerial interests. ReificationAccording to critical theory, the process by which something historical is made to seem natural. Thus, the dominant interests within an organization appear to be natural and self-evident. is the process by which something historical is made to seem natural. For example, what we call the profit motive did not always exist; it emerged under specific historical conditions as premodern feudal economies gave way to modern capitalist economies. But we have so reified the profit motive that its pursuit seems natural, normal, self-evident, and beyond questioning. This process of reification produces a “double move” by ensuring that managerial interests are considered the only legitimate interests, while simultaneously hiding the domination of those interests by making them seem perfectly natural. Thus, the interests of management are universalized and represented as identical to everyone’s interests. To speak of “company interests” is, in reality, to speak of managerial interests. Such distortion becomes, from a critical perspective, the very purpose of organizational communication—that is, the operation of dominant interests to create a “false” consensus between management and employees.
Critical theorists, like the postmodern theorists we will review below, see the organization as a created by larger forces of history and society. But unlike postmodern theorists who see the organization in constant flux within the swirling streams of those forces, critical theorists tend to see the structures of power and domination as being so reified that they constitute “a concrete, relatively fixed entity.”Deetz (2001), op. cit., pg. 27. Again, this requires a decision about ontology or the nature of existence—in our case, about the nature of organizational existence.
In addition to reification and universalization, critical theorists are concerned with two more questions: how reasoning in organizations becomes grounded in “what works,” and how dominant managerial interests gain the consent of subordinate interests. Jurgen Habermas noted how the modern age has increasingly supplanted practical reasoning that seeks mutual consensus, with technical reasoningReasoning that, according to cri+tical theory, calculates the means and controls needed to accomplish a desired end. In organizations, technical reasoning is made to seem that only rational basis for decisions. For the modern age it has largely replaced practical reasoning which seeks mutual consensus. that calculates the means and controls needed to accomplish a desired end.Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon. Critical theorists have applied this insight to organizational life by critiquing how corporations make technical reasoning, or determination of “what works” in achieving managerial interests, appear to be the only rational approach. Practical reasoning that fosters mutual determination of organizational goals either is made to seem irrational or is even leveraged by management as another “technique” to further its own interests. Thus, ideas such as promoting worker participation are either dismissed as inefficient or used as a new means to bring workers into alignment with corporate interests. Why do workers consent to such domination? Critical theorists have looked at bureaucratic forms, at coercions and rewards, and at organizational cultures that provide no chance for alternative modes of thinking—or that cause employees to identify so completely with an organization, they internalize its goals into their sense of personal duty and job satisfaction. Such employees need not be controlled; they discipline themselves.
If, according to critical theorists’ ontology, organizational structures have been reified into an objective existence, then according to their epistemology, how do these taken-for-granted structures become known? Most critical organization researchers engage in ideology critiqueAn approach to critical scholarship that employs theory to expose how dominant interests distort meaning, thought, and consciousness to simulatenously legitimize and hide their domination.. These researchers bring to their subjects an existing theory and then use it as a framework to expose how a dominant ideology has operated to reify and universalize its interests. A good example is provided by Karl Marx, the originator of ideology critique. He theorized that differences between capital and labor are built into the very structure of the capitalist system and its ideology. Then he employed his theory to explain how the few (who owned capital) could not only exploit the many (who owned only their labor), but could also make their domination appear legitimate and natural. Notions of economic class differences remain an influential strand of ideology critique. Yet other bases for criticism have also become important. More recently, feminist theory offers another example of ideology critique as researchers bring theories about gender-based structures of domination and use these as frameworks to expose or “denaturalize” the patriarchal assumptions that organizations take for granted.
In addition to ideology critique, a second stream of critical scholarship has emerged that follows the theories of Jurgen Habermas about communicative actionAn approach to critical scholarship that examines how dominant interests distort communication processes to sustain their domination by foreclosing alternate expressions. But legitimate communication may be restored, it is argued, through greater democratization of the workplace..Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action: Vol 1., Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon; Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 2, Lifeworld and system. Boston: Beacon. Where critical scholars have traditionally plumbed the ways that meaning, thought and consciousness itself are distorted by dominant discourses, Habermas began in the late 1970s to explore how communication is distorted. He proposed that, ideally, a communicative act should satisfy four conditions: participants should have equal opportunities to speak, should be heard without preconceptions of what is “true” and “proper,” and should be able to speak according to their own lived experiences. Scholars, then, can critique how organizations distort these conditions. Thus, managers have more opportunities to speak; “bottom line” considerations are a privileged form of knowledge and seen as the only rational basis for resolving issues; the organization’s structure dictates, in advance, the proper relations between management and labor; and discussions of workplace concerns must take place within the context of “company” (i.e., managerial) interests. Yet Habermas’s model for communicative action also suggests possibilities for a positive agenda. A number of scholars have proposed how legitimate organizational communication can be restored through democratization of the workplace.For example, see Cheney, G. (1995). Democracy in the workplace: Theory and practice from the perspective of communication. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 23, 167-200; Deetz, S. (1992). Democracy in the age of corporate colonization: Developments in communication and the politics of everyday life. Albany: State University of New York Press; Harrison, T. (1994). Communication and interdependence in democratic organizations. In S. Deetz (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 17 (pp. 247-274). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
As we learned above, postpositive and interpretive theorists look for order to emerge in organizations. Postpositive researchers look for the ways that organizational imperatives for efficiency and productivity brings members into alignment; interpretive researchers look for the ways that members create, through their communication, stable communities and shared cultures. By contrast, critical theorists believe that organizations are sites where historical and societal ideologies are in conflict, and where reified structures produce dominant and subordinate discourses. Other researchers may look for surface stability, but critical theorists’ axiology regards an organization’s submerged voices—workers, women, people of color—as worth knowing. Critical theorists’ scholarship aims to recover these marginalized voices, lay bare an organization’s reified structures for all to see, reopen possibilities previously foreclosed by those structures, and replace false consensus with true consensus. Given that emancipation is their goal, critical researchers combine scholarship with activism. These qualities—the ontology, epistemology, and axiology of the critical approach to organizations—are summarized in Table \( 3 \) below.
Table \( 3 \) The Critical Approach
Ontology (how things exist) Epistemology (how things are known) Axiology (values for research) Purpose of Org. Communication
Realism Critique Emancipation Distortion
The power structures of organizations have an objective existence formed by external historical and cultural forces and that is independent of the people in them. Exposing the hidden power structures in organizations is accomplished by using general theories about oppression as a framework to analyze a particular organization. Research aims to expose the hidden power structures in organizations so that marginalized interests can resist and previously foreclosed opportunities become possible. Communication by the dominant interests in organizations systemically distorts meaning, thoughts, consciousness, and communicative actions so that domination seems natural and alternative expressions are foreclosed.
Postmodern Approach
Many critical theorists hold that historical and cultural forces produce power structures with fixed existences, but postmodern theorists of organizational communication take a different view. “Reality” constantly fluctuates in the ongoing contests among competing historical and cultural discourses. Humans themselves are sites of competition between these discourses so that—despite our conceit that we have autonomous identities and control our own intentions—we are products of the multiple voices which shape and condition us. As Robert Cooper and Gibson Burrell explained, postmodern theorists “analyze social life in terms of paradox and indeterminacy, thus rejecting the human agent as the center of rational control and understanding.” In contrast to the modernist approach in which the “organization is viewed as a social tool and an extension of human rationality,” the postmodern approach sees the “organization [as] less the expression of planned thought and calculative action and more a defensive reaction to forces extrinsic to the social body which constantly threaten the stability of organized life.”Cooper, R., & Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, postmodernism, and organizational analysis: An introduction. Organization Studies, 9, 91-112; pg. 91.Perhaps an analogy can help. Imagine the sweep of great historical and cultural discourses as an ocean. Its constantly swirling waves and currents determine the actions and perceptions of all who sail upon it. An organization, then, is like a flotilla of ships that negotiate a temporary agreement to sail as a convoy until land is reached. Though an organization may last for decades, rather than days or weeks, in time the currents of history and society that brought it together will pull it apart. Postmodern theorists therefore reject the notion that, as a social object, the “organization” has an objective and enduring existence.
As postmodern theories of organizational communication have developed over the past generation, several themes have emerged. First is the centrality of discourseBecause postmodernists believe that language is the decisive factor in constructing societies, organizations and individuals, then discourse is the central focus of their studies., so that an organization is regarded as a “text” that postmodern analysts can “read.” The goal in “reading” this “text” is to unravel the underlying—and hidden—historical and cultural discourses which are reflected in the organization. This focus on discourse also means that postmodern scholars view language, rather than thought or consciousness, as the decisive factor in the social construction of organizations. Individuals are not the bearers of meaning, but are caught in webs of meaning that language creates. Following on this idea, a second theme emerges. Organizations are said to be de-centeredBecause postmodernists believe that individuals are not autonomous but are shaped by language, they hold that individual free will is not the central driving force of an organization.; the free will of its members are not the central driving force since people are preconditioned by language. Moreover, since organizations are only clusters of temporary consensus between competing discourses, then over time theses discourses tend to produce fragility rather than unity. Different levels of organization—from executives and middle managers to office employees and field personnel—look at things according to their own experiences and interests. Their multiple voices generate varying perspectives, producing multiple social realities rather than a single organizational culture. Thus, postmodern scholars say that organizations are fragmentedBecause postmodernists believe that organizations are temporary and fluid combinations of differing interests, they hold that the various discourses of the interests do not produce the stability of a single unified pattern but instead generate multiple social realities that lead to organizational fragility and fragmentation.. Nor is clash of voices without effect on individuals, who are shaped by the multiple discourses operating throughout the organization and surrounding society. For this reason, postmodernists say that individuals’ organizational identities are overdeterminedBecause postmodernists believe that individuals are not autonomous but are sites where multiple discourses are simultaneously in conflict, then identities of people within organizations are always fluid and partial—and thus overdetermined—rather than stable and continuous. and therefore precarious and unstable.
Given that each organization is a unique “text” that is ever fluid, a third theme in postmodern analysis is what Jean-Francois Lyotard called an “incredulity toward metanarratives.”Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; pg. xxiv. In contrast to critical scholars who look at organizations through the prism of an overarching theory—such as Marx’s theories about class struggle or Habermas’s theories about communicative action—postmodern scholars deconstruct the “text” of an organization for what it is, without fitting it into an a priori theoretical framework or metanarrativePostmodernists regard with incredulity that suggestion that a single “great story,” such as an overarching general theory, can provide all the answers.. Thus, a fourth theme in the postmodern approach to organizations is the need to deconstructPostmodernists believe that an organization is a “text” that can be “read.” Deconstruction is the method by which analysts trace back the discourses that have formed the power relations within an organization. the particular connections, within each organization, between knowledge and power. What we call organizational communication is, for postmodernists, the ongoing contest between discourses. The dominant interest works to sustain its power by ensuring that organizational knowledge is rendered on its own terms and other interpretations seem unnatural. Postmodern scholars strive to reopen taken-for-granted discourses of knowledge and power, trace their formation, and help recover the voices which have been marginalized.
In tracing out the knowledge/power connection, many postmodern organizational scholars follow the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault.See Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon; Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Pantheon; Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault(pp. 16-49). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Like Foucault, these scholars are concerned with the ways that modern organizations have eliminated the need to enforce discipline through physical punishment and real-time surveillance, but have “manufactured consent” and thereby “produced” employees who willingly discipline themselves. Nevertheless, Foucault did not see power as all bad. He held that power relations, being “rooted deep in the social nexus,” are inescapable; they arise from the fact of society itself and are therefore not “a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of.” The goal is not to abolish power and somehow create a perfectly free society, for a “society without power relations can only be an abstraction.” Rather, the goal is a more nuanced understanding that makes possible “the analysis of power relations in a given society, their historical formation, the source of their strength or fragility, the conditions which are necessary to transform some or to abolish others.” Toward that end, power may be seen not only as constraint; it also enables action by marking out ranges of possibilities and channels for their realization. Postmodern scholarship lays bare the power relations within organizations, putting these relations back into play and helping marginalized voices restructure the field of action to open up previously foreclosed possibilities.Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8, 777-795; pg. 791.
For postmodernists, then, the three decisions that organizational theorists must make—about ontology (how things exist), epistemology (how things are known), and axiology (what is worth knowing)—are summarized in Table \( 4 \) below.
Table \( 4 \) The Postmodern Approach
Ontology (how things exist) Epistemology (how things are known) Axiology (values for research) Purpose of Org. Communication
Relativism Deconstruction Denaturalization Contestation
Organizations come into existence as temporary combinations of interests against the threatening fluidity of larger historical and cultural discourses, so that they exist only in relation to those external forces. Organizations are “texts” that can be “read.” The goal is to deconstruct, or trace back, the historical and cultural discourses that led to the formation of a particular organization’s power relations. In the ongoing contest between organizational discourses, dominant interests maintain power by ensuring organizational knowledge is rendered on its own terms and made to seem natural. Research aims to “denaturalize” and thus reopen hidden power relations. Organizational communication is a means by which the discourses of an organization’s various interests are contested. In this contest, some discourses dominate and others are marginalized.
Combining Approaches
Until the 1970s, organizational research mostly proceeded from what is now called a postpositive approach. Articulating new paradigms, Stanley Deetz noted, “gave legitimacy to fundamentally different research programs and enabled the development of different criteria for the evaluation of research.”Deetz (2001), op. cit., pg. 8. At the same time, however, labeling has created distinctive communities of researchers that each favor a particular paradigm and can sometimes ignore or even dismiss the work of others.
The authors of this textbook individually take different approaches to organizational communication research. Yet we believe all perspectives make valuable contributions. For example, we share a common interest in communication by members of organized religions. Jason Wrench and Narissra Punyanunt-Carter have conducted, with other colleagues, extensive surveys of religious believers to produce an aggregate statistical picture of their communication behaviors.Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., Corrigan, M.W., Wrench, J. S., & McCroskey, J. C. (2010). A quantitative analysis of political affiliation, religiosity, and religious-based communication. Journal of Communication and Religion, 33, 1-32; Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., Wrench, J. S., Corrigan, M. W., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). An examination of reliability and validity of the Religious Communication Apprehension Scale. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 37, 1-15; Wrench, J. S., Corrigan, M. W., McCroskey, J. C., & Punyanunt-Carter, N. M. (2006). Religious fundamentalism and intercultural communication: The relationship among ethnocentrism, intercultural communication apprehension, religious fundamentalism, homonegativity, and tolerance for religious disagreements. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 35, 23-44. By contrast, Mark Ward spent several years visiting the local churches of a religious sect, participating in their worship and rituals, observing their communication firsthand, and learning how they talk among themselves.Ward, M., Sr. (2009). Fundamentalist differences: Using ethnography of rhetoric (EOR) to analyze a community of practice. Intercultural Communication Studies, 18, 1-20; Ward, M., Sr. (2010). “I was saved at an early age”: An ethnography of fundamentalist speech and cultural performance. Journal of Communication and Religion, 33, 108-144; Ward, M., Sr. (2011). God’s voice in organizational communication: A root-metaphor analysis of fundamentalist Christian organizing. Paper presented at National Communication Association 97th Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA, November 2011; Ward, M., Sr. (in press). Managing the anxiety and uncertainty of religious otherness: Interfaith dialogue as a problem of intercultural communication. In D. S. Brown (Ed.), Interfaith dialogue: Listening to communication theory. Lanham, MD: Lexington. To use Deetz’s distinction cited above, Ward derives “knowledge from” insiders on their own terms, while Wrench and Punyanunt-Carter consult existing theories and apply that “knowledge to” observed behaviors. Yet we see these different approaches not as an “either/or” choice but as complementary. “Insider” research contributes detailed cases of organizational communication that, taken together with cases of other organizations, may help construct more robust general theories. On the other hand, theoretically-informed research may identify broad patterns in organizational communication that can help those doing “insider” research make sense out of hundreds of separately collected observations. Figure 4.5 below provides a graphic representation of this dynamic.
Key Takeaways
• Different conceptions of an “organization” are behind different approaches to theorizing about organizational communication. The postpositive approach holds that an organization has an objective existence; people come and go, but the organization endures. The interpretive approach holds that an organization has a subjective existence; people create and sustain it through their communication. The critical approach holds that the structures of power within an organization have a fixed existence and reflect larger historical and cultural forces. The postmodern approach also holds that the power relations within an organization reflect larger historical and cultural discourses, but that these discourses are fluid and ever changing.
• Theories of organizational communication reflect assumptions with regard to ontology (how things, including social phenomena such as organizations, have existence), epistemology (how things become known), and axiology (what is worth knowing). In the previous takeaway, the ontologies of the four approaches to theorizing about organizational communication are described. The postpositive approach holds that organizations are known through scientific inquiry and that only empirical findings are worth knowing. The interpretive approach holds that organizations are known by directly experiencing them and that individuals’ perceptions (though these cannot be measured) are worth knowing. The critical approach holds that hidden power structures are exposed by applying general theories about domination and that the voices of marginalized groups are worth knowing. The postmodern approach also holds that marginalized discourses are worth knowing, but that hidden power relations are exposed by deconstructing, or tracing back, how various discourses have formed in a given organization.
Exercises
1. Think of the college or university that you are attending. Then imagine a prospective student asking you, “What is the best way to find out what your school is really like?” Would you advise the prospect to take a survey of current students, or to spend some time living on campus and participating in school activities? What is the reason for your advice? Could you imagine how a combination of both methods could be useful? Explain yourself.
2. We described above how most students go to college to “make more money,” taking for granted that higher education is about fitting into the needs of corporations. Can you think of other ways that the corporate world has influenced college students so that you might think in ways that serve corporate interests? Why might these thoughts seem natural to you, so that you do not question them?
3. Which approach to theorizing organizational communication—postpositive, interpretive, critical, or postmodern—makes the most sense to you? Why? Explain your answer. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/04%3A_Modern_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/4.02%3A_Rethinking_the_Organization.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate among the three models for how communication functions—linear, interactional, and transactional—and the limitations of each model.
• Differentiate among the seven traditions of communication theory and understand how each approaches the nature of communication and how meaning is exchanged.
You were introduced in Chapter 1 to the “SMCR” model of communication. For two good reasons, numerous textbooks in communication begin with this longstanding model. First, its components—source, message, channel, receiver—are easy to grasp. In our modern world of phones, computers, networks and mass media, we encounter the basic idea of the SMCR model on a daily basis. And so, second, the model is effective in getting students to think—often for the first time—about “communication” as more than just a reflex action, more than something that just “happens.”
In this section we will consider the two questions: how communication works and what communication is. The SMCR model, for example, suggests communication works by traveling in a straight line from source to receiver. But scholars have largely moved beyond this simple linear (A model of communication which holds that a message travels in a straight line from its source, through a channel, and to its receiver.) model and have described communication as an interactional (A model of communication which holds that communication travels in a circle as a sender transmits a message and then the receiver responds with feedback; thus both parties become sender/receivers.) or, more recently, a transactional (A model of communication which holds that sending and receiving of messages/feedback occurs simultaneously.) process. Below, we will review these three models below of how communication works. Yet an even more basic question concerns what communication is. The SMCR model belongs to a body of theories that conceive of communication as information processing, an approach that is called (as we will explain below) a “cybernetic” concept of communication. Yet the cybernetic concept is not the only body of communication theories. As Robert Craig described, seven distinct traditions of communication theory have emerged.Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9, 118-160. Since modern theories of organizational communication are often built on a different concept of communication than a cybernetic one, then later in this section we will review the seven approaches to answering the question: What is communication?
How Communication Works: Three Models
At the most basic level, the three models of how communication works—linear, interactional, and transactional—can be represented by the three graphics in Figure 4.6 below. The linear model originated in the 1940s, the interactional in the 1950s, and the transactional in the 1970s. That the original linear model of communication remains influential is attested by its inclusion in so many introductory textbooks—including this one. But theorists have long noted its limitations: the assumptions that listeners are passive, that only one message is transmitted at a time, that communication has a beginning and an end. In fact, a source could transmit a confusing or nonsensical message, rather than a meaningful one, and the linear model would work just as well; there is no provision for gauging whether a message has been understood by its receivers. Neither is the context of a communication situation taken into account. Nevertheless, the linear model introduces helpful concepts and terms that are the basis for understanding, as we will see later, the interactional and transactional models of communication.
Linear Model
Inspired by postwar research at Bell Laboratories on telephone transmissions, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver developed the “mathematical model” of human communication shown in Figure 4.7 below. Shannon, C., & Weaver, W. (1949) The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. In their model, successful sending and receiving of a message is a function of the channel’s capacity to handle signal degradation caused by static noise on the line. When applied in general to human communication, “noise” can be physical (background noises that make the message harder to hear), physiological (impairments such as hardness of hearing), semantic (difficulties in understanding choices of words), and psychological (predispositions and prejudices that affect how the message is interpreted). As you can see in Figure \(2\): , communication travels in a straight line.
A decade after Shannon and Weaver, David Berlo adapted their concepts into the now-familiar SMCR (source, message, channel, receiver) model.Berlo, D. (1960). The process of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. This is the model we introduced in Chapter 1 and have reproduced in Figure 4.8 below. Berlo’s adaptation was “tremendously influential” in offering a more flexible and “humanized conception of Claude Shannon’s model” that facilitated its application to oral, written, and electronic communication.Rogers, E. M. (2001). The department of communication at Michigan State University as a seed institution for communication study. Communication Studies, 52, 234-248; pg. 234. Moreover, the notion of feedback provided a means for gauging reception and understanding of the message. Yet as we will see below in the descriptions of the interactional and transactional models, subsequent theorists have attempted to show how communication is better understood as circular rather than linear, how listeners are also active participants in communication, how multiple messages may be sent simultaneously, and how context and culture impact understanding.
Interactional Model
Only a few years after Shannon and Weaver published their one-way linear model, Wilbur Schramm proposed an alternate model that portrayed communication as a two-way interaction.Schramm, W. (1954). How communication works. In W. Schramm (Ed.), The process and effects of communication (pp. 3-26). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Writing several years before Berlo, he was the first to incorporate feedback—verbal and nonverbal—into a model of communication. The other important innovations in Schramm’s interactive model, which we have adapted in Figure 4.9 below, were the additions of the communication context (the specific setting that may affect meaning) and of “fields of experience” (the frames of reference and the cultures that each participant brings to the communication).
With Schramm’s model, communication moves from a linear to a circular process in which participants are both senders and receivers of messages. Yet the model portrays communication like a tennis match: one participant serves up a message and the other participants then makes a return. Each waits, in turn, passively for the other. Thus, communication goes back and forth as one person (on the left of Figure \(4\): ) initiates a message and waits until the other (on the right) responds. But if you think about times when you have engaged in conversation, you will recognize how the other person is simultaneously sending messages—often nonverbally—while you are talking. Unlike a tennis match, you do not wait passively until the “ball is in your court” before acting communicatively. To demonstrate the simultaneity of communication, we move next to a transactional model.
Transactional Model
Perhaps the first model to portray communication as a simultaneous transaction is attributed to Dean Barnlund.Barnlund, D. (1970). A transactional model of communication. In K. K. Sereno & C. D. Mortensen (Eds.), Foundations of communication theory(pp. 83-102). New York: Harper. Later theorists have developed this idea of simultaneity, which is illustrated in Figure \(5\) below. As you can see, messages and feedback are being exchanged at the same time between communicators. And because they are engaged together in the transaction, their fields of experience overlap. Useful concepts such as noise and context can likewise be added to the model.
An expanded view of how communication functions can help us to better understand how individuals within organizations communicate. But for a firmer grip on modern theories of organizational communication we will now go beyond the message-centered, functional models described above and take a meaning-centered approach.
What Communication Is: Seven Traditions
You have probably heard the proverbial question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound? Similarly, we might ask: If you send a message that the receiver does not understand, has communication taken place? This question introduces the idea of meaning into the equation. Let us borrow from the SMCR model one more time to explore the place of meaning in communication.
Some theorists believe (as you probably do) that the meaning of a message lies in the sender. You think up a message and transmit it, and then the receiver must decode what you mean. But other theorists believe the meaning of a message is something that the sender and receiver construct together as they interact through their communication. Still other theorists believe that meaning resides in the channel—perhaps in the signs and symbols that, over time, humans invest with implied meanings, or perhaps in the larger structures of history and culture that condition how we perceive the world. As noted at the start of this section, Craig has identified seven traditions—which are summarized in Table \(1\) below—in communication theory.Craig, op. cit. Each wrestles with the question of how people derive meaning from a communication. And if we grant that communication only takes place when meaning is exchanged, then the issue of how people derive meaning is another way of putting the question: What is communication?
A helpful way of grasping the seven theoretical traditions is to pose a single communication scenario and then consider it from each of the seven approaches. For our purposes, we will pick a common scenario from organizational life—namely, the annual employee recognition luncheon in which awards are given to those who reach five or ten or fifteen years of service, and so on, up until retirement. During this festive event a catered lunch is served in a large room, speeches are made by key executives, long-serving employees come forward as their names are called and receive a certificate or plaque, and the luncheon concludes on a light note as employees organize a mock ceremony to give out humorous awards. For our overview of the seven traditions, let us begin with the tradition to which you have already been introduced—the cybernetic tradition—and see how it might explain our communication scenario.
Table \(1\): Seven Traditions of Communication Theory
Theoretical Tradition Communication theorized as...
Cybernetic information processing
Phenomenological experience of otherness
Sociopsychological expression, interaction, influence
Sociocultural (re)production of social order
Semiotic intersubjective mediation by signs
Critical discursive reflection
Rhetorical practical art of discourse
Cybernetic Tradition
Theorists in the cybernetic (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as information processing.) tradition start with the assumption that an organization is a system comprised of many interdependent parts. The annual employee recognition luncheon is a particularly good occasion to see all those parts in action:
• The top executives who make speeches and set policies for giving awards;
• The managers who implement the policies;
• The human resources department that generated the list of employees eligible for awards and organized the luncheon;
• The corporate communications department that will send out a press release after the event;
• The accounting department that processed purchase orders and payments to the caterer;
• The information technology department that set up the audiovisual equipment for the awards ceremony;
• The maintenance department that prepared the room and will clean up afterward; and finally,
• The employees who attended the luncheon, received awards, and put on the humorous entertainment.
All of these parts depend on each other—and must communicate together—to make the annual employee recognition luncheon happen. In the cybernetic tradition, then, communication is theorized as information processing. But cybernetic theorists do not stop at charting information pathways. They are also interested in how a system continually makes adjustments needed to sustain itself. Indeed, the word “cybernetics” was coined from the Greek word for “steersman” by MIT scientist Norbert Wiener.Wiener, N. (1954). The human use of human beings: Cybernetics in society Boston: Houghton Mifflin. In devising a new antiaircraft firing system during World War II, he addressed a major problem: though existing systems could feed back information on firing trajectories, targets would pass by before human operators could make adjustments. He saw that the new system must regulate itself by acting on its own feedback, a principle Wiener then extended to human societies. Communication theorists picked up on this idea by casting the communication process as a self-regulating system in which people act on feedback, adjust their messages, gradually eliminate distortions, and arrive at intended meanings.
Adjustments are made via feedback loops which connect the various parts of the system into networks. Our example of the employee awards luncheon illustrates several of these networks in play. Top executives, who want to annually honor loyal employees, must get feedback from the human resources department for a list of who is eligible. To organize the event, the human resources department must get feedback from the maintenance department on the room setup, the IT department on audiovisual equipment, and the accounting department on the budget for the caterer. To publicize the event, the corporate communication department must get feedback from top executives on the desired tone or theme of the press release. Moreover, the system cannot survive just by feeding on itself. Inputs and resources are gathered from the surrounding environment—for example, by soliciting proposals from local caterers, and by talking to local media about possible news and feature story angles. Through all these avenues of organizational communication, the system processes the information it needs to keep on going.
Phenomenological Tradition
Imagine yourself as a new employee who is attending the annual recognition luncheon for the first time. As you watch the first group of honorees go forward and accept their five-year service certificates, you picture yourself in their shoes and ponder, “Is this company a place I want to be in five years? Or is it a stepping stone?” Then you see the ten-year honorees and think, “Wow, ten years! If I’m still here in ten years, that means I’m committed long-term.” Also, you notice that ten-year employees tend to be people who have better job titles and higher pay, so that longevity has its rewards. Finally, you see plaques handed out to retirees and say to yourself, “I can’t even relate! What will my career have been like when I look back on it, someday? What do I want to be known for?” In the days after the luncheon, you run into some five- and ten-year honorees you know, tactfully engage them in conversation, and try to feel out their answers to the question, “Is it worth it to stay long enough to earn a service award?”
According to the phenomenologica (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as dialogue and the experience of otherness.) tradition of communication theory, you derive meaning by directly experiencing a particular phenomenon. At the luncheon you are confronted with the phenomenon of employee loyalty and longevity, and based on this experience you weigh your perceptions. Thus, you come to know your organizational world by directly and consciously engaging in it, pondering its meaning for you, interpreting that meaning through language to define and express it, and then continually reconstructing the interpretation in light of new experiences. Dialogue is another important concept in the phenomenological tradition. The annual luncheon was a type of dialogue as you listened to the various speeches and presentations. Then after the event, you dialogued one-on-one with coworkers who had been honored for their long service. Through these dialogues you open yourself to the experiences of others and can integrate this into your own experience.
Sociopsychological Tradition
In Chapter 1 you were introduced to a definition of human communication as a “process whereby one individual (or group of individuals) attempts to stimulate meaning in the mind of another individual (or group of individuals) through intentional use of verbal, nonverbal, and/or mediated messages.” We offered this definition in the opening chapter because it is a good place start. For one, the definition is held by many communication theorists. For another, it accords with what most laypeople (probably including you) believe about communication and about personhood. You likely see yourself as a distinct individual; your mind is your own. This is the basic assumption of sociopsychological (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as expression as expression, interaction, and influence rooted in human psychological processes.) theories about communication, that people control their own intentions. Thus, as noted above, communication may seen as one person’s intention to impact another person’s intention. Such a notion is problematic, however, for many communication theorists. Where sociopsychological theorists see individuality as an objective fact, postmodern theorists hold that people’s intentions are subjectively conditioned by their histories and societies. And where sociopsychological theorists believe that the meaning of a communication resides in the individual, sociocultural theorists (as will review below) believe that meaning arises from the interaction.
But for now, let us follow the sociopsychological tradition and see how it might explain the annual employee recognition luncheon. First, consider the speeches given by top executives to celebrate company values and, by implication, the loyalty these values merit from employees. One theory suggests that, psychologically, you are more likely to be persuaded if sufficiently motivated to carefully consider the arguments, and less likely if the speakers utter cliches you’ve heard before.Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag. Another theory claims that opinions are best understood not as a single point on a line, but as a continuum between acceptable and unacceptable; the more that the execs pitch their arguments on company loyalty toward the edge of this continuum, the more likely they can push the boundaries of what you will accept.Sherif, M., Sherif, C., & Nebergall, R. (1965). Attitude and attitude change: The social judgement-involvement approach. Philadelphia: Saunders. Still another leading theory proposes that if the speakers can make you feel an inner conflict between self-interest and group loyalties, you will be psychologically driven to resolve the conflict rather than feel torn.Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Then there are the conversations you had with longer-tenured coworkers. One theory of interpersonal communication holds that people’s personalities are structured like the layers of an onion; to elicit your coworkers’ inner feelings about staying long-term with the company, you had to go beyond mere chit-chat about sports and the weather, and instead penetrate into their goals, convictions, fears, fantasies and, at the deepest level, their self-concepts.Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Another theory claims that people experience an ongoing psychological tension between their need for being connected and need for feeling unique, and between their need for being open and need for keeping some things to themselves.Baxter, L. A., & Montgomery, B. M. (1998). A guide to dialectical approaches to studying personal relationships. In B. M. Montgomery & L. A. Baxter (Eds.), Dialectical approaches to studying personal relationships (pp. 1–15). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. In order to elicit coworkers’ true feelings about their service with the company—and to expose your own concerns—you must both navigate these tensions.
The main lesson here is that a sociopsychological view locates the meaning of communication within the mind of each individual. The company executives acted with the intention of promoting employee loyalty in the hope of influencing your intention. And when you acted on your intention to elicit information from long-serving coworkers, they were prompted by their own intention to be more, or to be less, open toward your questions. Human communicative behaviors, then, are seen as seen as rooted in human psychologies. So, if communication is defined as a process whereby one person intends to stimulate meaning in the mind of another, then the task of the researcher is to discover what stimuli elicit what responses.
Sociocultural Tradition
For the sociopsychological theorist, the meaning of a communication resides in each individual. But for the sociocultural (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as the production and reproduction of a social order, such as an organizational culture.) theorist, the meaning of a communication arises from interaction as people engage in discourse and socially construct what they jointly perceive to be real. George Herbert Mead, a founder of the sociocultural tradition, noted more than a century ago that—in contrast to the prevailing view that each individual is autonomous—people only develop a sense of self by being around other people. Further, since speech is the means by which people interact, then people develop their sense of self through communication. Indeed, without language—which arose because humans exist in society—there would be no thought.Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Another theorist in the sociocultural tradition, Erving Goffman, likened social interaction to a drama. Imagine yourself in an ordinary conversation and (being honest) think how you take a role (anything from clown to peacemaker) and “play to the audience” by communicating in ways that (you believe) will make you socially acceptable.Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday; Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Basic. W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen have described conversational interaction as a “coordinated management of meaning” in which people not only co-construct a social world but are, in turn, shaped by that world.Pearce, W. B., & Cronen, V. (1980). Communication, action, and meaning. New York: Praeger.
Given these assumptions, theorists in the sociocultural tradition look at the ways communication is used by people in interactions to produce—and then reproduce—stable patterns of social order. Sociocultural theorists of organizational communication, then, are interested in how organizational cultures arise as their members communicate with one another. And they would take a keen interest in the annual employee awards luncheon. First, there is the ritual aspect of the event as people on the platform speak structured sequences of words (an employee’s name is called, he or she comes forward, and the certificate is given with praise, smiles, and handshakes) that ultimately pay homage to the sacred object of the company. Second, the awards ceremony constitutes a story which fosters a “loyalty myth.” As the myth is enacted, the audience learns how they too are expected to fit into the story. Then, third, the awards ceremony is a “social drama” in which awardees gain honor by their perseverance, thus showing the audience how they can likewise win approval and continue to belong.
Organizational cultures are maintained not only through public events but also in natural conversation as employees spontaneously use “insider” talk. Such talk begins to form patterns that reproduce the values and assumptions of an organization culture.Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. In G. Philipsen and T. L. Albrecht (Eds.), Developing communication theories (pp. 119–156). Albany: State University of New York Press. Over time, the patterns seem so natural that employees use the talk without thinking and take the underlying cultural assumptions for granted. For example, if people address each other with formal titles—or, alternately, if they use first names—this talk reproduces assumptions about how organization members should relate to one another. Sociocultural researchers often look for words and phrases that keep recurring in significant ways. So perhaps the employee awards luncheon featured talk about the company as a “family” (a metaphor), or praised award recipients for being “customer-oriented” (a stock phrase), or continually referred to “aggressive” growth, “aggressive” marketing, an “aggressive” strategy, and so forth (a buzzword). Chances are that, when you later spoke one-on-one with award recipients, their use of such insider language in spontaneous conversation reflected their integration into the organizational culture.
Semiotic Tradition
The old saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” captures the essence of the semiotic (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as intersubjective mediation by signs, or the ways a sign (including a word) or symbol of a thing mediates the different thoughts that people have about the thing and thus permit meaning to be shared.) tradition in communication theory. Semiotics is the study of signs—and a classic example, of course, is how the presence smoke is the sign of a fire. Charles Saunders Peirce, a founding theorist of semiotics, would have called smoke an index or a trace that points to another object.Peirce, C. S. (1958). Charles S. Peirce: Selected writings (P. P. Weiner, Ed.). New York: Dover. Thus, thunder is the sign of an approaching storm, a bullet hole the sign of a shooting, a footprint the sign of a prey. Other signs are icons or abstract representations of another object—for example, the stylized image of a pedestrian on a traffic crossing light. Yet other signs are symbols that have a purely arbitrary relationship to another object. Again, to use traffic signs as an example, think of how a red octagon means “stop” and a yellow inverted triangle means “yield.”
The most common symbols of all, of course, are words. Consider: the word “dog” has no inherent relation to the actual animal. Instead, as C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards famously pointed out, the word “dog” may connote a friendly pet to one person and a dangerous beast to another. To explain how words work, they proposed a triangle of meaning.Ogden, C. K., & Richards, I. A. (1923). The meaning of meaning. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner. They theorized that meaning emerges from the interplay between a referent (in our example, a dog), a symbol (the word “dog”), and the reference (what a person thinks when he or she hears the word). As such, the meaning of “dog,” whether a cute pet or dangerous animal, resides not in the word but, rather, in the mind of the person. In this way, as Robert Craig observed, semiotic theorists regard communication as a process of “intersubjective mediation by signs.”Craig, op. cit. In other words, the meaning of a thing is subjective for each person. Thus, as we communicate about that thing, there is an encounter between the different meanings we each carry. The encounter is mediated by a sign—whether the sign is a word or an image—and that sign makes it possible for some meaning, at least, to be shared between communicators.
The annual employee recognition luncheon is replete with signs and symbols. In addition to the many words that are used, shared meaning is created by the symbol of the award certificates and plaques, by the printed program with elegant cursive script, by the cake and the balloons with congratulatory messages, by the round tables that were set up rather than the room’s usual conference seating, by the festive centerpieces on the tables, by the company posters and slogans posted on the walls, by the formal business attire of the executives who presented the awards, and by the large company logo that is hung on the podium and printed on items ranging from table napkins to tee shirts. All of these symbols enable important meanings—about company values, about employee loyalty, about labor-management relations—to be communicated and shared by dozens of people, even though each brings his or her own subjective thoughts to the event.
Finally, the company itself becomes a symbol as it takes on a distinctive corporate image. Roland Barthes equated this kind of “second-order” symbol to mythmaking and gave the French national flag as an example.Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. In the same way, Apple Corporation has come to symbolize high-tech innovation, a corporate image that instills its employees with a strong sense of organizational identity. By contrast, government agencies are often seen as bureaucratic and wasteful so that administrators must work hard to imbue their employees with a countervailing image of public service. The same semiotic process is at work as the college or university you attend strives to symbolize learning (if teaching is emphasized), or discovery (if research is emphasized), or opportunity (if career training is emphasized), or advancement (if nontraditional student are emphasized).
Critical Tradition
After witnessing or hearing about the employee awards luncheon, a critical (A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as discursive reflection, or reflection on the ways that discourses create dominant and marginalized voices) theorist would likely ask who decided that employee loyalty would be the only value recognized and the only value which deserved a special annual celebration. The decision, of course, was made by the dominant interests who hold power in the organization. The luncheon reifies their interests (by establishing loyalty to the company as a taken-for-granted part of organizational life) and universalizes their interests (by equating management interests with “company interests” so that other interpretations seem irrational). Even though employees are expected to be loyal in order to gain approval, the company has no corresponding obligation of loyalty to the employees and may lay them off as needed. Not only is this proposition tacitly accepted—but to suggest that a second luncheon be held, to make a public accounting of the company’s loyalty to its workers, would seem irrational. So would the suggestion that workers, rather than the human resources director, should plan the annual luncheon and decide what values should be recognized and what awards given. Yes, the employees are permitted by the leadership to plan a humorous “awards” segment—but that is only a parody, a way to control workers by giving them a sense of participation without any real substance.
Then, too, a critical theorist would point out how the awards luncheon, by celebrating only those employees who have served long term, actually silences the voices of traditionally marginalized workers. Historically underrepresented groups—women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, the working poor—have often lacked the access to acquire skills which would make them promotable in the corporate world. Because they are disproportionately placed in low-wage jobs, they are the first to be laid off or shunted into temporary work. Yet they do work that the company needs. Why is there no event to celebrate their contributions? Instead, the emphasis on longevity only marginalizes them further.
This all happens because the system follows an ideology that, in ways made to seem natural and inevitable, structures power relations to favor some at the expense of others. Stanley Deetz has described “managerialism” as an ideology that systematically distorts communication to produce a “discursive closure” that renders alternative views difficult to express or even think.Deetz, 1992, op. cit. The task of critical scholars is to “denaturalize” unjust ideologies and structures that are taken for granted, exposing them to resistance and discussion, and thereby reopening choices and possibilities the system had foreclosed. Thus, critical scholarship infuses research with action.
Rhetorical
For the last of the seven traditions in communication theory, we come to the oldest. More than 2,300 years ago Aristotle wrote The Rhetoric and gave us, as many believe, the world’s first systematic treatment of human psychology.For example, Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). San Francisco: Harper and Row; pg. 178. He lived in Athens, one of the democratic city-states of ancient Greece where citizens publicly stated their cases in the assemblies and courts. Alarmed that some used oratory for personal gain rather than public good, Aristotle examined how speakers persuaded audiences and devised a theory and method of reasoned public address.Aristotle (2006). On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse (2nd ed.) (G. A. Kennedy, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Today the phrase, “That’s just rhetoric,” connotes hollow or self-serving words. Aristotle had the same concern about public oratory. Thus rhetorical: A scholarly tradition that theorizes communication as the practical art of discourse and how persuasion is accomplished. theory, from classical times to the present, has concerned itself with the problem of how things get done. In other words, rhetorical theorists—including those who study organizational rhetoric—examine the processes by which speaker (or rhetor) and listeners move toward each other and find common grounds to go forward.
Studies of organizational rhetoric distinguish between external rhetoric aimed at stakeholders outside the organization and internal rhetoric aimed at employees. Mary Hoffman and Debra Ford classified four types of external rhetoric: to create and maintain an organization’s public identity, to manage issues, to manage risks, and to manage crises. Internal rhetoric, on the other hand, aims to align employees with organizational values and imperatives so they are motivated to do their jobs.Hoffman, M. F., & Ford, D. J. (2009). Organization rhetoric: Situations and strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thus, the rhetoric of the annual employee recognition luncheon is internal, an attempt by management to find common ground with employees and persuade them to adopt company values. After the luncheon, the company will engage in external rhetoric as the corporate communications office issues a press release that, when carried by local media, will hopefully reinforce the company’s image as a great workplace that inspires employee loyalty.
Rhetorical theory offers many avenues for analyzing the speeches heard at the awards luncheon. The classical theory of Aristotle, for example, holds that speakers must invent a persuasive argument, effectively arrange its points, word it an appropriate style, and deliver it in a suitable manner, while drawing on a memory of phrases, stories, and ideas to extemporaneously flesh out the argument for a given occasion or audience. Today we call this method the five canons of rhetoric. Yet to be compelling, arguments must be grounded in the shared topoi or mental topology of rhetor and audience. Thus, if everyone agrees that profit is good for both management and labor, then speeches at the awards luncheon can extol honorees for their contributions to the bottom line. But if the organization is nonprofit—like the college or university you attend—then arguments based on profit making would fall flat. Aristotle also theorized that artful rhetors can employ three types of proofs: logic (logos), emotion (pathos), and speaker credibility (ethos). Executives who spoke at the luncheon likely tried all three by stating how loyal employees are rewarded (logic), how such employees’ dedication is admirable (emotion), and how management can be trusted and believed (speaker credibility).
In recent decades, scholarly interest in rhetorical theory has grown and proposals for a “new rhetoric” have gained wide acceptance. Kenneth Burke held that persuasion cannot occur without identification; the task of the rhetor is “consubstantiation,” or a sharing of substances, with the audience.Burke, K. (1950). A rhetoric of motives. New York: Prentice-Hall. (Thus, company leaders could persuade employees to be loyal only if the audience felt that executives could understand and sympathize with their concerns.) Chaim Perelman contended that persuasion cannot occur without presence; the rhetor must highlight “elements on which the speaker wishes to center attention in order that they may occupy the foreground of the hearer’s consciousness . . . against the undifferentiated mass of available elements of agreement.”Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press; pg. 142. (Thus, management hopes its appeal for loyalty is enhanced by staging a special yearly event.) Walter Fisher contrasted a rational-world paradigm of persuasion through logic with a narrative paradigm in which audiences are persuaded by stories that ring true with their lived experiences and the “good reasons” validated by their communities.Fisher, W. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. (Thus, the awards luncheon will foster loyalty only if executives can tell a story that resonates with the lives of employees.) And contemporary rhetorical scholars are recognizing the materiality of rhetoric as it “not only helps to produce judgments about specific issues, it also helps to produce or constitute a social world.”Jasinksi, J. (2001). Sourcebook on rhetoric: Key concepts in contemporary rhetorical studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001; pg. 192. (Thus, the rhetoric of the awards luncheon aims not only to persuade but, leaders hope, produce an organizational culture whose logics favor employee loyalty.)
Key Takeaways
• Three models for how communication functions have been proposed: linear, interactional, and transactional. The linear model holds that a message travels in a straight line from its source, through a channel, and to its receiver. The interactional model holds that communication travels in a circle as a sender transmits a message and then the receiver responds with feedback; thus both parties become sender/receivers. The transactional model holds that sending and receiving occur simultaneously.
• Seven traditions in communication theory have been identified by Robert Craig. The cybernetic tradition theorizes communication as information processing. The phenomenological tradition theorizes communication as dialogue and the experience of otherness. The sociopsychological tradition theorizes communication as expression, interaction, and influence rooted in human psychological processes. The sociocultural tradition theorizes communication as the production and reproduction of a social order, such as an organizational culture. The semiotic tradition theorizes communication as intersubjective mediation by signs, or the ways that a sign (including a word) or symbol of a thing mediates the different thoughts that people have about the thing and thus permit meaning to be shared. The critical tradition theorizes communication as discursive reflection, or reflection on the ways that discourses create dominant and marginalized voices. The rhetorical tradition theorizes communication as the practical art of discourse and how persuasion is accomplished.
Exercises
1. Your class in Organizational Communication is itself a type of organization. Think about the communication that takes place in your class, whether the class is face-to-face or online. Would you say that communication between the students and the instructor is best explained as a linear, interactional, or transactional process? Explain your answer.
2. In the subsection above entitled “What Communication Is: Seven Traditions,” we imagined how the annual employee awards luncheon could be explained, in turn, by each of the seven traditions. Now on your own, think of another communication scenario that occurs in organizations (perhaps in your college or university, such freshman orientation or the annual commencement ceremony) and then explain your scenario by each of the seven traditions. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/04%3A_Modern_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/4.03%3A_Rethinking_Communication.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Understand the basic precepts of systems theory and Karl Weick’s theory of organizing and sensemaking.
• Understand the basic precepts of Giddens’s structuration theory and its applications made by Poole and McPhee to organizations.
• Understand how, according to feminist theory, organizations are gendered and a primary site for configuration of gender roles.
To this point, we have explored approaches to theorizing organizational communication rather than specific theories. Yet we believe that focusing first on approaches is important. To speak of “interpretive organizational theory,” or “critical organization theory,” or “postmodern organization theory” is not to speak of any one single theory. Rather, each is—along with the postpositive perspective—a general approach to the looking at the problem of organizational communication. Each approach is informed by its own ontology (belief about the how things exist), epistemology (belief about how things can be known), and axiology (belief about what is worth knowing). Then, out of their respective philosophical commitments of each approach emerge specific theories. In the remainder of this section we will describe important modern theories of organizational communication that have emerged from the different approaches. And by first grasping the underlying approaches and how each looks at the problem in a different way, we believe you will be better equipped to understand specific theories and “where they’re coming from.”
Before proceeding, though, we offer one last thought to help put matters into perspective. You have likely heard the popular catchphrase “paradigm shift.” It was coined half a century ago by Thomas Kuhn.Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A historian and philosopher of science, he noted that theories which scientists generally agreed were settled could suddenly be overturned. These “scientific revolutions” were not always due to a new discovery, but to a new way of looking at the problem. The old paradigm closed off alternative approaches but, over time, some scientists became dissatisfied until momentum built for a paradigm shift. Kuhn’s thesis has also been applied to the social sciences—and the domain of organizational studies provides an excellent case in point. What is now called the postpositive approach dominated the field into the 1970s, until some organizational communication researchers became interested in the concept of organizational culture and felt constrained by the postpositive paradigm. New ways of looking at the problem were needed.
A generation or two later, organizational communication research has spawned four paradigms that are widely recognized by scholars. None can lay claim to being “the” dominant paradigm. Neither is the postpositive approach obsolete; if anything, it informs more research projects and more researchers than the other approaches, and retains wide influence. This is especially so since postpositive research aims at prediction, which is valued by the corporate world as a key to improved management practices. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that organizational communication research has split into four communities, each with its own paradigm. If so, we believe this is unfortunate. The specific theories described in this section illustrate the innovative work being done, on important problems of contemporary organizational life, through different approaches to organizational communication—and through blending aspects of those approaches. This should persuade us that each approach has something to contribute. Having multiple paradigms in play, as we do today, presents the field with a unique opportunity.
Postpositive Approach: Systems Theory
Systems theoryA theory based on the metaphor of the organization as a biological organism, so that the organization is seen as an open system that interacts with its environment in order to acquire the resources it needs to survive and grow. offers a good illustration of how organizational communication research from a postpositive perspective has continued to develop and even incorporate insights from other approaches. The story of systems theory begins in the mid 1950s when, as we saw in Chapter 3, the heyday of classical management theory had passed and the human resources approach was ascendant. In 1956 the Canadian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy first published his “general system theory” which proposed that traits found in biological systems could be applied to any system.Von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York: Braziller. A decade later, the notion of applying the theory to organizations was popularized in an influential book by Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: Wiley. The old metaphor of the organization as a machine was replaced by the metaphor of a biological organism. As a result, the conception of the organization as a closed system was replaced by that of an open systemA system that is open to its surrounding environment, as opposed to a closed system that is not. A closed system is only concerned with input and output, whereas an open system encompasses input, throughput, and output.. Where a machine operates on its own, a biological organism can only survive by interacting with and gathering inputs from its surrounding environment. Thus, compared to the input-output of a machine, the operations of a biological organism involve input-throughput-output (a concept we encountered in Chapter 1; see Figure 1.1).
Through systems theory, other princples from biology have been applied to organizations. Like an organism, an organization is not an undifferentiated hodgepodge of parts but a system with a hierarchical ordering (The notion is system theory which states that an organization is not a mass of undifferentiated parts, but that the parts are ordered in some way.) Further, these ordered parts are interdependent (The notion in systems theory that the parts of the system depend on one another in order to properly function.) since they rely on one another to properly function. Being interdependent, the system enjoys the property of holismThe notion in systems theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. or of being greater than the sum of its parts. But since the parts of the system must work together, feedbackThe name given in systems theory to internal communication that corrects deviation and spread information to help parts function better. is required both to correct deviations and spread information that fosters growth. In addition to communication within the system, the organism requires exchangeThe name given in systems theory to external communication that, in exchange for outputs, acquires the inputs or resources the organization needs to grow.with its environment. Unless the system exchanges outputs in order to acquire the inputs it needs to function, then the organization will feed on itself and eventually die. But because the system is open and its boundaries are permeableThe notion in systems theory which states that the boundaries of an organization are permeable so that exchanges can occur with the surrounding environment., the organization benefits from negative entropyIf an organization acquires no resources from the surrounding environment then it will feed on and eventually exhaust itself; this is called entropy. But a healthy organization that interacts with its environment can acquire resources and thus grow or experience negative entropy.—that is, because needed resources can pass freely into the system, it can grow. Yet to handle inputs from the environment, the system needs the requisite varietyThe notion in systems theory which states that an organization must a level of variety that is sufficient to deal with the level of complexity in its environment. to do so. In other words, the system’s complexity must be a match for the complexity of its inputs. If it does then the system will possess the trait of equifinalityThe ability of an organization to achieve a given goal in more than one way., which means the organization has multiple means to achieve a given goal and need not depend on only one option.
Perhaps the most influential single theory to emerge from the systems approach was proposed in the 1960s by Karl Weick and refined by him in the next three decades.Weick, K. (1969). The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. The theory begins with the observation that an organization’s environment includes information as well as material resources. Since the late twentieth century, the information environment has grown increasingly complex. Many communication situations cannot be handled by routines and rules. Moreover, the organization and its members both shape, and are shaped by, the information environment in which they operate—a principle Weick borrowed from the interpretive approach. Because all these factors introduce what he called “equivocality,” the goal of organizational communication is equivocality reductionBecause modern organizations are confronted by an increasingly complex information environment then, according to Weick’s theory, they seek to reduce the amount of equivocality (uncertainty) they experience.. To achieve the requisite variety needed to meet the challenges of a complex information environment, organization members’ natural response is the enactment of their own internal informational culture—again, a notion taken from the interpretive approach, and yet also an aspect of the interdependency predicted by systems theory. Next, Weick proposed a concept drawn from Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection. Though organization members have enacted an information environment, they each bring different interpretations of what that environment means. Thus, a part of the organizing process is selection of the best interpretations and then their retention to guide future enactments and selections. This collective process of enactment, selection, and retentionIn Weick’s theory, organizations respond to equivocality in their environments by enacting their own information system, selecting their best responses for reducing equivocality, and retaining them to guide future responses. is, in Weick’s model, called retrospective sensemakingName given in Weick’s theory to the process of enactment, selection, and retention by which organization members make sense of their environment.. Organization members muddle through complexities, perceive over time what works, and collectively reduce equivocality and make sense of their workplace. Thus, Weick has constructed a theory of organizing that is rooted in systems theory and follows a pospositive research agenda of observing and measuring aggregate behaviors. And yet his theory usefully draws on interpretive principles about the social constructedness of collective environments.
Interpretive Approach: Structuration Theory
Weick’s theory of organizing blends interpetive perspectives into a systems theory. But a key systems concept—that the parts of a system are interdependent—is given a new, interpretive twist through structuration theoryA theory proposed by Giddens to answer the question: Do people have free will or are they determined by their environments? He theorized that structure and agency are not a dualism but a duality. That is, people’s actions produce structure but, by acting within a structure, they also perpetuate or reproduce it. and its applications to organizational life. In traditional systems theories about organizations, the parts of the system are the various departments which have been hierarchically ordered to comprise an organization. But in structuration theory, the systemIn structuration theory, a system is comprised not of parts (such as an organizaation’s various departments) but of human practices. is a system of human practicesIn structuration theory, patterns of activity which have meaning for participants., where practices are understood as patterns of activity which have meaning for participants. Thus, the organizational system is not the operations department, the marketing department, the accounting department, and so on. Rather, the organizational system is comprised of patterns of practices—from the way that sick leave is handled, to the way that purchase orders are processed, to the way that meetings are conducted. In structuration theory, then, “structure” is not used in the conventional sense of a hierarchy. Rather, structureIn structuration theory, the interrelationships between human practices. refers to the interrelationships between practices.
By basing notions of system and structure on practices, and defining practices as meaningful patterns, we can see how structuration theory reflects the interpretive focus on the social constructedness of human groupings. This move sprang from, as Marshall Scott Poole and Robert McPhee have related, the concerns of scholars in the 1960s who felt that the sociopsychological emphasis in communication studies did not adequately allow for communal effects. “[T]he properties of systems were most often cast as constraints on behavior that acted from outside the individuals involved,” such that individuals were not seen as agents involved in constructing those systems.Poole, M. S., & McPhee, R. D. (2005). Structuration theory. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research: Multiple perspectives (pp. 171–195). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; pg. 171. Then in the late 1970s and 80s, communication scholars discovered the work of British theorist Anthony Giddens.Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press; Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, MA: Polity. His theory of structuration resolved the structure-versus-agency debate with an innovative move. Giddens proposed that structure and agency are not “either/or” but are “both/and,” or as he put it, not a dualism but a duality. In other words, people create a structure through their actions—but they also perpetuate, or reproduceIn struction theory, this refers to way that people within a system perpetuate its structure by acting within that structure., the structure by acting within it. As Giddens explained, structure is both “a medium and an outcome” of social action. Structure not only constrains action but also enables it, even as action produces and reproduces the structure—and thus, we have the process of structuration which gives the theory its name. Individuals act within the structure’s enablements and constraints by drawing on shared rulesStructuration theory holds that individuals act within a structure by drawing on shared rules to guide their actions and by employing resources (whether material or nonmaterial) to take action. to guide their actions, as well as resources (whether material or nonmaterial) they can employ to take action. And as the process of structuration goes forward, a system of practices evolves which guides signification (how things are interpreted), legitimation (what is deemed moral and should be done), and domination (how power is distributed to get those things done). Nevertheless, people are mostly unaware that their actions are grounded in, and impact upon, larger structurational process because their actions and consequences are separated in space and time.
Poole and McPhee outlined how structuration theory might be generally applied to communication studies and then, in the early 1980s, began exploring its applications to organizational communication.McPhee & Poole (1980). A theory of structuration: The perspective of Anthony Giddens and its relevance for contemporary communication research. Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association annual convention, New York. First, they suggested that structuration can explain the formation of an organization’s climate (a concept discussed in Chapter 6) or its “collective attitude, continually produced and reproduced by members’ interactions.”Poole & McPhee (1983). A structurational analysis of organizational climate. In L. L. Putnam & M. Pacanowski (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach (pp. 195–220). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; pg. 213. Climate emerges from a concept pool of shared terms and phrases that members use to describe the organization, culminating in a kernel climate as members adopt a commonly shared abstraction to capture their basic understandings of the organization, and then progressing into particular climates that guide members’ attitudes and actions in specific situations.McPhee, R. D. (1985). Formal structure and organizational communication. In R. D. McPhee & P. Tompkins (Eds.), Organizational communication: Traditional themes and new directions (pp. 149–177). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Further developments in organizational structuration theory have asserted that organizational communication occurs at three centers of structuration: conception, implementation, and reception.McPhee, R. D. (1989). Organizational communication: A structurational exemplar. In B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, B. J. O’Keefe & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking communication: Paradigm exemplars, Vol. 2 (pp. 199–212). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; McPhee, R. D., & Zaug, P. (2000). The communicative constitution of organizations: A framework for explanation. Electronic Journal of Communication, 10, 1–16. Though much overlap and conflict can occur, top management typically dominates conceptual communication, middle management oversees implementation, and employees receive and enact what has been decided. These communications may be classed into four flows that are respectively concerned with membership negotiation (who can be a member), activity coordination (what members do), self-structuring (how activities are organized), and institutional positioning (how the organization differentiates itself from others). Meanwhile, structurational processes also operate at the individual level to drive organizational identity (a phenomenon addressed in Chapter 8). Through an identity-identification duality, the more that organization members are linked with other members who share the same premises, the more they will all cultivate a like identity for themselves and, in turn, be self-actualized by relationships with likeminded individuals.Cheney, G., & Tompkins, P. K. (1987). Coming to terms with organizational identification and commitment. Central States Speech Journal, 38, 1–15; Scott, C. R., Corman, S. R., & Cheney, G. (1998). Development of a structurational model of identification in the organization. Communication Theory, 8, 298–335.
Giddens’s original stucturation theory addressed processes at the societal level and the institutions that societies create and sustain. A societal institution, he observed, can accrue and channel great power as it becomes a nexus for concentrating, organizing, controlling, and then projecting resources. As mentioned above, structurational processes govern how things are interpreted, what is deemed moral and should be done, and how power is distributed to do those things. This same attention to the ways in which power operates through a system has continued to be a concern for scholars who apply structuration theory to organizations. In looking back on two decades of theory development, Poole and McPhee believed, “Structuration theory . . . has the potential to bring a critical edge to the analysis of organizational systems because it charges scholars to look for the role of power and domination in structuring processes that underlie organizations.” Further, the theory “shows how organizations are created and sustained by human action and how, potentially, they can be changed.”Poole, M.S., & McPhee, R. D., 2005, op. cit., pg. 180. Thus, they concluded, “We hope future researchers will take a more critical stance in developing the future of the structurational perspective.”Ibid, p. 192.
Critical/Postmodern Approaches: Feminist Theory
Feminist theoryNot a single theory, but an approach to organizational communication scholarship that sees organizations as gendered and as sites for configuring gender roles. provides an apt subject to conclude this chapter on modern theories of organizational communication—and to conclude this section, which has highlighted ways that modern theories often blend perspectives from different approaches. First, a cohesive body of work in feminist organizational communication studies is a newer development, having emerged only since the 1990s. Second, despite its recent pedigree, feminist theorizing about organizational communication draws on diverse schools of thought which have enriched one another in innovative ways. Katherine Miller identified five distinct approaches to feminist theorizing;Miller, K. (2012). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes (6th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth. Marta Calas and Linda Smircich identified seven;Calas, M. B., & Smircich, L. (1996). From “the women’s point of view”: Feminist approaches to organization studies. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy & W. R. Nord (Eds.), Handbook of organization studies (pp. 218–257). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. and Michael Papa, Tom Daniels, and Barry Spiker recently identified eight.Papa, M. J., Daniel, T. D., & Spiker, B. K. (2008). Organizational communication: Perspectives and trends. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Feminist theorizing that specifically addresses organizational communication is generally identified with the critical approach to organizations, although Dennis Mumby also identified a postmodern strain in feminist inquiry about organizational life.Mumby, D. K. (2001). Power and politics. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 585–623). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
While feminist theorizing has generated a diverse body of research, some common themes emerge. Yet before describing these, let us review some ideas that retain a large influence on popular culture (so that you have probably heard about them) but do not represent current directions in feminist organizational communication studies. Karen Lee Ashcraft has recounted how research in the 1980s and 90s frequently focused on sex differences.Ashcraft, K. L. (2005). Feminist organizational communication studies: Engaging gender in public and private. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research: Multiple perspectives (pp. 141–169). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Women were depicted as “different” than men. Even if a “feminine style” of communication and leadership was celebrated as valuable, the notion nevertheless perpetuated a stereotype. Moreover, “feminine style” and “women’s concerns” were largely equated with those of middle-class white women. Finally, the workplace was seen as neutral territory into which individuals brought their sex differences and societal prejudices; organizations were simply places where people played out gender issues imported from the outside. Two decades of feminist organizational communication scholarship has altered this picture. The workplace is no longer viewed as neutral; instead, organizations are seen as profoundly gendered institutions and a primary source of gendering (i.e., configuring gender roles) in contemporary society.
To explain this phenomenon, let us begin with the basic concept of “male” and “female.” The concept inherently lends itself to “either/or” thinking or what scholars call a binaryAn opposition such as male/female, cause/effect, rational/emotional, leader/follower, win/lose, public/private. Feminist theory holds that binary thinking in organizations leads to the domination of “masculine” values such as competition over “feminine” values such as cooperation. mode of thought. Another binary common to Western society is the “mind/body” dualism which holds that the mind is nonmaterial and the body is physical. A tendency to think in terms of binaries, feminist scholars have shown, suffuses modern organization in ways that (as critical theory tells us) work simultaneously to make “masculine” values dominant and yet hide that domination by making it seem natural. For example, the modern bureaucratic organizations is based on hierarchical ordering—which privileges the abstract (a “masculine” value) over the personal (a “feminine” value), establishes the workplace on the basis of individual categorization rather than egalitarian cooperation, and fosters a management/labor binary.Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psyhological theory and women’s development. Cambridhe, MA: Harvard University Press. Hierarchy promotes linear modes of thinking and communication so that organizations extol a cause/effect binary as the only rational way to make decisions, rather than a holistic approach.Buzzanell, P. M. (1994). Gaining a voice: Feminist organizational communication theorizing. Management Communication Quarterly, 7, 339–383. Indeed, the rational/emotional binary is another mode of thought that gives a “masculine” gendering to organizations.Mumby, D. K., & Putnam, L. L. (1992). The politics of emotion: A critical reading. Academy of Management Review, 17, 465–486. Likewise, the leader/follower binary, which is inherent to hierarchy, is patriarchal and fosters a dependency that “feminizes” workers.Ferguson, K. (1984). The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Conflict management is another area where “masculine” values reign; even when individuals agree to set aside the win/lose binary, settling their differences through negotiation privileges the skill of bargaining.Putnam, L. L., & Kolb, D. M. (2000). Rethinking negotiation: Feminist views of communication and exchange. In P. M. Buzzanell (Ed.), Rethinking organizational and managerial communication from feminist perspectives (pp. 76–104). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Modern organizations even configure female bodies according to masculine values, as a woman’s “professional body” is expected to be trim and thus show discipline.Tretheway, A. (1999). Disciplined bodies: Women’s embodied identities at work. Organization Studies, 20, 423–450; Tretheway, A. (2000). Revisioning control: A feminist critique of disciplined bodies. In P. M. Buzzanell (Ed.), Rethinking organizational and managerial communication from feminist perspectives (pp. 107–127). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Tretheway, A., Scott, C., & LeGreco, M. (2006). Constructing embodied organizational identities: Commodifying, securing, and servicing professional bodies. In B. Dow & J. T. Wood (Eds.), Handbook of gender and communication (pp. 123–141). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Finally, Weber’s ideal of the impersonal-but-fair bureaucracy ideal (see Chapter 3) is alive today in the public/private binary that governs most organizations. That “masculine” values are the standard is ensured by the rule that public workplace performance takes precedence of private concerns.Ashcraft, 2005, op. cit.
The connections between feminist theory and critical theory are clear. Today, a growing body of feminist research employs fieldwork and ideology critique to show how organizations reify and universalize “masculine” values. Recently, other feminist scholars have demonstrated how a postmodern approach to organizations can inform research by deconstructing how discourses of domination—such as male domination—have formed over time. An example is Ashcraft and Mumby’s study of airline pilots, a profession in which white males predominate. They documented how early aviators were romanticized as daredevils but, when the prospect of commercial aviation arose, celebrated “lady” pilots made aviation seem less intimidating. Then as commercial flights became a reality and the public worried about safety and reliability, the industry promoted the image of the fatherly (white) professional pilot in a crisp naval-style uniform.Ashcraft, K. L., & Mumby, D. K. (2004). Reworking gender: A feminist communicology of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Their project also explores issue of race and, as such, illustrates how in recent years the feminist approach to organizational communication has begun to encompass issues of race, class, sexuality, and ability.
As our look at systems theory, structuration theory and feminist theory affirms, modern theories of organizational communication are diverse. In addition, they afford opportunities for innovative, as well as blended, approaches to explaining problems of organizational life in the twenty-first century.
Key Takeaways
• Systems theory is based on the metaphor of the organization as a biological organization. Its parts, though hierarchically ordered, are interdependent and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Feedback between parts spreads needed information. But an organization is as an open system with permeable boundaries, engaging in exchange with its environment to gather resources required for growth. Because its environment is complex, the organization must have the requisite variety to deal with that complexity. This is aided through equifinality or the ability to take multiple paths for achieving the same goal. Karl Weick’s theory of organizing holds that information is part of an organization’s environment. Since the information is increasingly complex, a goal of organizational communication is equivocality reduction through processes of sensemaking.
• Structuration theory provides a new answer to the question: Do people have free will or are they determined by their environments? Anthony Giddens theorized that structure and agency are not a dualism but a duality. That is, people’s actions produce structure but, by acting within a structure, they also perpetuate or reproduce it. This is called structuration. Thus, structure is both an outcome of, and a medium for, social action. For Giddens, a system is comprised human practices that have meaningful patterns for participants. Poole and McPhee, and subsequent scholars, have applied the theory of structuration to explain the processes of organizational climate, organizational communication, and organizational identity.
• Feminist scholarship on organizational communication encompasses a diversity of approaches and theories. However, they share a conception of the modern organization as being gendered (rather than a neutral site where sex differences and societal prejudices play out) and as a primary site in the modern world for configuring gender roles. The male/female distinction reflects a binary mode of thought that suffuses organizations. Other binaries found in organizations include cause/effect, rational/emotional, leader/ follower, win/lose, and public/private. Bureaucratic hierarchy “feminizes” workers by making them dependent, while basing organizational life on individual categorization rather than egalitarian cooperation.
Exercises
1. Where classical theory is based on the metaphor of the organization as a machine, systems theory is based on the metaphor of the organization as a biological organism. Make a list of other possible metaphors that might be used and explain how each one can help us understand the ways that an organization works.
2. In developing a theory of organizational structuration, Robert McPhee proposed that communication occurs in four flows: membership negotiation (who can be a member), activity coordination (what members do), self-structuring (how activities are organized), and institutional positioning (how the organization differentiates itself from others). Think of an organization to which you belong and then make a list of the types of communication that occur within each of the four flows. Can you identify any patterns or structures in these communication practices? Do these structures help people in the organization get their messages across and be understood? Or do they limit what people can say? Or both?
3. Again, think of an organization to which you belong. Name some examples of binary thinking (e.g., cause/effect, rational/emotional, leader/follower, win/lose, public/private) you have observed. How does this binary thinking affect what you have experienced in the organization? Does this type of thinking tend to make “masculine” values (e.g., competition, individualism, being rational, showing no emotion, taking action) more favored than “feminine” values (e.g., cooperation, integration). | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/04%3A_Modern_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/4.04%3A_Representative_Modern_Theories.txt |
Real World Case Study
The Walt Disney Company and its theme parks have drawn the interest of organization and management scholars for decades. Books and articles praising Disney management began appearing in the 1960s. The runaway 1982 bestseller, In Search of Excellence by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, remains in print and lauds the Disney organization as a “best example” of customer service and employee relations.Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H., Jr. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America’s best companies. New York: Harper & Row. The high profile of the Disney theme parks in U.S. and global culture have prompted studies not only by industrial psychologists and management scientists, but by scholars who take interpretive, critical, and postmodern approaches to organizational communication.For example, see Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the story-telling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as “Tamara-land.” Academy of Management Review, 38, 997–1035; Van Maanen, J. (1991). The smile factory: Work at Disneyland. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Lewis, C. C. Lundberg & J. Martin (Eds.), Reframing organizational culture (pp. 58–76). Newbury Park, CA: Sage; Van Maanen, J. (1992). Displacing Disney: Some notes on the flow of organizational culture. Qualitative Sociology, 15, 5–25; Van Maanen, J., & Kunda, G. (1989). Real feelings: Emotional expression and organizational culture. Research in Organizational Behavior, 11, 43–103.
One innovative study, though conducted some 30 years ago, reads like today’s news. The Disneyland theme park in California was dealing with the economic effects of a recent recession. Since the park was founded in 1955, management had succeeded in building up an unusually close-knit organizational culture. So a 1984 strike by park employees, protesting a management proposal to freeze wages and reduce benefits, made national headlines. Two organizational communication researchers, Ruth Smith and Eric Eisenberg, decided to investigate these labor troubles by taking an interpretive approach to the Disney organizational culture.Smith, R. C., & Eisenberg, E. M. (1987). Conflict at Disneyland: A root-metaphor analysis. Communication Monographs, 54, 367-380. They interviewed managers from several departments, reviewed company documents, and found that management carefully cultivated the metaphor of Disneyland as a “drama” or “show.” Customers were “guests” and employees, as the “cast,” were expected to play their “roles” by talking in approved phrases that followed the “script.” Dress codes and grooming requirements were called “costuming.” The park’s “on-stage” and “back-stage” areas were clearly delineated.
Then Smith and Eisenberg interviewed striking workers and were surprised by what they discovered. The company founder, Walt Disney, had died in 1966. His successors worked diligently to carry on his legacy so that the show might go on. In fact, according to Smith and Eisenberg, management was so successful in cultivating this idea that the park employees also took satisfaction in being caretakers of the Disney legacy. And with Disneyland’s emphasis on family entertainment, park employees began to see their workplace as a “family.” When management was compelled by the recession to emphasize the bottom line, employees believed the company was forsaking the Disney legacy and violating the spirit of the “Disney family.” Management responded by suggesting that families go through hard times, but to no avail. The strike lasted 22 days, the union went public with its concerns, management implemented a separate wage scale for new employees, and the organizational culture was profoundly changed.
1. Smith and Eisenberg took an interpretive approach for their research on the organizational culture of Disneyland by analyzing company documents and interviewing managers and employees. If you were a postpositive researcher, how might you have conducted surveys of Disneyland employees to supplement the interviews? Would such knowledge of aggregate responses, alone, have helped you understand the Disneyland culture? Or would you have needed to interpret the mindsets of individual managers and employees? In other words, could nomothetic research by itself have sufficed or was ideographic research essential?
2. If you had worked with Smith and Eisenberg, how might you have extended their study through ethnographic fieldwork? What Disneyland management and employee activities and rituals might you have observed and participated in? Smith and Eisenberg analyzed the metaphors that managers and employees used in their interviews; managers emphasized a “drama” metaphor, while employees also added a “family” metaphor. How might ethnographic fieldwork—as you participated in and directly experienced Disneyland culture for yourself—have extended the findings?
3. What might a critical organizational communication scholar have said about the culture that Smith and Eisenberg found at Disneyland? Many organization and management scholars have praised the Disney company. But a critical scholar might ask: Did management use its “show” discourse to reify and universalize its interests? Was this discourse a kind of technical reasoning to gain a desired managerial goal and make practical reasoning toward mutual consent seem irrational? Did the discourse distort employees’ consciousness to favor management? Did it distort communication so that all communicative action took place on managerial terms? And as a postmodern scholar might have asked, did the discourse “manufacture consent” so that workers willingly disciplined themselves? What do you think?
4. Re-read the description in the case of the “show” discourse that governed the organizational culture at Disneyland. Then re-read the discussion in this chapter about the seven traditions in communication theory: cybernetic, phenomenological, sociopsychological, sociocultural, semiotic, critical, and rhetorical. Now try to explain the “show” discourse according to each tradition.
5. Karl Weick’s system theory holds that people collectively “make sense” of their workplace by enacting responses to its complexities, selecting the best responses, and retaining those responses to guide future enactments and selections. Try to interpret the Disneyland “show” culture that Eisenberg and Smith discovered through this framework.
6. Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory holds that even as people create a structure, they simultaneously perpetuate or reproduce the structure by acting within what the structure enables and what it constrains. Try to explain our case study through this framework. Robert McPhee’s application of structuration theory to organizations holds that structuration occurs differently at the executive, middle management, and employee levels. Does this help explain why Disneyland employees went on strike?
7. What might a feminist organizational communication scholar have said about the culture that Smith and Eisenberg discovered at Disneyland? Does their description suggest that the organization was gendered? Do you see any evidence of binary thinking in the Disneyland culture that Smith and Eisenberg’s describe?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. In Chapter 4 we learned that theorists must make decisions about ontology, epistemology, and axiology. Select the answer below that gives the definitions of these three terms in the order of ontology, epistemology, and axiology.
1. how things are known; what is worth knowing; how things exist
2. what is worth knowing; how things exist; how things are known
3. how things exist; what is worth knowing; how things are known
4. how things exist; how things are known; what is worth knowing
5. what is worth knowing; how things are known; how things exist
2. The belief that a social phenomenon (such as an organization) has a subjective existence, and that it naturally tends toward order, are characteristic of which approach to organizations?
1. Postpositive
2. Interpretive
3. Critical
4. Postmodern
5. Feminist
3. The belief that a social phenomenon (such as an organization) is known by applying prior theoretical knowledge to the phenomenon, and that it naturally tends toward conflict, is characteristic of which approach to organizations?
1. Postpositive
2. Interpretive
3. Critical
4. Postmodern
5. Functionalist
4. The belief that a social phenomenon (such as an organization) exists independent of human perception, and that its structures are created through human agency, is characteristic of which approach to organizations?
1. Postpositive
2. Interpretive
3. Critical
4. Postmodern
5. Social constructionist
5. Which model depicts communication as a process by which communicators send messages/feedback simultaneously to one another?
1. Sociopsychological
2. Socicultural
3. Linear
4. Interactional
5. Transactional
1. D
2. B
3. C
4. A
5. E | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/04%3A_Modern_Theories_of_Organizational_Communication/4.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
Since the 1950s, researchers have been very interested in how information is passed around the various levels of an organization’s hierarchy. How information is passed around an organization is commonly referred to as “communication structure,” and there are three dominant perspectives: channels, perceived networks, and observable networks.
• 5.1: Introduction
• 5.2: Formal Communication Networks
The word “formal” describes adherence to a set of conventional requirements of behavior. Formal communication then consists of the rules and norms established by an organization for communicative behavior. A communication rule is a standard or directive governing how communication occurs within an organization. Communication rules are explicitly stated and may be found in your organization’s policies and procedures manual.
• 5.3: Informal Communication Networks
While formal communication networks are very important for the day-to-day functioning of any organization, there exists another set of communication networks that also dramatically impacts the day-to-day functioning of any organization. This second set of communication networks are called informal communication networks, or communication networks that do not exist within the structure of the organizational hierarchy.
• 5.E: Exercises
05: Communicating Between and Among Internal Stakeholders
Communication Structure
As discussed in Chapter 1, one of the fundamental parts of an organization is the presence of a hierarchy. Since the 1950s, researchers have been very interested in how information is passed around the various levels of an organization’s hierarchy. How information is passed around an organization is commonly referred to as “communication structure,” and there are three dominant perspectives: channels, perceived networks, and observable networks.Papa, M. J., Daniels, T. D., & Spiker, B. K. (2008). Organizational communication: Perspectives and trends. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. The channels perspective sees messages as concrete objects that can be passed along clearly established channels of communication within an organization. Koehler, J. W., Anatol, K. W. E., & Applbaum, R. L. (1981). Organizational communication: Behavioral perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. In essence, the channels perspective focuses on how the message moves along the channels of communication and not on the relationship between the sender and the receiver. Under this perspective, the receiver becomes a passive individual in the communication process. In Chapter 1, we mentioned Redding’s 10 postulates of organizational communication.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. One of his postulates explains that the message received, not the one sent, is the one that a receiver will ultimately act upon in an organization. This channels perspective violates this basic tenant of organizational communication.
The second prominent perspective of organizational communication structure discussed is the perceived network perspective. Papa, M. J., Daniels, T. D., & Spiker, B. K. (2008). Organizational communication: Perspectives and trends. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. One way that some scholars have attempted to ascertain how communication is transmitted within an organization is to ask organizational members. In essence, this method involves interviewing organizational members and asking them who they talk to and how they pass on information to their coworkers. According to Steven R. Corman and Craig R. Scott, perceived networks are innately flawed:
This formulation denies the existence of a network of communication, suggesting instead that the network is a structure of perceived communication relationships. It is a kind of latent knowledge that guides members’ manifest communication behavior. We believe members’ reports of communication reflect this knowledge, not their recollections of specific communication episodes [emphasis in original]. Corman, S. R., & Scott, C. R. (1994). Perceived networks, activity foci, and observable communication in social collectives. Communication Theory, 4, 171–190, pg. 174.
Corman and Scott’s argument against the use of perceived networks is twofold. First, Corman and Scott argue that when researchers ask participants about their communication networks, the participants respond by thinking of who they should be communicating with not necessarily who they actually communicate with at all. Second, the perceptions that participants have about their communicative networks is more a generalized understanding of how they communicate and not how they actually communicate during specific communicative episodes. In other words, people often believe that they utilize specific channels of communication within the organization, whereas in reality, they are communicating in a completely different way.
The third prominent perspective of organizational communication structure is the observable network perspective. Papa, M. J., Daniels, T. D., & Spiker, B. K. (2008). Organizational communication: Perspectives and trends. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Another way that scholars can examine how communication actually happens within an organization is to literally watch it happen. While actually watching how communication occurs within an organization provides the most accurate information, the research process is very time consuming. When actually observing an organization’s communication network, you cannot hope to get all of the necessary information in a short period of time. For this reason, data collection in this type of research is very laborious. Furthermore, a researcher’s ability to observe actual communication networks is only as good as the researcher’s access to those communication networks. People who talk outside of work or in inaccessible areas of the organization (like the bathroom) can lead to an incomplete picture of the actual communication networks within the organization.
Overall, watching how people interact within an organization and how information is transmitted within an organization is a very difficult task. Furthermore, how researchers and organizations view communication networks also differs. Corman and Scott noted, “we believe … there is no network of communication in the sense analogous to a network of computers or telephones or television stations. Instead, the network is an abstract structure of perceived communication relationships that functions as a set of rules and resources actors draw upon in accomplishing communication behavior” [emphasis in original].Corman, S. R., & Scott, C. R. (1994). Perceived networks, activity foci, and observable communication in social collectives. Communication Theory, 4, 171–190, pg. 181. Ultimately, this abstract structure can be broken down into two basic parts: formal communication networks and informal communication networks. The rest of this chapter is going to examine formal and informal communication networks. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/05%3A_Communicating_Between_and_Among_Internal_Stakeholders/5.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain Weber’s (1930) beliefs on downward communication.
• Understand Katz and Kahn’s (1966) typology of downward communication.
• Clarify Hirokawa’s (1979) two problems associated with downward communication.
• Be able to explain Hirokawa’s (1979) four functions of upward communication.
• Understand Katz and Kahn’s (1966) typology of upward communication.
• Explain the importance of employee silence and organizational dissent.
• Explain Fayol’s (1916/1949) perspective on horizontal/lateral communication.
• Understand Hirokawa’s (1979) four functions of horizontal/lateral communication.
• Analyze Charles and Marschan-Piekkari’s (2002) five organizational behaviors to increase the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication in multinational corporations.
The word “formal” describes adherence to a set of conventional requirements of behavior. Formal communicationOrganizational communication that exists within the rules and norms established by an organization. then consists of the rules and norms established by an organization for communicative behavior. A communication ruleA standard or directive governing how communication occurs within an organization. is a standard or directive governing how communication occurs within an organization. Communication rules are explicitly stated and may be found in your organization’s policies and procedures manual. For example, maybe your organization has very strict policies established for what happens in case of an emergency. One of the authors of this book worked in a hospital that had very explicit communication rules if someone was accidentally stuck by a needle. First, the individual was required to immediately go to the emergency room for testing and the initiation of preventative pharmaceutical measures. Second, the head of the hospital’s risk management office was to be contacted. The risk management head would then investigate the matter and submit a formal report of all accidents to the CEO of the hospital on a monthly basis. These steps were not perceived as optional at all and were clearly written in the employee handbook.
Communication normsStandards or patterns of communication regarded as typical within an organization., on the other hand, are standards or patterns of communication regarded as typical. Where communication rules are explicitly discussed within an organization, communication norms are only learned through active observation of communicative behavior within the organization. In fact, one of the most common ways to learn a communicative norm in an organization is to accidentally violate the norm. For example, in the same hospital discussed above, the head of risk management had to formally communicate to the CEO on a monthly basis any accidents that had occurred. However, the head of risk management would also send the CEO an e-mail as soon as she had an incident report just to keep him updated more frequently. When the head of risk management went on a two month leave of absence, one of her subordinates took over the position. The subordinate followed the guidelines as set forth in the policies and procedures manual to the letter. However, the CEO got very angry when at the end of the month he received his formal briefing of accidents because he hadn’t been kept up-to-date throughout the month. In this case, the subordinate had followed the formal communication rules of the organization but had violated what had become a formal communication norm.
Obviously, understanding how formal communication functions within an organization is very important, which is why a considerable amount of the early research on organizational communication examined formal communication. To help us further understand formal communication in the organization, we’re going to look at it by examining the three directions communication happens within an organization: downward, upward, horizontal/lateral.
Downward Communication
Downward communicationMessages that start at the top of the hierarchy and are transmitted down the hierarchy to the lowest rungs of the hierarchy. consists of messages that start at the top of the hierarchy and are transmitted down the hierarchy to the lowest rungs of the hierarchy. Downward communication can be considered a top-to-bottom approach for organizational communication. The earliest thinker in the area of downward communication was Max Weber.Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin. Weber believed that there were two ways to get employees to follow one’s directives: power and authority. Weber defined powerThe ability to force people to obey regardless of their resistance. as the ability to force people to obey regardless of their resistance, whereas authorityWhen an individual’s orders are voluntarily obeyed by those receiving them. occurs when orders are voluntarily obeyed by those receiving them. Weber argued that individuals in authority based organizations were more likely to perceive directives as legitimate.Gerth, H. H., Mills, C. W. (Eds.). (1948). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. London: Routledge. While this process sounds simplistic, individuals in management positions have often had to determine how to communicate with employees. Randy Hirokawa noted that there are two general types of downward communication in modern organizations:
(1) information concerning the current/future status of specific aspects of the organization, new organizational policies, recent administrative decisions, and recent changes in the standard-operating-procedures; and (2) information of a task-related nature which generally provide subordinates with the technical know-how to accomplish their tasks or assignments with greater efficiency and productivity. Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 84.
While Hirokawa’s two-prong approach to downward communication is fairly consistent with the type of communication that occurs in modern organizations, this type of communication was not always present.
History of Downward Communication
C. J. Dover traced the history of downward communication through the utilization of employee publications. Dover’s research ultimately identified three distinct eras: entertainment, information, and interpretation and persuasion.Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172.
The Era of Entertainment
The first era of downward communication noted by C. J. Dover was the era of entertainment, which he defined as the period prior to World War II. Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172.In addition to basic directives, most of the communication during the Era of Entertainment was primarily fluff material, “company publications thus dealt largely with choice items of gossip, social chit-chat about employees, notices of birthdays and anniversaries, jokes, notices of local recreation and entertainment opportunities, etc.”Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172, p. 168. When one looks at this list of information communicated downward, the obvious lack of information about the state of the organization itself is glaring. However, “there were occasional exhortations to lead clean, moral, and thrifty lives, some attacks on the evils of ‘demon rum,’ some attacks on the ‘bolsheviks,’ [sic] and some printed resistance to early attempts at unionization.”Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172, p. 168.
Era of Information
The second era of downward communication discussed by C. J. Dover was the era of information, which occurred during the 1940s. Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172. Two competing forces ultimately changed the face of employee communication during the 1940s. First, businesses were forced to produce more with less as a result of the U.S. entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As businesses found themselves with less overhead capital, the printing of company publications with trivial, entertaining information became a non-necessity. Second, research in the social sciences started to ascertain that informed employees were more productive employees. Ultimately, this second issue won out and employee publications started to focus more on information about the organization and less on the entertainment value of the publications. In fact, the number of employee publications tripled from 1940 (2,000) to 1950 (6,000). Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172. These new publications were very different from their pre-WWII precursors, “The new emphasis in content was on informing employees about the company—its plans, operations, and policies. Typical of this new material were reports on company growth, and expansion, the outlook for the business and the industry, company financial reports, and information on productivity, costs, and employee benefit plans” [emphasis in original]. Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172, p. 169.
Era of Interpretation and Persuasion
The third era of downward communication discussed by C. J. Dover was the era of interpretation and persuasion, which occurred during the 1950s. Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172.During the 1950s employee publications maintained their entertainment and information aspects, but added an organization’s perspective on information in an attempt to interpret the information and persuade the employee’s to the organization’s interpretation. Dover had this to say about interpretation and persuasion:
The “Era of Interpretation and Persuasion” adds new features [to employee publications]. Prominent among these are (a) interpretation—i.e., emphasizing or explaining the significance of the facts in terms of employee or reader interest, and (b) persuasion—i.e., urging employees or readers, on the basis of the facts as they have been interpreted, to take specific action or to accept management’s honest ideas and opinions [emphasis in original].Dover, C. J. (1959). The three eras of management communication. Journal of Communication, 9, 168–172, pg. 170.
Managers to this day still attempt to communicate to their employees using interpretative and persuasive strategies. The rest of this section is going to examine types of downward communication, problems with downward communication, and effective methods for downward communication.
Types of Downward Communication
While there are numerous typologies examining the various types of messages transmitted down a hierarchy from management, the most commonly cited typology was created by Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Katz and Kahn’s typology breaks downward communication into five distinct types: job instructions, job rationales, procedures and practices, feedback, and indoctrination.
Job Instructions
The first type of message that management commonly communicates to employees are job instructionsExplanations from management relating to how they want an employee to perform her or his job., or how management wants an employee to perform her or his job. Often this type of downward communication occurs through training. Depending on the difficulty of the job, communicating to an employee how to perform her or his job could take days, months, or years. Some organizations will even send employees outside of the organization for more specialized training.
Job Rationales
The second type of messages Katz and Kahn identified as commonly communicated downward in an organization are job rationales.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. A job rationaleA basic statement of the purpose of a specific job and how that job relates to the overarching goal of the organization. is a basic statement of the purpose of a specific job and how that job relates to the overarching goal of the organization. Every job should help the organization achieve its goals, so understanding how one’s position fits into the larger scheme of the organization is very important. Furthermore, the job rationale will also illustrate how a single job relates to other jobs within the organizational hierarchy.
Procedures & Practices
The third type of messages Katz and Kahn identified as commonly communicated downward in an organization are procedures and practices.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Procedures and practices typically come in the form of an employee manual or handbook when you start working within an organization. ProceduresSequences of steps to be followed in a given situation. are sequences of steps to be followed in a given situation. For example, in an organization, there may be procedures in place for reporting sexual harassment or procedures for hiring new members. PracticesBehaviors people should do habitually., on the other hand, are behaviors people should do habitually. For example, maybe you are required to punch in and out using a time-clock or you are not allowed to wear open toed shoes. There are procedures and practices related to policies (courses of action taken in the organization), rules (standards or directives governing behavior), and benefits (payment and entitlements one receives with the job).
Feedback
The fourth type of message Katz and Kahn identified as commonly communicated downward in an organization is feedback. Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Providing feedback to one’s subordinates is a very important feature of any supervisory position.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. Employees can only grow and become more proficient with their jobs if they are receiving feedback from those above them. This feedback needs to contain both positive and negative feedback. Positive feedbackFeedback to an employee that occurs when a supervisor explains to the subordinate what he or she is doing well. occurs when a supervisor explains to a subordinate what he or she is doing well, whereas negative feedbackFeedback to an employee that occurs when a supervisor explains to a subordinate areas that need improvement. occurs when a supervisor explains to a subordinate areas that need improvement. Furthermore, feedback should not only occur in formal review sessions often referred to as “summative feedback.” Instead, supervisors should utilize formative feedback, or periodic feedback designed to help an employee grow and develop within the organization.
Employee Indoctrination
The last type of downward communication discussed by Katz and Kahn is employee indoctrination.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. IndoctrinationThe process of instilling an employee with a partisan or ideological point of view. is the process of instilling an employee with a partisan or ideological point of view. Specifically, organizations use indoctrination messages in order to help new members adopt ideological stances related to the organization’s culture and goals. The ultimate goal of organizational indoctrination is organizational identification, or “the extent to which that person’s self-concept includes the same characteristics he or she perceives to be distinctive, central, and enduring to the organization.”Beyer, J. M., Hannah, D. R., & Milton, L. P. (2000). Ties that bind: Culture and attachments in organizations. In N. M. Ashkanasy, C. P. M. Wilderom, & M. F. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook of organizational culture & climate (pp. 323–338). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pg. 333. We’ll examine employee indoctrination in more detail in Chapter 12.
Katz and Kahn’s typology of downward communication is very useful to remember when examining how communication in an organization is conducted. Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Often, managers may be competent at one or two of the types of downward communication but not as competent in the other three. When this is the case, managers need training in how to become effective downward communicators. Furthermore, managers must also think of the most appropriate communication channels to use when sending downward messages. An article in Management Report in 2004 titled “Downward Communication” listed a wide range of possibilities for communicating information downward: staff meetings, one-on-one meetings, internal newsletters, employee information sheets, bulletin boards, employee handbooks, and e-mail.Downward communications. (2004, August). Management Report, 27(8), 6–7. While all of these are options for downward communication, not all of them appropriate for every communication situation. For example, you probably don’t want to chastise an employee’s tardiness in a company newsletter, on a bulletin board, or during a staff meeting, however this form of downward communication could be appropriately sent during a one-on-one meeting, through employee information sheets, or in an e-mail. Ultimately, managers must be competent in how they communicate down the hierarchy to their subordinates. Now that we’ve looked at the types of messages sent down the hierarchy and the different mediums a manager could use to send messages down the hierarchy, let’s examine some of the problems with downward communication.
Problems with Downward Communication
Downward communication is an extremely important part of any organization. However, Randy Hirokawa noted that there are two primary problems associated with downward communication: accuracy and adequacy.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. Accuracy of informationHow truthful a message is that has been received. refers to how truthful a message is that has been received. There are two primary ways that the accuracy of a message can be distorted. First, some messages are simply based on inaccurate information. For example, a manager who hears a false rumor and then passes the rumor on to her or his subordinates has passed on inaccurate information. Obviously, when the truth of the rumor is learned by subordinates, the manager’s credibility is going to be negatively impacted because her or his subordinates will perceive the manager as not being a trustworthy source of information. The second way messages can contain inaccurate information is as a result of multiple people in the communication chain, or as W. Charles Redding calls it serial transmission.Redding, W. C. (1966). The empirical study of human communication in business and industry. In P. E. Reid (Ed.), The frontiers in experimental speech-communication research (pp. 47–81). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. As we know from playing the telephone game in school, when A communicates to B and B communicates to C and C communicates to D, the chances of the message becoming distorted with each passing person becomes more likely. Even in the case of serial transmission of information (A→ B → C → D) managers who are caught communicating inaccurate information can expect to have employees question their credibility. Another ramification of passing on inaccurate information is that some subordinates will start to question how connected their supervisor is to the organizational hierarchy. Basically, if my supervisor is passing on inaccurate information, then clearly he or she doesn’t really know what’s going on at all.
A second problem associated with downward communication refers to the adequacy of the information being communicated. Adequacy of informationWhether or not the information being communicated is sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need for information in the workplace. refers to whether or not the information being communicated is sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need for information in the workplace. When discussing adequacy, there are two possible extremes that managers could swing to: communication underload and communication overload. Communication underloadWhen workers are not provided enough information to complete their jobs. occurs when subordinates are not provided enough information to complete their jobs. Communication underload can come in the form of inadequate on-the-job training, limited feedback from one’s supervisor, or insufficient information on policies and procedures in the organization. Often communication underload is completely accidental and occurs as an inadvertent omission. In this case, supervisors themselves may have too many things going on and information is accidentally not passed on to their subordinates in a timely fashion or at all. Other times communication underload can occur because a supervisor feels the need to hoard information in an effort to secure her or his power base. Individuals often see information as power and transmitting that information to another person as a loss of power.Huseman, R., Lahiff, J., & Wells, R. (1974). Communication thermoclines: Toward a process of identification. Personnel Journal, 53, 124–135. When information hoarding occurs, subordinates may be given just enough information to not make their supervisor look bad, but not enough information to truly excel at their jobs. For obvious reasons, information hoarding can be a very large problem in organizations.
The second problem associated with adequacy of information involves communication overloadWhen workers are provided too much information to complete their jobs., or when subordinates are provided too much information to complete their jobs. In an ideal work environment, supervisors will function as gatekeepers of information and make sure that adequate information is passed on to a subordinate to help the subordinate excel in her or his job. Unfortunately, some supervisors do not know how to function as gatekeepers, so they pass along any information they receive to their subordinates without filtering information that is not useful for their subordinates. Eventually, subordinates can become so overwhelmed with the number of messages that are being received, that they spend much of their work day simply shifting through information, which decreases their ability to be productive.Anderson, J., & Level, D. A. (1980). The impact of certain types of downward communication on job performance. The Journal of Business Communication, 17, 51–59. Other individuals when faced with communication overload simply start ignoring all of the information coming in because it’s simpler to just ignore information than to shift through it all. Communication overload is generally a product of channel capacity or an individual’s limits to receiving information.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. Some information is easy for an individual process, but other information involves considerable more effort on the part of the receiver. The more technical and complex the information, the smaller an individual’s channel capacity for handing the information will be.
In addition to Randy Hirokawa’s two primary problems associated with downward communication, we believe there is a third problem with downward communication: utility.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. Utility involves whether or not the information provided is actually useful. Often information that is transmitted to an individual within an organization is completely useless to that individual. For example, one of the coauthors of this book was paid to go to a meeting about new computer software the organization wasn’t planning on purchasing. In this instance, the subordinate (our coauthor) was actually sent for training on a software package that the subordinate would never see and never use. In this case, our coauthor not only wasted time going to this meeting, the organization paid our coauthor to actually go to this meeting and the organization paid the person making the presentation. In essence, both time and money were wasted on information that had no utility to either the individual employee or the organization.
Effective Methods for Downward Communication
So now that we’ve looked at some of the problems organizations face with downward communication, let’s examine some best practices for downward communication. First, individuals who are engaged in downward communication need to make sure that the information they are passing on to those below them is first, and foremost, accurate. If this means spending a little extra time verifying information, then verify the information. A supervisor may have to spend a couple of extra minutes verifying information, but this is a better trade-off than having to rebuild one’s credibility.
Second, make sure that the amount of information you are passing along to your subordinates is adequate and can be utilized. To ensure that you are avoiding communication underload and communication overload, you should do two things: filter and ask. The first thing to ensure your subordinates are receiving adequate information is filter out information that isn’t necessary for your subordinates. Filtering out information for one’s subordinates is not an easy task. One easy way to help filter information is to ask yourself, “will this information help my subordinates personally or professionally.” Some information could help your subordinates personally—workshops on avoiding stress, time management, or conflict management. While other information can help your subordinates professionally: information related to job duties, information on career advancement, and information related to organizational policies and procedures. In addition to attempting to filter information for your subordinates, you can always ask your subordinates if they feel they are getting enough information. Often subordinates will be the first to tell you when they feel under or over informed.
The third best practice in downward communication involves the source of the message. Obviously, the source of the message has a strong impact on how people interpret the importance of the message itself. For example, messages received from the CEO of organization will receive more weight than a message from a mid-level manager. For this reason, important messages should come from the top of the hierarchy and be transmitted as directly as possible to the employees to avoid serial transmission.
The fourth best practice in downward communication involves the type of communication channels utilized for the downward transmission of a message. By communication channels, we are referring to the traditional notion of communication channels commonly held in organizations. When encoding a message for transmission through the organizational hierarchy, one needs to think about the most expedient method for delivering the message itself. As previously discussed, the more individuals a message is transmitted through will increase the likelihood that the message itself will become distorted.
The fifth best practice in downward communication involves mindfully picking the communicative medium utilized for downward communication. As discussed earlier in this chapter, Katz and Kahn’s typology of downward communication consists of five different types: job instructions, job rationales, procedures and practices, feedback, and indoctrination.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. When encoding various messages related to these five types of downward communication, managers need to realize that the same communicative medium may not be the most effective tool for every message communicated. There are a variety of different types of communicative mediums that could be utilized: staff meetings, one-on-one meetings, internal newsletters, employee information sheets, bulletin boards, employee handbooks, e-mail, employee social networking sites, etc... In fact, if a piece of information is extremely important, communicating the information through multiple mediums may also be important. One of our coauthors had a former student named Chad who worked for a large discount chain as a front-line customer services representative in the technology department. Chad found out one day that he had violated a new rule set forth by the organization that he didn’t know existed. When he asked his manager about the new policy, Chad was told that the he should have received an e-mail about the new rule in his employee e-mail account. To make this situation even more problematic, Chad didn’t even know that he had an employee e-mail account. Chad discovered that the corporation had an intranet and all employees were supposed to check their e-mail prior to clocking-in for work. Chad asked some of his coworkers if they knew about employee e-mail accounts and found that no one apparently knew about the e-mail accounts. This example illustrates what can happen when organizations only utilize one communicative medium for important downward messages.
The story about Chad also illustrates our final recommendation for best practices in downward communication, checking for understanding. The message received, not the one sent, is the one that a receiver will ultimately act upon in an organization.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. Or as in the case of Chad, the lack of message reception is also a problem. It’s one thing to tell someone something, and completely different to have communicated with someone. Telling is a sender centered communicative strategy because the sender encodes a message and transmits the message.Richmond, V. P., McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (2005). Organizational communication for survival: Making work, work (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. However, the sender does not make sure that a receiver actually receives the message or correctly interprets the message itself. Furthermore, the meaning of a message is one that is determined by the receiver not by the sender. Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. In the case of telling, the receiver is completely taken out of the communication process, so the chance of misunderstandings and missed communication increases dramatically. For this reason, we recommend that downward communication be followed up by some kind of interaction with the individuals being sent a message to ensure that the message is being received and interpreted in a manner consistent with the sender’s original intent. To ascertain message reception and interpretation, supervisors need to encourage their subordinates to participate in upward communication.
Upward Communication
Upward communicationMessages that start at the bottom of the hierarchy and are transmitted up the hierarchy to the highest rungs of the hierarchy. consists of messages that start at the bottom of the hierarchy and are transmitted up the hierarchy to the highest rungs of the hierarchy. Upward communication can be considered a bottom-up approach to organizational communication. Randy Hirokawa noted that upward communication serves four very important functions in the modern organization.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. First, upward communication allows management to ascertain the success of previously relayed downward communication. Second, upward communication allows individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy to have a voice in policies and procedures. Hirokawa clarifies, “Perhaps even more importantly, upward communication, because it allows subordinates to participate in the decision-making process, also facilitates the acceptance of those decisions which they had a part in making.” Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 86. Third, upward communication allows subordinates to voice suggestions and opinions to make the working environment better. As Elton Mayo discovered during the employee interview program as part of the Hawthorne Works Studies, employees have a lot to say about their working conditions and how to make the organization more efficient.Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Furthermore, simply asking employees for their suggestions and opinions was found to increase job satisfaction. Lastly, upward communication allows management to test how employees will react to new policies and procedures. Often before radical changes are made to an organization, management will try to use focus groups of subordinates to gage their reactions to impending changes. These reactions can then be used in the framing of the communicative messages about the impending changes to the entire organization.
As a side note, we feel it is important to also stress research examining sex differences in upward communication.Stewart, L. P., Stewart, A. D., Friedley, S. A., & Cooper, P. J. (1996). Communication between the sexes: Sex differences and sex-role stereotypes (2nd ed.). Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick. The researchers noted females who provide more upward communication are more likely to advance and be promoted than those females who did not. As such, in a world where women are still under-promoted in many organizations, mastering upward communication can be very important for female workers. Now that we’ve examined some of the basic reasons for upward communication in organizations, we’re going to examine the types of upward communication in organizations, problems with upward communication in organizations, and effective methods for upward communication.
Types of Upward Communication
While there are numerous typologies examining the various types of messages transmitted up a hierarchy, the most commonly cited typology was created by Katz and Kahn.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Katz and Kahn’s typology breaks upward communication into four distinct types: information about the subordinate her/himself, information about coworkers and their problems, information about organizational policies and procedures, and information about the task at hand. Dennis Tourish and Paul Robson argue that a fifth form of upward communication needs to be included in this list: critical upward communication.Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711–730.
Information about the Subordinate
The first form of upward communication discussed by Katz and Kahn involves information about the subordinate her or himself.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Information that can be communicated upwardly about oneself typically falls into one of two categories: personal information and professional information. Personal information that can be communicated upwardly involves information that is more intimate in nature. For example, you can talk to your supervisor about your friends and families, hobbies, psychological/medical problems, etc…. This information helps subordinates establish a more understanding relationship with their supervisors. Professional information that can be communicated upwardly involves issues related to job performance or problems related to work. For example, maybe you’re having a great quarter and want to communicate this to your supervisor. On the other hand, maybe you’re really having problem with one specific facet of your job and you need help or more time. Perhaps you’re supposed to write a report, but the report keeps getting pushed further and further down your priority list as new projects come your way.
Information about Coworkers and their Problems
The second form of upward communication discussed by Katz and Kahn involves information about coworkers and their problems.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Often managers are completely removed from what is actually going on with their subordinates because the managers’ attentions are not completely focused on their subordinates. Despite what subordinates often think, managers have their own workloads that must be taken care of in addition to their managerial duties. For this reason, managers are often simply unaware of what is going on with their subordinates. In order to combat this lack of clarity, managers often rely on subordinates to report problems. One of our coauthors worked for a medical school overseeing medical students, interns, residents, and teaching faculty. One of the medical interns was actually showing up to work intoxicated. The only reason our coauthor found out about this was when one of the teaching faculty called to report the problem. While it was our coauthor’s job to oversee situations like these, if our coauthor had never been told there was a problem, the problem would have continued and could have led to serious consequences both medically and legally. Another facet of this problem occurs when subordinates are not able to complete their job duties. People can become very adept at hiding what they don’t know and can’t do when necessary. While others will only actively work when they are under immediate supervision, however once the supervision leaves, the individuals stop working. The only way a supervisor can have any chance of finding out about either one of these situations is to rely on other subordinates to report what’s happening. While children are taught that tattle-telling is a horrible thing, often telling a supervisor what a coworker is or is not doing is extremely important. Whether the coworker simply needs more training or needs to be reprimanded, the only way a supervisor can correct behavior is if he or she knows about the problem in the first place. To help with this process, many organizations have actually initiated anonymous complaint/report phone lines. Individuals who see someone behaving in a dangerous or unethical manner can anonymously call the phone line and leave a message about the problem, and the organization can then start its own internal investigation.
Organizational Procedures & Practices
The third form of upward communication discussed by Katz and Kahn involves information about organizational procedures and practices.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. As previously discussed in this chapter, procedures are sequence of steps to be followed in a given situation, whereas practices are behaviors people should do habitually. Within any organization there are procedures and practices related to policies (courses of action taken in the organization), rules (standards or directives governing behavior), and benefits (payment and entitlements one receives with the job). Upward communication about procedures and practices can help management see where policies, rules, and benefits can be more influential or stream-lined. Often, management creates procedures and practices for how things ought to be accomplished without ever having to implement the procedure or practice themselves. The only way management can know if the procedures and practices are causing unneeded stress or loss of resources is if the people who have to enact those procedures and practices explain the problem.
Task at Hand
The last form of upward communication discussed by Katz and Kahn involves information about the task at hand.Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. This last form of upward communication is specifically directed to communicate information to management that helps an individual complete her or his job. Types of messages that could fall into this category include asking for more information, asking to have a task clarified, asking for additional resources to complete the task, keeping a supervisor informed of a time table for completion, explaining the current status of a project, etc…. All of these different types of messages enable the subordinate to either ask questions about the task or inform their supervisor about the task. While communicating information about oneself is probably most important during the initial stages of relationship development with one’s supervisor, communicating information about tasks to one’s supervisor is the most common form of upward communication and the most important over time.
Critical Upward Communication
In addition to the four forms of upward communication discussed already, Tourish and Robson argue that a 5th form of upward communication needs to be included in this list: critical upward communication.Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711–730. Critical upward communication is “feedback that is critical of organizational goals and management behavior.” Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711–730, pg. 711. (p. 711). Critical upward communication has been discussed under many different terms, “employee voice, issue selling, whistle-blowing, championing, dissent and boat rocking.” Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711–730, pg. 712. Everyday individuals in organizations around the world make decisions about whether to communicate critically about organizational goals and management behavior. To help us understand upward communication, let’s briefly examine two communication related variables: employee silence and organizational dissent.
Employee Silence
A lot of the focus in communication research is on talking, but Richard Johannesen explained that researchers needed to start understanding the vital role that silence can play in human communication within a variety of contexts.Johannesen, R. L. (1974). The functions of silence: A plea for communication research. Western Speech, 38, 25–35. The first researchers to examine the impact silence can have in the workplace in the organizational literature were Elizabeth Morrison and Frances Milliken.Morrison, E., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy Of Management Review, 25, 706–725. doi:10.5465/AMR.2000.3707697 Employee silenceWhen employees intentionally or unintentionally withhold information that might be useful to a leader or her or his organization. is fundamentally understood as a communication phenomenon where employees intentionally or unintentionally withhold information that might be useful to a leader or her or his organization. Johnson, M. (Producer). (2008, March 17). Employee silence on critical work issues: Interview with Subra Tangirala [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from www.obweb.org/podcasts/MikeJo...0080317_mh.mp3 Morrison and Milliken argued that employees remain silent because of their manager’s behavior with regards to upward communication. Specifically, “silence is an outcome that owes its origins to (1) managers’ fear of negative feedback and (2) a set of implicit beliefs often held by managers.” Morrison, E., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy Of Management Review, 25, 706–725, pg. 705. doi:10.5465/AMR.2000.3707697 Imagine you’re working in a pizza shop and you try to explain to your manager that simply rearranging some of the ingredients would actually make putting the pizza together faster. If the manager shoots you down or gives you dirty looks at the suggestion, you will be less likely to offer advice in the future.
There are three common forms of employee silence: acquiescent silence, defensive silence, and prosocial silence.Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1359–1392. First, acquiescent silenceForm of employee silence that occurs when employees are disengaged in the workplace and feel they simply cannot make difference. occurs because employees are disengaged in the workplace and feel they simply cannot make difference. As such, they withhold information or simply do not bother offering suggestions because they believe that it is impossible to make a real difference in their organization. Second, defensive silenceForm of employee silence that occurs when an employee believes that speaking up will put her or him at risk, so the employee opts to not speak out. occurs as a form of self-protection for employees. If an employee believes that speaking up will put her or him at risk, then that employee will be less likely speak up. These people withhold information or omit facts because they fear some kind of organizational retaliation. Lastly, prosocial silenceForm of employee silence that occurs because employees want to appear cooperative and/or altruistic in the workplace. occurs because employees want to appear cooperative and/or altruistic in the workplace. Organizations where conflict is discouraged or avoid can lead people to withhold information to appear cooperative or protect “proprietary knowledge to benefit the organization.”Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1359–1392, pg. 1363.
In a study examining employee silence in the workplace, Surahmaniam Tangirala and Rangaraj Ramanujam found that employees who were “silenced” in the workplace perceived their working environments as unjust, they did not identify with their organizations, and they did not professionally committed to their organizations.Tangirala, S., & Ramanujam, R. (2008). Employee silence on critical work issues: The cross level effects of procedural justice climate. Personnel Psychology, 61, 37–68. In another study by Jason Wrench, he operationalized a set of theoretical items originally proposed by Morrison and Milliken into a research measure.Wrench, J. S. (2012). The effect of office politics on employee silence and dissent. Manuscript in Preparation.In Wrench’s study, he set out to examine the relationship between organizational politics and various other organizational constructs. Specifically related to employee silence, Wrench found that acquiescent and defensive silence negatively related to employee motivation and job satisfaction. Conversely, prosocial silence positively related to employee motivation and job satisfaction. Overall, this study demonstrates the impact that silence can have on an individual’s happiness in the workplace.
While employee silence has received a lot of traction in academic circles since 2000, there are definitely a number myths about employee silence that have developed: Detert, J. R., Burris, E. R., & Harrison, D. A. (2010). Debunking four myths about employee silence. Harvard Business Review, 88, 26.
1. Myth: “Women and nonprofessional employees withhold more information than men and professional staffers because they are more concerned about consequences or more likely to see speaking up as futile.” Reality: Research has found no evidence that any of this is true. In fact, the studies that have examined gender differences have turned up no evidence to support that women and men utilize silence in the workplace to differing degrees. Furthermore, neither education nor income is also a good predictor of who will be silent.
2. Myth: “If my employees are talking openly to me, they’re not holding back.” Reality: Research has found that 42% of people admit to purposefully withholding information when there is nothing to gain or something to lose by divulging that information.Detert, J. R., Burris, E. R., & Harrison, D. A. (2010). Debunking four myths about employee silence. Harvard Business Review, 88, 26. As such, people may be talking but they may not be actually giving management a complete picture.
3. Myth: “If employees aren’t speaking up, it’s because they don’t feel safe doing so, despite all my efforts.” While there are many employees who will remain silent out of fear, 25% of employees withhold information simply to avoiding wasting time.Detert, J. R., Burris, E. R., & Harrison, D. A. (2010). Debunking four myths about employee silence. Harvard Business Review, 88, 26. Unfortunately, when employees make decisions on what is useful or non-useful information, those decisions may not be completely informed or accurate.
4. Myth: “The only issues employees are scared to raise involve serious allegations about illegal or unethical activities.” Reality: Obviously, whistleblowing, the act of disclosing about an illegal or unethical activity, can definitely make people a little anxious. However, 20% of employees admit that “fear of consequences has led them to withhold suggestions for addressing ordinary problems and making improvements. Such silence on day-today issues keeps managers from getting information they need to prevent bigger problems.”Detert, J. R., Burris, E. R., & Harrison, D. A. (2010). Debunking four myths about employee silence. Harvard Business Review, 88, 26.
Overall, employee silence is a stifling behavior that has numerous negative effects on how people communicate and interact within the workplace. Let’s switch our attention to the other end of the communication spectrum and discuss how employees articulate dissent within the workplace.
Organizational Dissent
Jeffrey Kassing proposed a model for what he coined “organizational dissent” as having two basic processes: (1) individual employee feels apart from her or his organization, and (2) the employee expresses disagreement about some aspect of her or his organization’s philosophy or behavior.Kassing, J. W. (1997). Articulating, antagonizing, and displacing: A model of employee dissent. Communication Research, 48, 311–332. The second of these processes is similar to Tourish and Robson notion of critical upward communication.Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711–730. Kassing believed that dissent is a “subset of employee voice that entails the expression of disagreement or contradictory opinions in the workplace.” Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the Organizational Dissent Scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183–229, pg. 184. Ultimately, the concept of organizational dissent stems out of the basic American value of freedom-of-speech where it is promoted that good citizens should be able to express their disagreement. However, in the organizational realm, employees must carefully decide whether expressing disagreement is worth the possible ramifications of disagreeing, “employees assess available strategies for expressing dissent in response to individual, relational, and organizational influences and that they actually express dissent after considering whether they will be perceived as adversarial or constructive as well as the likelihood that they will be retaliated against.”Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the Organizational Dissent Scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183–229, pg. 191. Ultimately, Kassing argued that there are three primary types of organizational dissent: articulated/upward, latent/lateral, and displaced.Kassing, J. W. (2011). Key Themes in Organizational Communication Series: Dissent in organizations. Malden, MA: Polity. Note 5.26 "Organizational Dissent Scale" contains the scale created by Kassing to measure employee dissent.
Organizational Dissent Scale
Read the following questions and select the answer that corresponds with how you communicate in your workplace. Do not be concerned if some of the items appear similar. Please use the scale below to rate the degree to which each statement applies to you:
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
1. _____I am hesitant to raise questions or contradictory opinions in my organization.
2. _____I speak with my supervisor or someone in management when I question workplace decisions.
3. _____I make suggestions to management or my supervisor about correcting inefficiency in my organization.
4. _____I do not express my disagreement to management.
5. _____I tell management when I believe employees are being treated unfairly.
6. _____I bring my criticism about organizational changes that aren’t working to my supervisor or someone in management.
7. _____I don’t tell my supervisor when I disagree with workplace decisions.
8. _____I’m hesitant to question workplace policies.
9. _____I do not question management.
10. _____I complain about things in my organization with other employees.
11. _____I join in when other employees complain about organizational changes.
12. _____I share my criticism of this organization openly.
13. _____I hardly ever complain to my coworkers about workplace problems.
14. _____I let other employees know how I feel about the way things are done around here.
15. _____I do not criticize my organization in front of other employees.
16. _____I criticize inefficiency in this organization in front of everyone.
17. _____I make certain everyone knows when I’m unhappy with work policies.
18. _____I speak freely with my coworkers about troubling workplace issues.
SCORING: To compute your scores follow the instructions below:
1. Step One: Add scores for items 2, 3, 5, & 6
Step Two: Add scores for items 1, 4, 7, 8, & 9
Step Three: Add 30 to Step One.
Step Four: Subtract the score for Step two from the score for Step Three.
2. Step One: Add scores for items 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, & 18
Step Two: Add scores for items 13 & 15
Step Three: Add 12 to Step Two.
Step Four: Subtract the score for Step two from the score for Step Three.
Interpreting Your Score
For articulated dissent, scores should be between 9 and 45. If your score is above 32, you are considered to engage in high amounts of articulated dissent. If your score is below 32, you’re considered to engage in minimal amounts of articulated dissent.
For latent dissent, scores should be between 9 and 45. If your score is above 25, you are considered to engage in high amounts of latent dissent. If your score is below 25, you’re considered to engage in minimal amounts of latent dissent.
Source: Kassing, J. W. (2000). Investigating the relationship between superior-subordinate relationship quality and employee dissent. Communication Research Reports, 17, 58–70.
Articulated/upward dissentForm of organizational dissent involving the expression of dissent to one’s leaders up the formal chain of the hiearchy. “involves expressing dissent within organizations to audiences that can effectively influence organizational adjustment and occurs when employees believe they will be perceived as constructive and that their dissent will not lead to retaliation.”Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the Organizational Dissent Scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183–229, pgs. 191–192. Kassing further noted that there are five different types of dissent strategies subordinates can employ: direct-factual appeal, solution presentation, repetition, circumvention, and threatening resignation.Kassing, J. W. (2002). Speaking up: Identifying employees’ upward dissent strategies. Management Communication Quarterly, 16, 187–209. The first articulated dissent strategy is direct-factual appeal, which is when “people provide factual information based on their own work experience and their understanding of company policies and practices when they express their disagreement to their supervisors.”Kassing, J. W. (2005). Speaking up competently: A comparison of perceived competence in upward dissent strategies. Communication Research Reports, 22, 227–234, pg. 233. The second articulated dissent strategy is solution presentation, which is when a subordinate offers a solution to a workplace problem while raising concerns about the problem itself. The third articulated dissent strategy is repetition, or when a subordinate keeps raising the same issue over and over again over a period of time. The idea behind repetition is that if the problem is brought up over and over again, the supervisor may be more inclined to eventually do something about the problem. The fourth articulated dissent strategy is circumvention, which is when a subordinate goes around her or his immediate supervisor to someone higher up the hierarchy in an attempt to get some kind of action taken. While circumventing one’s immediate supervisor can be very dangerous, there are often times when it is necessary. For example, many organizations have procedures for the reporting sexual harassment. The most common first step in sexual harassment procedures is to report any harassing behavior to your immediate supervisor, but what if your immediate supervisor is the one harassing you? Many organizations realize that supervisor harassment can be a problem, so they actually designate someone within the organization as the “go to” person for incidents of harassment. In these cases, individuals lower on the hierarchy are able to circumvent their supervisors and report the harassment to someone higher on the hierarchy. The last articulated dissent strategy is to threaten resignation. This dissent strategy is fairly simple: do what I want or I quit. Of course, this dissent strategy is only effective if the person dissenting is actually ready to resign. Never use threatening resignation as a bluffing tactic because your supervisor may just decide to call your bluff.
The second type of organizational dissent, latent/lateral dissentForm of organizational dissent consisting of communicative behaviors include complaining to coworkers and voicing criticism openly to others on the same level of the organizational hierarchy., consists of communicative behaviors “that involves complaining to coworkers and voicing criticism openly within organizations.”Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the Organizational Dissent Scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183–229, pg. 211. Kassing labeled this form of dissent “latent dissent” because the term “suggests that dissent readily exists but is not always observable and that dissent becomes observable when certain conditions exists (i.e., when frustration mounts).”Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the Organizational Dissent Scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183–229, pg. 211. This form of organizational dissent is actually a form of horizontal or lateral organizational communication, which will be discussed later in this chapter.
Current Research—Kassing
Investigating the Relationship between Superior-Subordinate
Relationship Quality and Employee Dissent
By. Jeffrey W. Kassing (2000)Kassing, J. W. (2000). Investigating the relationship between superior-subordinate relationship quality and employee dissent. Communication Research Reports, 17, 58–70.
In this study, Kassing set out to examine the relationship between subordinate-supervisor relationship quality and subordinate utilization of articulated and latent dissent. He recruited 232 employees who worked in various organizations throughout the state of Arizona. His sample consisted of 113 females (56%) and 99 males (43%) with 1% not responding to the question regarding biological sex. The mean age of the participants was 37.08 and the average length of time on their current job was 5.72 years. The study contained individuals at various levels of organizational hierarchies: 6% held top management positions, 30% held management positions, 57% held non-management positions, and 6% held other organizational positions.
In this study, Kassing had two basic hypotheses he wanted to test:
H1: Subordinates who perceive having high-quality relationships with their supervisors will report using significantly more articulated dissent than subordinates who perceive having low-quality relationships with their supervisors.
H2: Subordinates who perceive having low-quality relationships with their supervisors will report using significantly more latent dissent than subordinates who perceive having high-quality relationships with their supervisors.
To test these two hypotheses, Kassing used his measure of organizational dissent along with a measure of subordinate-supervisor relationship quality. Using the measure of subordinate-supervisor relationship quality, Kassing created two groups by taking those who scored above the median (indicating high relationship quality) and those who scored below the median (indicating low relationship quality). Kassing then examined if these two groups differed in their use of articulated and latent dissent.
The results for the first hypothesis indicated that those individuals who reported having high relationship quality with their supervisors were more likely to engage in articulated dissent than those who reported having low relationship quality with their supervisors. Ultimately, the first hypothesis was supported by the results.
The results for the second hypothesis indicated that those individuals who reported having low relationship quality with their supervisors were more likely to engage in latent dissent than those who reported having high relationship quality with their supervisors. Ultimately, the second hypothesis was supported by the results.
Based on the results from this study, we learn that the quality of relationship an individual has with her or his immediate supervisor has a direct impact on both articulated and latent organizational dissent.
The final type of dissent is referred to as displaced dissentForm of organizational dissent that occurs when an employee feels that dissent in the workplace could be harmful, so he or she express dissent to friends and family members outside the boundaries of the organization. and occurs outside of the confines of the organization itself. When an employee feels that dissent in the workplace could be harmful, he or she will often express dissent to friends and family members. Ultimately, whether an individual decides to express dissent within the organization (upward or lateral) depends on how he or she views the risks of doing so. If someone fears retaliation, bullying, or ostracism because of dissent, he or she will be less likely to engage in dissent within the workplace.Waldron, V. R., & Kassing, J. W. (2011). Managing risk in communication encounters: Strategies for the workplace. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Research has also shown a relationship between employee silence and organizational dissent.Wrench, J. S. (2012). The effect of office politics on employee silence and dissent. Manuscript in Preparation. Specifically related to employee silence, Wrench found that acquiescent and defensive silence negatively related to articulated dissent and positively related to latent dissent. Conversely, prosocial silence positively related to articulated dissent and negatively related to latent dissent. Overall, this research demonstrates that there is a clear relationship between the use of silence within an organization and the way an employee expresses her or his dissent.
Problems with Upward Communication
Randy Hirokawa noted that there are two primary problems associated with upward communication: distortion and filtering.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. Researchers have found that 85 percent of individuals had on at least one occasion “felt unable to raise an issue or concern to their bosses even though they felt that the issue was important.”Milliken, F., Morrison, E., & Hewlin, P. (2003). An exploratory study of employee silence: Issues that employees don’t communicate upward and why. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1453–1476, pg. 1459. In essence, subordinates purposefully do not communicate information to their supervisors, which ultimately distorts the overall picture a supervisor has of what is going on in the workplace. The first study conducted on the issue of upward distortion was Glen Mellinger’s ground breaking study on the subject.Mellinger, G. D. (1956). Interpersonal trust as a factor in communication. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 52, 304–309. Fredric Jablin summarized Mellinger’s findings in this manner:
Results of this early inquiry into message distortion revealed that when Individual A does not trust Individual B, Individual A will conceal his/her feelings when communicating to B about a particular issue. Moreover, concealment of Individual A’s true feelings was found to be often associated with evasive, compliant, or aggressive communicative behavior on his/her part and with under- or overestimation of agreement on the issue by individual B. Jablin, F. M. (1979). Superior-subordinate communication: The state of the art. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 1201–1222, pgs. 1204–1205.
In essence, when a subordinate is not forthcoming with her or his thoughts on an issue, a supervisor often guesses what her or his subordinates think about the specific issue.
Now that we’ve examined Randy Hirokawa’s first problem associated with upward communication (distortion),Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. we need focus on the “three possible culprits” of failure in upward communication: trust, influence, and mobility.Roberts, K. H., & O’Reilly, C. A., III. (1974). Failures in upward communication in organizations: Three possible culprits. Academy of Management Journal, 17, 205–215. The first reason why upward distortion may happen is because a subordinate doesn’t trust her or his supervisor. If a subordinate does not perceive her or his supervisor as trustworthy, the subordinate is simply more likely to avoid telling the supervisor anything other than absolutely necessary information. The second reason why upward distortion may occur is a result of subordinate perceptions of supervisor influence over subordinate’s future. Subordinates who perceive a supervisor as having a great effect on their futures could react in two totally different ways. Some subordinates will be very open with communication in an effort to build a stronger relationship with their supervisor, whereas other subordinates will actually go along with whatever a supervisor wants even if the subordinate thinks it’s a bad idea. In one case a subordinate could end up over communicating, while in the other case a subordinate ends up under communicating, either way you end up with upward distortion. The third reason for upward distortion relates to an individual’s desire to move up within the hierarchy. It’s one thing for a supervisor to have influence over your career path, and a completely different thing to either care or not care about mobility.
In one study the researchers examined four different organizations to see the effect of trust, influence, and mobility had on the quantity of upward communication.Roberts, K. H., & O’Reilly, C. A., III. (1974). Failures in upward communication in organizations: Three possible culprits. Academy of Management Journal, 17, 205–215. They found that trust and influence both positively related to the quantity of upward communication, and mobility did not really play a factor in the quantity of upward communication. This study was later replicated finding the same results.Blalack, R. O. (1986). The impact of trust and perceived superior influence on upward communication: A further test. American Business Review, 3, 62–66. In essence, people who trust their supervisors and perceive their supervisors as influencing their careers engage in more upward communication.
Communicating Ethically
From a subordinate’s perspective, is upward distortion ever an ethical communicative practice? Often supervisors will want information from a subordinate that could harm the subordinate or her or his coworkers, so determining whether one should distort information or not can be a hard thing to decide. For example, what if your supervisor asks you about one of your coworker’s recent performance and your coworker’s performance was subpar? Do you tell your supervisor the truth knowing that the coworker could be reprimanded or fired, or do you distort the facts in an effort to “save” your coworker? People in organizations often distort information to help themselves or their peers, but is it ever ethical?
On the other hand, what if your supervisor asked you about her or his performance, which has been problematic; do you tell him the truth? Obviously, saying that communication distortion is always unethical would be easy to say, but is that really the case? Can communication distortion be ethical?
The second problem Randy Hirokawa noted with upward communication relates to filtering. Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95.Organizations today often suffer from what they termed info-glut or data smog, which is to say that organizations have a problem with communication overload.Edmunds, A., & Morris, A. (2000). The problem of information overload in business organizations: A review of the literature. International Journal of Information Management, 20, 17–28. Just as we discussed earlier in this chapter that downward communication can lead to communication overload, so can receiving too much information from one’s subordinates. Ultimately, there is a fine line between the necessity of ensuring honest upward communication and receiving too much upward communication. Supervisors must learn how to filter out information from all directions that isn’t necessary, but this is a skill that takes time and energy to learn. At the same time, subordinates also need to learn what information is necessary for their supervisors to have and what information is not necessary.
Effective Methods for Upward Communication
While there is no magic bullet for improving upward communication within an organization, we do believe there are four best practices that all supervisors should engage in: establish trust, use multiple mediums, show utility, and decrease barriers. First, and definitely the most important best practice for ensuring quality upward communication, is establishing a trusting relationship with one’s subordinates. As discussed above, trust clearly leads to an increase in upward communication from one’s subordinates.Roberts, K. H., &O’Reilly, C. A., III. (1974). Failures in upward communication in organizations: Three possible culprits. Academy of Management Journal, 17, 205–215.,Blalack, R. O. (1986). The impact of trust and perceived superior influence on upward communication: A further test. American Business Review, 3, 62–66. When subordinates trust their supervisors they are more likely to engage in two-way communication that is honest and productive.
Second, Hirokawa recommends that managers utilize multiple strategies when soliciting upward communication.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. Supervisors should use a variety of strategies for increasing upward communication: routine discussion meetings, supervisor’s appraisals of individual employees, manager’s appraisals of individual supervisors, attitude surveys, employee suggestion programs, grievance procedures, open-door policies, and exit interviews.Upward communication. (2004, October). Management Report, 27(10), 2–4. All of these different strategies can definitely help increase upward communication. However, all of the strategies may not be the most beneficial for all types of information a supervisor needs, so a supervisor should think critically before implementing one strategy over another.
The third best practice for increasing upward communication is to clearly show that subordinate input is taken seriously. Too often people become discouraged when their feedback is given and the feedback is never acknowledged or nothing is done with the feedback. Obviously, not all ideas subordinates have can be legitimately implemented, however we do recommend establishing a method for responding to all ideas. For example, if you have an employee suggestion program, you may also want to implement a response to employee suggestions section in the organization newsletter. When employee suggestions cannot be implemented for legitimate reasons, simply explaining why the suggestions cannot be implemented is the best way to make employees feel that their ideas were taken seriously even if not implemented. Furthermore, when you implement an employee’s suggestion, make sure to communicate to everyone that this has occurred because it will increase the likelihood of future upward communication by all employees.Upward communication. (2004, October). Management Report, 27(10), 2–4.
Lastly, Hirokawa also recommends decreasing physical barriers between superiors and subordinates in an effort to increase interaction.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. Based on research in Japanese organizations, Hirokawa argued that Japanese managers have more effective upward communication with their subordinates because the managers spend more time on the workshop floor directly interacting with their subordinates.Hirokawa, R. A. (1981). Improving intra-organizational communication: A lesson from Japanese management. Communication Quarterly, 30, 35–40. The idea of decreasing barriers is nothing new in the United States because Bill Hewlett and David Packard created a management strategy in the 1940s simply titled Management by Walking Around (MBWA). MBWA is an easy way for management to increase interaction with their subordinates and ward off potential organizational problems.Pace, A. (2008, August). Leaving the corner office. Training + Development, 62(8), p. 16. Too often managers are over taxed with many duties, and overseeing people is just one of many things managers have to accomplish during a workday. However, the only way to really establish a trusting relationship with one’s subordinates is through consistent face-to-face interaction. However, there are three conditions necessary for MBWA.Pace, A. (2008, August). Leaving the corner office. Training + Development, 62(8), p. 16. First, managers need to interact with each subordinate and be prepared for honest feedback. During these interactions, managers can learn about potential problems and about what individual subordinates are doing. Second, managers should encourage dialogue about non-work topics. If a manager sticks strictly to work topics, subordinates may perceive her or him as distant and non-communicative. Lastly, managers should not be critical of subordinates while engaging in MBWA. The goal of MBWA is to encourage subordinates to open up and communicate. If a manager is constantly criticizing people during her or his treks out of the office, people will start to dread seeing the manager of the office and will be more likely engage in upward distortion.
Horizontal/Lateral Communication
Horizontal or lateral communicationMessages that are transmitted to other individuals on the same rung of the organizational hierarchy. consists of messages that are transmitted to other individuals on the same rung of the organizational hierarchy. In essence, horizontal or lateral communication occurs when individuals who have roughly the same status interact with one another in an organization. Occasionally, these lines of communication are firmly established within the organizational hierarchy chart, but typically these lines of communication are not part of the traditional hierarchical chart. As discussed in Chapter 3, one of the earliest theorists on the nature of horizontal/lateral communication was a French mining engineer named Henri Fayol. Fayol published his treatise on administration in 1916 called Administration Industrielle et Générale,Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C. Storrs, Trans.). London: Pitman. (Reprinted from Administration industrielle et générale, 1916) but did not reach English readers until 1949 when the text was translated by Constance Storrs as General and Industrial Management. Fayol had lots of ideas on how organizations should function, but his ideas on horizontal communication are what we are interested here. Fayol believed that communication within an organization should travel up and down very clear channels of communication. In Figure \(1\), we see an example of an organizational hierarchy with one head administrator, two supervisors, and six subordinates. Three of the subordinates work directly under Supervisor A and three work directly under Supervisor B. According to Fayol, if subordinate #3a working under Supervisor A needs to communicate something to subordinate #1b working under Supervisor B, the message would have to go up the hierarchy and then back down the hierarchy. In this case, Subordinate 3a, would communicate the message to Supervisor A who would then communicate the message to the head administrator. The head administrator would then communicate the message to Supervisor B, who would finally communicate the message to Subordinate 1b. However, Fayol did believe that an alternate chain of communication is necessary during periods of crisis. When information needed to get to someone quickly because of a crisis, Fayol created a mechanism that would temporarily bridge two individuals on the same level of the hierarchy. Figure \(2\) illustrates how the Fayol Bridge would work. During a crisis, Subordinate 3a would communicate to Supervisor A the importance of getting the information to Subordinate 1b quickly. If Supervisor A believes that the speed at which Subordinate 1b receives the information is important, then Supervisor A will give permission to Subordinate 3a to transmit that information directly to Subordinate 1b.
The idea of hierarchical control over messages was very commonplace all the way through the 1950s:
Although communication between departments on the same level occurs, theoretically it is not supposed to be direct. Reports, desires for services, or criticisms that one department has of another are supposed to be sent up the line until they reach an executive who heads the organizations involved. They are then held, revised, or sent directly down the line to the appropriate officials and departments. The reason for this circuitous route is to inform higher officials of things occurring below them. Miller, D. C., & Form, W. H. (1951). Industrial sociology. New York: Harper, pg. 158.
When one reads this quotation from Miller and Form, one is led to believe that vertical (upward & downward) communication is the most common channel of communication in organizations, and it should be.Simpson, R. L. (1959). Vertical and horizontal communication in formal organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 4, 188–196. However, the type of organization is the ultimate determinator of whether there is primarily vertical communication or horizontal communication occurring. Simpson, R. L. (1959). Vertical and horizontal communication in formal organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 4, 188–196.
By the 1960s and 1970s, researchers began to realize that the idea of primarily vertical oriented communication was highly unrealistic and not necessarily beneficial to organizations. Furthermore, horizontal/lateral communication actually enabled lower level supervisors to engage in automatic horizontal/lateral communication. By automatic, Joseph Massie was referring to “habitual, routine, and spontaneous reaction of managers to a problem situation.”Massie, J. L. (1960). Automatic horizontal communication in management. Journal of the Academy of Management, 3, 87–91, pg. 88. Ultimately, enabling lower level managers to decide courses of action on some decisions relieved high level administrators “not only from making some decisions but also from consciously structuring the decision-making pattern for lower level managers.”Massie, J. L. (1960). Automatic horizontal communication in management. Journal of the Academy of Management, 3, 87–91, pg. 88. This process of allowing individuals at various levels of the hierarchy to participate in decision-making and implementing courses of action is called decentralization because the decision-making is disbursed through the organization instead of being centered at the top of the hierarchy.Child, J. (2005). Organization: Contemporary principles and practice. London: Blackwell.,Hilmer, F. G., & Donaldson, L. (1996). Management redeemed: Debunking the fads that undermine our corporations. New York: Free Press. Furthermore, decentralization of decision-making greatly reduces the problems associated with serial transmission of messages. Earlier in this chapter we discussed how serial transmission of messages leads to all kinds of problems, and the more rungs up and down a hierarchy a message must travel, the greater the chance of the message distortion.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc. Now that we have examined the basic perspectives on horizontal/lateral communication, we can examine the types of horizontal/lateral communication, problems with horizontal/lateral communication, and effective methods for horizontal/lateral communication.
Types of Horizontal/Lateral Communication
According to Randy Hirokawa there are four functions to horizontal communication: task coordination, problem solving, sharing of information, and conflict resolution.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. The function of horizontal/lateral communication is to help organizational members coordinate tasks to help the system achieve its goals. Often people in different departments are completely unaware of how their department impacts another department’s ability to function. When different departments are brought together and shown how each department helps the organization strive for its goals, departments are able to ascertain how they can actually help each other more effectively.
The second function of horizontal/lateral communication is to allow organizational members to solve problems. The basic process of “brain storming” is always more effective when you have numerous departments thinking about how to solve specific problems. For example, if your entire organization is having problems with recycling, it wouldn’t be beneficial if only members from one department got together to talk about the problem. When there are system-wide problems facing an organization, the organization needs system wide solutions.
The third function of horizontal/lateral communication is the sharing of information among organizational members. As we’ve already mentioned in this chapter, there are numerous reasons why individuals may be reluctant to share information, but when people hoard information the overall organization suffers. The need for sharing can be explained in this way, “it is through the sharing of information that organizational members become aware of the activities of the organization and their collegues [sic].” Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 89.
The final function of horizontal/lateral communication is conflict resolution. When individuals are in conflict with each other, the easiest way to solve the conflict is through direct interaction. Often simple conflicts are a result of misunderstandings that can become exacerbated if not handled quickly and efficiently. For this reason, “in the presence of conflict between organizational members within a department or section, the ability to discuss the matter of concern can often lead to a resolution of the conflict.” Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 89. If an organization opts to utilize Fayol’s (1916) ideas of horizontal communication, “one would have to go half-way around the organizational hierarchy to get a message to a collegue [sic] if one were to remove horizontal channels.”Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 89. As always, the more direct the path of communication is the more likely the message will remain uncorrupted.
Problems with Horizontal/Lateral Communication
As with both vertical types of communication, horizontal/lateral communication is not without its own share of problems. In fact, Valerie McClelland and Richard Wilmot reported a study conducted by the consulting group Wilmot Associates in which “more than 60% of employees in a variety of organizations say that lateral communication is ineffective.McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. More specifically, about 45% say communication between peers within departments is inadequate, and 70% claim that communication between departments must improve” McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38, pg. 32. In fact, the literature has shown us that there are four basic issues that negatively effect on horizontal/lateral communication within an organization: lack of rewards, competition, intra-organizational conflicts, and lack of lateral understanding.
No Reward Structure
The first issue that can negatively affect horizontal/lateral communication within an organization occurs as result of no reward structure for horizontal/lateral communication. Classical theories of organizational communication didn’t even recognize horizontal/lateral communication as an important function yet alone something that should be openly encouraged.Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95. People who work in organizations are often given numerous tasks, and behaviors that are not rewarded by the organization are simply ignored and seen as nonessential. For this reason, many organizations have a serious lack in both quantity and quality of horizontal/lateral communication.
Inter-Departmental Competition
The second issue that can negatively impact horizontal/lateral communication occurs as a result of inter-departmental competition. Both Hirokawa and McClelland and Wilmot note that many organizations purposefully pit different departments against each other. Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95.,McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. When departments are forced to compete with each other, there should be no surprise that hoarding information becomes a common phenomenon. Hirokawa noted that this desire for interdepartmental competition is a uniquely American concept. In his analysis comparing American versus Japanese organizations, this sense of competition often “causes [organizational members] to hoard information, rather than sharing it with their collegues [sic].”Hirokawa, R. A. (1981). Improving intra-organizational communication: A lesson from Japanese management. Communication Quarterly, 30, 35–40, pg. 90. (p. 90). Japanese organizations, on the other hand, foster a sense of collaboration, which actually leads to an increase in both the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication.
Intra-Organizational Conflicts
The third issue that can negatively impact horizontal/lateral communication arises from intra-organizational conflicts. “Any time that individuals from different departments within an organization interact, there is always a potential for conflict.” Hirokawa, R. Y. (1979). Communication and the managerial function: Some suggestions for improving organizational communication. Communication, 8, 83–95, pg. 90. The most common reason for interdepartmental conflict is a perception of incompatible goals. If the software development department wants to take time to get the kinks out of a new product, but the marketing department wants to get the product in customers’ hands immediately, you’re going to end up with conflict. When people perceive conflict as an innately negative endeavor, they are more likely to resist any contact that could lead to a conflict. We will discuss the process of conflict in much greater detail in Chapter 13.
Inadequate Lateral Understanding
The final issue that can negatively impact horizontal/lateral communication occurs as a result of inadequate lateral understanding.McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. Lateral understanding is the degree to which individuals within an organization understand the purpose and functions of what individuals do in various departments throughout the organization. Employees often end up wasting very valuable time trying to figure out who does what in an organization when a problem arises. As McClelland and Wilmot wrote, “employees don’t understand the goals, responsibilities and capabilities of other departments . . . this is evident even at senior levels.” McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38, pg. 33. There are three major outcomes related to inadequate lateral understanding: waste of time, work overlapping, and poor decision making. First, People ultimately waste a lot of time attempting to determine who they should be contacting in the first place. Second, you may end up with two employees in two departments basically performing the exact same task without realizing that someone else is completing the task. Lastly, managers will often make decisions that negatively impact other departments without even knowing this has occurred.
Effective Methods for Horizontal/Lateral Communication
In an attempt to help organizations communicative more effectively, McClelland and Wilmot devised a series of seven best practices that organizations should adopt to improve horizontal/lateral communication: develop lateral understanding, flexible chain of command, share clear and consistent direction, set the example, institute lateral teams, ensure accountability to departments and organization, make training available, and develop dialogue between shifts and locations.McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. The first way to improve horizontal/lateral communication is to increase lateral understanding. As previously discussed, when people don’t understand what other parts of the organization are doing, you end up with people wasting time and resources, duplicating work, and/or making decisions that negatively impact other departments. Lateral understanding should become a priority for all individuals within an organization from the very top to the very bottom. In fact, holding “a forum in which to provide supervisors with an understanding of the opportunities, challenges, goals and structures of their area of responsibility.”McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38, pg. 36. Only when people start learning about the opportunities, challenges, goals, and structures of other departments can they see how to improve horizontal/lateral communication.
McClelland and Wilmot’s second suggestion for increasing the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication is to establish a flexible chain of command.McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. When organizational members are forced to adhere to rigid lines of communication, the likelihood of productive horizontal/lateral communication is decreased. Only when top administrators realize that Fayol’s scalar chain isn’t effective will they stop feeling the need to micromanage information flow at all levels of the organization.Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C. Storrs, Trans.). London: Pitman. (Reprinted from Administration industrielle et générale, 1916)
The third best practice for increasing the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication is to ensure that clear and consistent messages are delivered downward. When all of the supervisors are on the same page, the chance of mixed or conflicting messages getting sent down the hierarchy is greatly reduced. Furthermore, when all subordinates within an organization receive the message simultaneously, supervisors prevent the appearance of senior administration favoring one department over another. Furthermore, systematic downward communication decreases the likelihood of mixed messages, and even though “an inconsistent message is unintentional, it can be destructive to relationships between employees and management.”McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38, pg. 36. Therefore, ensuring effective horizontal/lateral communication among supervisors and coordinating downward messages can help to foster relationships between employees and management.
The fourth best practice for increasing the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication is for senior administration and supervisors to set the example. If an organization wants to increase the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication, then all members of the organization should be actively engaged in horizontal/lateral communication. When people on the lower rungs of the hierarchy witness effective horizontal/lateral communication among those individuals above them in the hierarchy, they are more likely to participate in horizontal/lateral communication as well. Ultimately, the only way to ensure organization wide effective horizontal/lateral communication is to start it at the top and expect it to occur throughout the entire organization.
Another way to increase horizontal/lateral communication in organizations is to establish lateral teams. The establishment of teams that include individuals from various departments can help initiate contact and understanding between various members of the organization. However, McClelland and Wilmot do recommend that these teams actually have some level of individual autonomy to make decisions and then be held accountable for creating tangible results.McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38. When teams are allowed to participate in the decision-making process and follow through with those decisions, team members end up taking a considerable amount of ownership of their decisions. Furthermore, the more an organization utilizes lateral teams, the more adept an organization becomes at foreseeing possible problems and warding them off before they are problems.
Another important practice for improving the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication is to hold everyone accountable to the organization. “When managers are accountable for decisions that adversely affect others, they’re more likely to work together on changes and solve problems jointly At the same time, all departments should also be held accountable for making sure that they are helping the organization’s goals. The only way for departments to demonstrate they are helping the organization’s goals is to demonstrate how they fit into the larger piece of the puzzle, which requires them to know what the larger puzzle actually looks like.
McClelland and Wilmot also recommend providing training for new organizational members and existing organizational members in effective horizontal/lateral communication, decision-making, and teamwork. For many individuals, the thought of actually interacting with individuals in other departments is a completely new concept, so training becomes very important. “Many employees reveal a lack of understand about how to work with others constructively without putting co-workers on the defensive. Through continual involvement and interaction, they’ll be sensitized to the value of interpersonal communication and internal networking.”McClelland, V. A., & Wimot, R. E. (1990). Improve lateral communication. Personnel Journal, 69, 32–38, pg. 38.
The final best practice for increasing the quality and quantity of horizontal communication in the workplace is to develop dialogue between shifts and locations. Let’s handle both of these topics separately. First, increasing communication between members of different shifts is extremely important because it allows people to get a greater grasp of what is occurring. When people do not communicate during shift changes, the people starting their shifts waste time determining what needs to be accomplished during their shift. Fundamentally, increased communication during shift changes leads to a decrease in mistakes and an increase in efficiency.
Up to this point, most of our discussion of horizontal communication has really been framed for individuals who all work within one compound of an organization. However, in today’s global environment, many people are constantly having to interact with people in other time zones or different countries that all belong to the same organization. Often multinational corporations will even have individuals within the same department on different continents. Because of the unique nature of multinational corporations, they have their own set of concerns relating to horizontal/lateral communication. One of the strongest benefits of the multinational corporation is its ability to rely on expertise and information from across the various subsidiaries of the multinational corporation.Charles, M., & Marschan-Piekkari, R. (2002). Language training for enhanced horizontal communication: A challenge for MNCs. Business Communication Quarterly, 65, 9–29. There are five distinct organizational behaviors to increase the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication in multinational corporations:
1. Conducting a linguistic audit (helps the organization know where potential language problems are);
2. Making specific comprehension proficiency a priority (often the ability to understand a language is more important in business than being able to speak or write in that language)
3. Encouraging staff to understand and negotiate Global Englishes (English may be the general language of modern business, but there are multiple variations people should be aware of);
4. Include native English speakers in communication training (native English speakers need to be trained to limit their vocabularies and grammatical structures, speak slowly and clearly; and
5. Avoid cultural idioms when interacting with non-native English speakers), and making language and communication a corporate level function (letting individual subsidiaries decide language and communication training can backfire, so they should be seen as part of the corporate level).Charles, M., & Marschan-Piekkari, R. (2002). Language training for enhanced horizontal communication: A challenge for MNCs. Business Communication Quarterly, 65, 9–29.
In this section we have examined the world of formal communication networks in organizations. Specifically, we have examined the roles, problems, and best practices for downward, upward, and horizontal/lateral communication. In the next section, we are going to shift our attention to informal communication networks.
Key Takeaways
• Max Weber (1930) believed organizations had two ways to get employees to follow one’s directives: power and authority. Power is the ability to force people to obey regardless of their resistance, whereas authority occurs when orders are voluntarily obeyed by those receiving them. Weber argued that individuals in authority-based organizations were more likely to perceive directives as legitimate.
• Katz and Kahn (1966) created a typology of downward communication that consisted of five distinct types of downward communication: job instructions, job rationales, procedures and practices, feedback, and indoctrination.
• Hirokawa (1979) noted that there are two primary problems associated with downward communication: accuracy (how truthful a message is that has been received) and adequacy (whether or not the information being communicated is sufficient to satisfy a requirement or need for information in the workplace).
• Hirokawa (1979) believed there are four functions of upward communication: (1) allows management to ascertain the success of previously relayed downward communication; (2) allows individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy to have a voice in policies and procedures; (3) allows subordinates to voice suggestions and opinions to make the working environment better; and (4) allows management to test how employees will react to new policies and procedures.
• Katz and Kahn (1966) created a typology for upward communication consisting of four distinct types: (1) information about the subordinate her/himself, (2) information about coworkers and their problems, (3) information about organizational policies and procedures, and (4) information about the task.
• Tourish and Robson (2006) argued that Katz and Kahn’s (1966) typology for upward communication was incomplete and argued for a fifth one they called critical upward communication, which consists of communicative behaviors that are critical of management behavior. Two common forms of critical upward communication studied in communication are employee silence (when an employee intentionally or unintentionally withhold information that might be useful to a leader or her or his organization) and organizational dissent (when an employee expresses her disagreement with management behavior).
• Henri Fayol’s (1916/1949) believed that organizations needed to have a very strict organizational hierarchy where all information flowed up and down appropriate channels. During a crisis situation, a lower employee could ask her or his immediate supervisor to communicate information to another lower employee located on the same rung of the hierarchy. Only if the lower-level employee’s supervisor agreed with the urgency, would that lower-level employee be allowed to interact with someone else on the same rung of the hierarchy.
• Hirokawa (1979) noted four functions to horizontal communication: task coordination, problem solving, sharing of information, and conflict resolution. The function of horizontal/lateral communication is to help organizational members coordinate tasks to help the system achieve its goals.
• Charles and Marschan-Piekkari (2002) recommend five distinct organizational behaviors to increase the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication in multinational corporations: (1) conduct a linguistic audit (helps the organization know where potential language problems are), (2) make specific comprehension proficiency a priority (often the ability to understand a language is more important in business than being able to speak or write in that language), (3) encourage staff to understand and negotiate Global Englishes (English may be the general language of modern business, but there are multiple variations people should be aware of), (4) include native English speakers in communication training (native English speakers need to be trained to limit their vocabularies and grammatical structures, speak slowly and clearly, and avoid cultural idioms when interacting with non-native English speakers), and (5) make language and communication a corporate level function (letting individual subsidiaries decide language and communication training can backfire, so they should be seen as part of the corporate level).
Exercises
1. Using Katz and Kahn (1966) typology of downward communication (job instructions, job rationales, procedures and practices, feedback, & indoctrination), how would you describe the state of downward communication within your own organization?
2. Using Katz and Kahn (1966) typology of upward communication (information about the subordinate her/himself, information about coworkers and their problems, information about organizational policies and procedures, & information about the task), how would characterize the state of upward communication within your own organization?
3. Think of a time in your own work history where you’ve engaged in the three types of dissent discussed by Jeffrey Kassing (articulated, latent, & displaced). Why did you opt to use that specific type of dissent in that communicative context?
4. Charles and Marschan-Piekkari (2002) recommend five distinct organizational behaviors to increase the quality and quantity of horizontal/lateral communication in multinational corporations. Do you think Charles and Marschan-Piekkari’s ideas hold true with the revolution of social media in the workplace? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/05%3A_Communicating_Between_and_Among_Internal_Stakeholders/5.02%3A_Formal_Communication_Networks.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Understand Mishra’s (1990) eight reasons for the existence of grapevines in organizations.
• Differentiate among Davis’s (1969) four informal communication networks.
• Explain the relationship between social capital and communication networks.
• Understand Brass’s (1995) typology for the measurement of ties.
• Understand Brass’s (1995) typology for the measures assigned to individual actors.
• Understand Brass’s (1995) typology for the measures assigned to networks.
In the previous section of this book, we examined the three types of formal communication networks that exist within organizations (downward, upward, & horizontal/lateral). While formal communication networks are very important for the day-to-day functioning of any organization, there exists another set of communication networks that also dramatically impacts the day-to-day functioning of any organization. This second set of communication networks are called informal communicationOrganizational communication that occurs outside the the structure of the formal organizational hierarchy. networks, or communication networks that do not exist within the structure of the organizational hierarchy. Early research in organizational communication didn’t even acknowledge the existence or the importance of these informal networks. However, the Hawthorne Studies suggested that a great deal of what happens within an organization is a result of informal communication networks. Often informal communication networks have been referred to as “grapevine communication” or “water cooler communication.”
The term “grapevine” was originally coined during the Civil War because the telegraph lines used by Army intelligence were strung through trees and the wires often resembled grapevines. According to Mishra, “The messages that came over these lines were often so confusing or inaccurate that soon any rumor was said to come from the grapevine.”Mishra, J. (1990). Managing the grapevine. Public Personnel Management, 19, 213–228, pg. 214. Today organizational grapevines are a standard part of anyone’s organizational life. In fact, researchers estimate that 70 percent of all communication that occurs within an organization occurs in informal communication networks.DeMare, G. (1989). Communicating: The key to establishing good working relationships. Price Waterhouse Review, 33, 30–37. In essence, the bulk of actual communicative behavior within an organization does not go according to the prescribed lines of communication desired by upper management. Furthermore, researchers found that many managers were surprisingly unaware of the informal communication networks that existed within their organizations.Crampton, S. M., Hodge, J. W., & Mishra, J. M. (1998). The informal communication network: Factors influencing grapevine activity. Public Personnel Management, 27, 569–584. Only 70 percent of top-level managers, 81 percent of middle level managers, and 92 percent of lower level managers were even aware that a grapevine existed within their organizations. We should also note that research has found that informal communication networks are just as likely to exist among management as among subordinates. In fact, “Bosses who chose not to pay attention to the grapevine have 50% less credible information than those who do” Mishra, J. (1990). Managing the grapevine. Public Personnel Management, 19, 213–228, pg. 215. Furthermore, there are eight reasons why grapevine communication exists in organizations:
1. Grapevines are faster than formal communication networks and can easily bypass individuals without restraint.
2. Grapevines can carry useful information quickly throughout an organization.
3. Grapevines can supplement information being disseminated through formal communication networks.
4. Grapevines provide outlets for individual’s imaginations and apprehensions.
5. Grapevines satisfy individuals’ need to know what is actually going on within an organization.
6. Grapevines help people feel a sense of belonging within the organization.
7. Grapevines serve as early warning systems for organizational crises and to think through what they will do if the crises actually occur.
8. Grapevines help to build teamwork, motivate people, and create corporate identity. Mishra, J. (1990). Managing the grapevine. Public Personnel Management, 19, 213–228, extrapolated from pg. 215.
While grapevines are clearly beneficial to organizations and their members, there are obvious problems with informal communication networks. The biggest problem stems out of the unreliability of information being transmitted in informal communication networks. We should mention that research has found that information transmitted through informal communication networks tends to be 75 to 95 percent accurate.Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272. Unfortunately, the 5 to 25 percent of the time the informal communication network contains false information is highly problematic for organizations.
Now that we’ve examined the nature of informal communication networks and the reasons for informal communication networks, we need to switch gears and look at the types of informal communication networks.
Types of Informal Communication Networks
In this section, we’re going to discuss how informal communication networks pass information along from person-to-person. Keith Davis found four basic types of informal communication networks: single strand, gossip, probability, and cluster.Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272.
The first type of informal communication network described by Davis was the single strand communication network (Figure 5.3a).Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272. In a single strand networkType of informal communication network where information travels from one person to the next person., the process of communication is very linear and information travels from one person to the next person. The best way to think of this type of informal communication network is like a relay race. But instead of passing a baton between runners, some type of information is passed from person to person. This communication network represents the traditional notions of serialized transmission.Redding, W. C. (1972). Communication with the organization: An interpretive review of theory and research. New York: Industrial Communication Council, Inc.
The second type of informal communication network Davis discussed was the gossip communication networkType of informal communication networkwhere one individual who serves as the source of the message who transmits the message to a number of people directly. (Figure 5.3b).Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272. In a gossip network, you have one individual who serves as the source of the message who transmits the message to a number of people directly.
The third type of informal communication described by Davis is referred to as the probability communication networkType of informal communication network where one individual serves as the primary source of the message who randomly selects people within her or his communication network to communicate the message, and then these secondary people randomly pick other people in the communication network to pass along the message. (Figure 5.3c).Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272. In a probability communication network, you have one individual as the primary source of the message who randomly selects people within her or his communication network to communicate the message. These secondary people then randomly pick other people in the communication network to pass along the message. Think of this type of informal communication network as really annoying internet spam. In the case of internet Spam, someone creates the e-mail, and then sends it to random people who then feel the need to forward it to other people, and so on and so on. There is no way for the source of the message to truly track where the message has been sent after the message is communicated because the transmission is random.
The final form of informal communication network described by Davis is the cluster networkType of informal communication network where the source of the message chooses a number of pre-selected people with whom to communicate a message, and then the secondary people then pass on the message to a group of people who have also been pre-selected to receive the message. (Figure 5.3d).Davis, K. (1969). Grapevine communication among lower and middle managers. Personnel Journal, 48, 269–272. Cluster networks are considerably more systematic than probability networks. In the case of a cluster network, the source of the message chooses a number of pre-selected people with whom to communicate a message. The secondary people then pass on the message to a group of people who have also been pre-selected to receive the message. This type of network is the origin of the telephone tree. In a telephone tree, one person calls two people. Those two people then are expected to call three other people. Those three people are then also expected to call three other people. Before you know it, everyone who is on the telephone tree has received the message.
Researcher Profile—Everett M. Rogers (1931–2004)
Everett M. Rogers is generally viewed in the field of communication studies as the father of information diffusion. Rogers grew up in Caroll, Iowa, and ultimately earned his Ph.D. in sociology and statistics from Iowa State University in 1957. Over the course of his academic career, Rogers taught at numerous universities both within the United States and abroad including: Ohio State University, Michigan State University, National University of Columbia, and Universite de Paris.
In 1962, Rogers published the first edition of his book The Diffusion of Innovations where he described how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through social groups. One of the social groups Rogers specifically examined was organizations. Through his analysis, Rogers proposed that there were five types of individuals involved with the diffusion of innovations: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). Innovators were people who created new ideas and technology or brought the new ideas and technology to the social group. Early adopters were those people who quickly latched on to the new innovations. The early majority were those individuals who comprised the first massive wave of people adopting a new innovation. The late majority were those individuals who waited a little longer than the early majority. Lastly, Laggards were those individuals who really put off adopting the new innovation, and some laggards simply never would adopt the new idea or technology.
One area that diffusion of innovations has been particularly utilized has been in the field of health communication. Specifically, health communication researchers have examined how health related mediated messages get transmitted between individuals within a social network, which ultimately has been shown to lead to social change (Smith, 2004). Hornik (2004) summarized that diffusion of innovations ultimately examines four basic questions:
1. What is the process of invention and adaptation of technologies or ideas subject to diffusion?
2. Why do some people (or collectivities) adopt before others?
3. What is the process that people go through as they adopt?
• What are the stages they go through?
• What influences them at each stage (sources)?
4. What are the consequences with regard to social welfare (growth and equity) given particular policies about, or patterns of, diffusion? (p. 143)
As a diffusion scholar, Rogers was very aware of network analysis and during his tenure at Michigan State University (1964–1973) he actively included information on network analysis in his courses and seminars on diffusion. Furthermore, Rogers created the first undergraduate course in organizational communication in 1966, which is considered to be the first such course on the undergraduate level in the world (Susskind, Schwartz, Richards, & Johnson, 2005).
In 1981, Rogers with his former student Larry Kincaid published the seminal work on communication network analysis titled Communication Networks: Toward New Paradigm for Research. In this book, Rogers and Kincaid argue:
Communication network analysis is a method of research for identifying the communication structure in a system, in which relational data about communication flows are analyzed by using some type of interpersonal relationship as the unit of analysis. This distinctive emphasis of network analysis upon communication links, rather than on isolated individuals, as units of analysis, enables the researcher to explore the influence of other individuals on human behavior. (p. xi)
Ultimately, Rogers and Kincaid’s book ushered in the modern era of communication network analysis within the field of communication studies as well as the fields of business and sociology.
Analyzing Communication Networks
The last part of this chapter is going to examine how researchers observe both formal and informal communication networks. Peter Monge and Noshir ContractorMonge, P. R., & Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of networks. New York: Oxford University Press. define communication networks as “the patterns of contact between communication partners that are created by transmitting and exchanging messages through time and space.”Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of networks. New York: Oxford University Press, pg. 440. Of course these networks can range in size from interpersonal interactions to global networks.Harris, T. E., & Nelson, M. D. (2008). Applied organizational communication: Theory and practice in a global environment (3rd ed.). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. When attempting to study communication networks within organizations, researchers complete what is called a network analysis. Monge and Contractor discussed the science of network analysis, “network analysts often identify the entities as people who belong to one or more organizations and to which are applied one or more communication relations, such as ‘provides information to,’ ‘gets information from,’ and ‘communicates with.’ It is also common to use work groups, divisions, and entire organizations as the set of entities.”Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of networks. New York: Oxford University Press, pg. 441. In essence, network analysis is a process whereby researchers attempt to determine both the formal and informal communication networks that exist within an organization and between the organization and its external environment. Ultimately, there are four types of communicative activities that occur within networks: exchange of affect (liking, friendship), exchange of influence and power, exchange of information, and exchange of goods and services.Tichy, N. M., Tushman, M. L., & Fombrun, C. (1979). Social network analysis for organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 4, 507–519.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the analysis of organizational communication networks as a result of sociological construct social capital. Social capital is a term that dates back to 1916 when L. J. Hanifan used the term to discuss the importance of rural communities’ involvement in schools in West Virginia.Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. The first modern definition of “social capitalThe creation and utilization of communication networks to obtain specific goals.” is attributed to Pierre Bourdieu who defined it as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition.”Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le capital social: Notes provisoires. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Socials, 31, 2–3, pg. 2. However, it wasn’t until James Coleman study examining how social capital leads to human capital that the study of social capital became common place.Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. The American Journal of Sociology, 94(supplement), S95–S120.,Portes, A. (1998). Social Capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1–24. Coleman defined “social capital” as “a variety of entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain action of actors—whether persons or corporate actors—within the structure.”Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. The American Journal of Sociology, 94(supplement), S95–S120, pg. S98. In essence, social capital as a concept is innately about the creation and utilization of communication networks to obtain specific goals. Social networking websites are often designed to help people organize their social networks in a much faster way. Business oriented social networking sites (SNSs) like LinkedIn help people gain and manage their social networks, and thus their social capital, more efficiently.
The rest of this section is going to examine the commonly discussed aspects of communication networks. Specifically, we are going to examine the three categories created by Daniel J. Brass for analyzing communication networks: measurement of ties, measures assigned to individual actors, and measures assigned to networks.Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press.
Measurement of Ties
The first category involves the typical communication network measures of ties. The word “tiesThe linkages between people in a communication network.” here refers to the linkages between people. When we talk about “linksThe communicative relationship between two people in a communication network.” in network analysis we are talking about the communicative relationship between two people. Specifically, Brass notes that there are seven commonly utilized measures of ties: indirect links, frequency, stability, multiplexity, strength, direction, and symmetry.
Indirect Links
If we reexamine Figure 5.3, the last two informal communication networks (probability and cluster) contain indirect links. In the case of probability communication networks, we see A only communicating with E and C, and all of the people in the network receive the message from someone else. While A does not communicate with D directly, there is an indirect link that goes from D → I → E → A. The same is also true in the cluster sample where A only communicates to B and F, but everyone else in the network then receives the message from B or F.
Frequency
The second measure of ties examines the existence of the frequency of communication between individuals within a network, which is a numerical indicator of the quantity of communication that exists between two individuals. In most organizations, there are some people you communicate with multiple times a day and others you see only once a year.
Stability
When researchers examine the stability of communication networks, they are interested in how long a specific link has existed. Some links may exist for decades, while other may exist for only a few hours. For example, maybe you have colleagues around the country that you are constantly in contact with, but then you have other colleagues you only meet for a few minutes one time in a meeting. While you may have established a link with the person in the meeting, this link was quick and not considered stable.
Multiplexity
The concept of multiplexity refers to the number of links individuals have to one another. In essence, people within an organization can have multiple links to each other as a result of different relationships both within the organization and within the environment. For example, maybe you have a colleague you work with, you go to the same church, and your kids go to school together. In this case, you are linked through multiple relationships.
Strength
The strength of a link refers to the “amount of time, emotional intensity, intimacy, or reciprocal services (frequency or multiplexity often used as measure of strength of tie).”Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press, pg. 44. Some links within a communication network are just bound to be stronger than other links. Maybe you and a colleague are good friends and go shopping together, go to the theatre together, and take trips together. Obviously, if you are spending more time with and establishing multiple links with an individual, that link is going to be stronger than one you have with someone you never see outside of work.
Direction
The concept of direction is very similar to the process of vertical communication. In essence, does communication flow one-way? For example, maybe the CEO of your organization is allowed to communicate with you, but you are not allowed to communicate directly with the CEO.
Symmetry
The opposite of direction is symmetry, which examines whether or not communication links are open and messages are able to go bi-directionally. In essence, symmetry inspects whether communication is one-sided or whether both parties are actively involved in the communication.
Measures Assigned to Individual Actors
The second category involves the typical social network measures assigned to individual actorsTerm used in social networking research to refer to an individual participating in a communication network.. The term “actor” here is not meant in the theatre sense of the word. Instead, “actor” is used to represent an individual participating in a communication network. Brass identified seven different types of measures commonly assigned to individual actors in communication networks: degree, range, closeness, betweenness, centrality, prestige, and roles.
Degree
The topic of degree in network analysis refers to the “number of direct links with other actors.”Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press, pg. 45. Some individuals will have many links and others will have very few links. Typically, links are discussed by examining the number of in-degree links and the number of out-degree links. In-degree links examine the number of links directed towards an actor from other actors. In other words, in-degree links are “in-coming links” and can help researchers ascertain the number of sources of information an actor has. Out-degree links, on the other hand, involve the number of links where a specific actor communicates information to other actors. These are also referred to as “out-going links” because information is flowing away from the actor to other actors in her or his network.
Range
Range refers to the diversity of links an individual has within her or his communication network. This diversity can refer to dissimilar groups of individuals or individuals on different levels of the hierarchy. In a multinational firm, developing links around the globe can be very beneficial for an individual. In fact, having diverse links in one’s communication network can help one receive the best possible information because the more homogenous one’s links are, the greater likelihood that the information one receives will be identical.
Closeness
The term closeness refers to the number of links within a communication network it takes for an individual to communicate with her or his entire network. In essence, how easily can an individual actor reach everyone in her or his network? Brass explains how closeness is analyzed by network analysts, “Usually [closeness is] measured by averaging the path distances (direct and indirect links) to all others. A direct link is counted as 1, indirect links receive proportionately less weight.”Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press, pg. 45. For example, in the communication networks exhibited in Figure 5.3, the gossip network is much closer than the single strand network. In the gossip network, Person A can communicate directly with everyone in her or his network, whereas in the single strand network, communication from Person A to Person D takes two extra steps (through Person B and Person C).
Betweenness
Betweenness is the “extent to which an actor mediates, or falls between any other two actors on the shortest path between those two actors.”Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press, pg. 45. In essence, is the shortest path between two individuals directly through you? For example, maybe you’re the administrative assistant for a CEO. Everyone knows that the only way to get to the CEO is to go through you. In this case, by being in the position of administrative assistant, you function as the between point between the CEO and other people in the organization.
Centrality
Centrality refers to the extent to which an individual is at the core of one’s communication network. If you examine Figure 5.3 again, Person A is clearly the central figure in each of the forms of informal communication networks. However, Person A is clearly more centrally located in the gossip communication network than the other three because in the gossip network all of the links are out-degree from Person A.
Prestige
The concept of “prestige” in network analysis is a little ambiguous and harder to map because it refers to the reasons people want to be a part of an actor’s communication network. In essence, the more people want to be part of your communication network, the higher your prestige is within the network itself.
Roles
Within any communication network, there are a number of roles that people may exhibit within the network. Roles in this sense refer to specific behaviors people exhibit within a communication network. Research in network analysis has found a number of different types of role that are common within organizations: stars, liaisons, bridges, gatekeepers, and isolates.
Stars. The concept of stars existing within a communication network stemmed from the research by Thomas J. Allen and Stephen I. Cohen who found that some individuals just standout and have more communication links than other people.Allen, T. J., & Cohen, S. I. (1969). Information flow in research and development laboratories. Administrative Science Quarterly, 14, 12–19. Michael L. Tushman and Thomas J. Scanlan examined how stars function in communication networks.Tushman, M. L., & Scanlan, T. J. (1981a). Characteristics and external orientations of boundary spanning individuals. The Academy of Management Journal, 24, 83–89. One of the primary functions of stars is the ability to cross organizational boundaries in their links. Tushman and Scanlan noted that “boundary spanning individuals are those who are internal communication stars (that is, they are frequently consulted on work related matters) and who have substantial communication with areas outside their unit.”Tushman, M. L., & Scanlan, T. J. (1981a). Characteristics and external orientations of boundary spanning individuals. The Academy of Management Journal, 24, 83–89, pg. 84. Ultimately, Tushman and Scanlan realized that there were two types of stars in communication networks: internal stars and external stars.Tushman, M. L., & Scanlan, T. J. (1981b). Boundary spanning individuals: Their role in information transfer and their antecedents. The Academy of Management Journal, 24, 289–305.Internal stars are individuals who develop competence in a specific internal unit and are able to gain and disseminate information within their communication network. Internal stars are also referred to as opinion leaders, because they are seen as the go-to people for information and problem solving. External stars, on the other hand, develop competence in an area external to the organization and are able to receive and disseminate information within their communication network outside of the organization itself. External stars are also referred to as cosmopolites because they have stronger ties to the external environment, and cosmopolites bring in information to the organization from the external environment. The last type of star identified by Tushman and Scanlan are individuals who engage in informational boundary spanning, which are both internal and external stars who can bridge the gap between their communication network and other communication networks who could utilize their information.Tushman, M. L., & Scanlan, T. J. (1981b). Boundary spanning individuals: Their role in information transfer and their antecedents. The Academy of Management Journal, 24, 289–305.
Liaisons. According to Everett M. Rogers, a liaison is “an individual who links two or more cliques in a system, but who is not a member of any clique.”Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (4th ed.). New York: The Free Press, pg. 111. (p. 111). Rogers uses the word “clique” to refer to communication networks in this definition. In essence, a liaison is an individual who does not belong to two communication networks, but is the between person in the middle of the two networks.
Bridges. Bridges, on the other hand, are individuals who link two or more communication networks together and is a member of the two communication networks. In essence, a bridge is someone who belongs to two groups and is able to send and receive information along between those two groups.
Gatekeepers. A gatekeeper is an individual who has the ability to filter information from the external environment to internal communication networks or filter information that is passed from one communication network to another communication network.Tushman, M. L. (1977). Special boundary roles in the innovation process. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, 587–605. Because gatekeepers have the task of determining what information is delivered within the organization, they play a very important role in the day-to-day functioning of the organization. If gatekeepers let in too much information, the organization will suffer from communication overload. On the other hand, if the gatekeepers filter out too much information, the organization will suffer from communication underload.
Isolates. The last role that people exhibit in communication networks are isolates. Isolates are individuals who have withdrawn themselves from the communication networks.Tichy, N. M., Tushman, M. L., & Fombrun, C. (1979). Social network analysis for organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 4, 507–519. These are individuals who typically have very few links if any at all. One of our coauthors worked for an organization that was located six hours away. Our coauthor would go for weeks without having any kind of direct contact with the organization. Many members of this organization didn’t even know that our coauthor had been hired and was working for the organization. In this case, our coauthor was clearly isolated from the communication network within the organization.
Measures Assigned to Networks
The final category discussed by Brass involves the typical social network measures used to describe networks.Brass, D. J. (1995). A social network perspective on human resources management. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (vol. 13, pp. 39–79). Greenwixh, CT: JAI Press. The previous two classifications of measures looked at more micro-level aspects of communication networks, whereas this section is going to examine nine measures used to describe networks on a macro-level: size, inclusiveness, component, reachability, connectedness, density, centralization, symmetry, and transitivity.
Size
The size of a communication network relates to the total number of actors within a network. Some communication networks are small involving only a handful of actors, whereas other networks are very large containing hundreds of actors.
Inclusiveness
The issue of inclusiveness is related to the total number of possible actors within a communication network minus the number of isolates. The more isolates a communication network has, the less inclusive the network is.
Component
A component within a communication network is the largest subset of actors or groups of actors who contain multiple links. In essence, is there one group of actors within the communication network that are clearly more linked to each other than any other actors or subsets of the larger communication network? Often, these components will actually have no links outside of the group of actors. Sometimes people refer to components as the “in-crowd” because the people within the “in-crowd” typically do not allow outsiders access to the component clearly establishing who is and who is not within the group. When referring to groups of individuals who are highly linked within an organization, we call these groups “nodes.” An organization’s total communication network will consist of a variety of nodes.
Reachability
Reachability refers to the average number of links it takes to link any two individuals within a communication network. Reachability is measured by examining both direct and indirect ties.
Connectedness
Connectedness is similar to reachability, but instead of evaluating individual actors we are evaluating groups of actors or nodes. Connectedness, then, is the degree to which all of the nodes in a communication network are reachable, and is usually determined by comparing the number of nodes that are clearly reachable with the number of nodes that are not.
Density
Within any communication network, most people are linked (either in or out-degree) to others within the network, but are not linked to every possible person within the communication network. Density refers to the number of links that exists within a communication network as compared to the total number of links possible within a communication network.
Centralization
The idea of centrality starts with realizing that most organizational communication networks have one star who is the most linked person within the organization. Centralization then is comparing that individual star to the rest of the people within the communication network. In highly centralized communication networks, the average person and the star’s number of links will be very similar. In highly decentralized communication networks, most people contain only a few links and no one comes close to the number of links that the central star has.
Symmetry
Earlier we discussed the notions of “symmetry” and “direction” in conjunction with looking at the typical social network measures of ties. Symmetry on the network level compares the number of symmetry ties with the number of direction ties. The more bi-directional or symmetrical ties that exist within a communication network, the more symmetrical the communication network is. On the other hand, the more uni-directional or direction ties that exist within a communication network, the less symmetrical the communication network is.
Transitivity
The concept of transitivity in communication networks refers to indirect relationships between three people. For example, if A communicates a message to B and then B communicates the message to C, the three individuals are considered transitive. In essence, A and B are directly linked, B and C are directly linked, and A and C are indirectly linked through B. The concept of transitivity then “is the number of transitive triples divided by the number of potential transitive triples” within a communication network (Brass, 1995, p. 44).
Current Research—Papa & Papa
Communication Network Patterns and the Re-invention of New Technology
By Wendy H. Papa and Michael J. Papa (1992)Papa, W. H., & Papa, M. J. (1992). Communication network patterns and the re-invention of new technology. The Journal of Business Communication, 29, 41–61.
In this study, Papa and Papa (1992) wanted to examine how communication networks impact on re-invention, or a user’s likelihood of changing or modifying a new innovation during the innovation’s period of adoption. For this study, the researchers used an insurance office in New Jersey because the office planned on introducing a new computer system. There were 137 participants who worked in the office ranging in age from 23 to 44. The sample consisted of 64 females and 73 males. Furthermore, the organization consisted of 13 departments and included five unique hierarchical levels.
In this study, Papa and Papa had three basic hypotheses to test:
H1: A positive linear relationship exists between the activity level of an employee’s network (as measured by interaction frequency and network size) and the speed with which that employee implements a re-invention.
H2: A negative linear relationship exists between the integrativeness of an employee’s network and the speed with which that employee implements a re-invention.
H3: A positive linear relationship exists between the diversity of an employee’s network and the speed with which that employee implements a re-invention.
To collect their data, Papa and Papa trained the employees within the insurance company in making accurate assessments about interactions related to the new computer system. The participants then kept a diary of their interactions related to the new computer system over the course of 5 weeks.
The results for the three hypotheses found that an individual’s network diversity and network integrativeness positively related to an individual’s adoption of a re-invention, but network size and interaction frequency did not.
Furthermore, the individual who initiated the re-invention (or re-inventor) had a more diverse communication network, a larger communication network, greater frequency of interaction, and less integrative than the average worker within the organization.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have examined a number of very important concepts related to organizational communication. Specifically, we started the chapter by examining the three types of formal communication networks that exist in organizations (upward, downward, and horizontal/lateral). We then switched gears and looked at informal communication networks specifically examining communication grapevines and rumors. The last part of this chapter contained a brief overview of the field of communication network analysis. We examined the historical roots of network analysis, the place of social capital, and how communication networks are measured by organizational scholars. In the next chapter, we will continue to examine communication within an organization by exploring leadership.
Key Takeaways
• Mishra (1990) noted eight reasons why grapevine communication exists in organizations: (1) grapevines are faster and can bypass people, (2) grapevines care useful information quickly, (3) grapevines supplement formal communication networks, (4) grapevines provide outlets for individual’s imaginations and apprehensions, (5) grapevines help people know what is actually occurring, (6) grapevines make people feel like they belong, (7) grapevines are early warning signs for looming crises, and (8) grapevines help to build teamwork, motivate people, and create corporate identity..
• Davis (1969) proposed four basic types of informal communication networks: single strand (one person tells one other person), gossip (one person tells many people directly), probability (one person tells a few people, who turn around and tell more people), and cluster (similar to a telephone tree—one person tells her or his designated network, who then tell their designated networks).
• An individual who has a strong and diverse social network will be able to tap into that social network faster in an effort to achieve specific goals. When people tap into their social networks to help them complete tasks, they are using their social capital.
• Brass (1995) noted commonly utilized measures of ties: indirect links, frequency, stability, multiplexity, strength, direction, and symmetry.
• Brass (1995) identified seven commonly assigned measures to individual actors in communication networks: degree, range, closeness, betweenness, centrality, prestige, and roles.
• Brass (1995) examined nine measures used to describe networks on a macro-level: size, inclusiveness, component, reachability, connectedness, density, centralization, symmetry, and transitivity.
Exercises
1. Think of a time when you’ve tuned in to the grapevine at your workplace. How accurate was the information you received? Would you still trust the grapevine in your workplace today? Has social media made grapevine communication better or worse?
2. Do an analysis of your own social capital. The Canadian Government put together a document describing how to analyze one’s social capital (www.horizons.gc.ca/doclib/Measurement_E.pdf). Use one of the 15 different methods for analyzing social capital described in this document (Appendix 1–15) to analyze your own social capital.
3. Conduct a simple network analysis of an organization you belong to currently. If your organization is very large, you may want to only analyze one division of the organization. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/05%3A_Communicating_Between_and_Among_Internal_Stakeholders/5.03%3A_Informal_Communication_Networks.txt |
Real World Case Study
Bluewolf, an information technology (IT) consulting firm in New York, grew from two individuals to over 200 individuals in just seven years. In 2008, the organization made approximately \$31 million in revenues. During the process of hiring new individuals, the company founders Michael Kirven, 38, and Eric Berridge, 39, didn’t really worry about vacation policies. The unofficial vacation policy now states that individuals can take vacations anytime they want for as long as they want as long as the individual’s objectives are being met. In fact, most people in the organization take 3–4 weeks of vacation a year because too much more than that would make completing objectives very difficult.
Bluewolf didn’t stop with just their non-vacation policy, the organization openly encourages a highly interactive and communicative environment. Employees working on teams will often take team trips to the gym or volunteer in community causes.
As a result of its unique structure, the organization estimates that it saves \$250,000 a year because no one is having to watch time-cards and vacation days. Furthermore, the turnover rate in the organization is very small.
1. Do you think Bluewolf’s organizational structure could be effective in other types of organizations? If so, in what types of organizations do you think this organizational structure would be the most effective?
2. How do you think the lack of a formal vacation policy increases effective communication at Bluewolf?
3. Do you see any communicative problems that may arise out of the organizational structure created by Bluewolf?
Real World Case Study
Starcom MediaVest Group has come to the realization that many employees are spending a considerable amount of time during each workday on various social networking websites (e.g., myspace, facebook, friendster, linkedin, etc.). In fact, research has found that 20 percent of today’s employees are actively engaging in a social network website during the business day. Senior executives at Starcom MediaVest decided to stop fighting the losing war against social networking and join the social networking phenomenon.
Starcom MediaVest Group ultimately decided to create their own social networking website specifically for their employees. The website creators even looked to popular social networking websites like myspace and facebook when creating Starcom MediaVest’s site. For example, if you’re looking for someone who has specific knowledge on advertising opportunities in South-East Asia, you just have to type the information into the websites search engine. The search engine then shows the individual searching as a pushpin in the center of a bull’s eye with surrounding pushpins indicating people around the world in the Starcom MediaVest Group family who have the expertise you’re looking for.
1. How do you think social networking sites are changing the dynamics of horizontal communication within the organization?
2. Do you think organizations should limit employee access to social networking websites during the business day?
3. What do you think some of the downsides are for an organization having its own social networking website?
Real World Case Study
Weekends are supposed to be a time when individuals can relax and not think about what’s going on at work. However, with the invention of e-mail, text messaging, and other forms of interactive technologies, our ability to escape to our homes for a work-free weekend is becoming harder and harder to do. To combat this problem, PricewaterhouseCoopers started discouraging employees from e-mailing individuals on the weekends.
If an employee of PricewaterhouseCoopers attempts to send an e-mail on Saturday or Sunday, they are greeted with the following pop-up message “It’s the weekend. Help reduce weekend e-mail overload for both you and your colleagues by working offline.” Senior executives at PricewaterhouseCoopers argue that sending e-mail during the weekend makes other individuals feel obligated to respond during the weekend. Instead, employees are encouraged to write their e-mails during the weekend but wait until Monday morning to actually send the e-mails.
1. The pop-up message is a form of downward communication related to communication flow. Do you think this is an effective way to prevent weekend e-mails?
2. Do you think people are obligated to respond to e-mails they receive during the weekend?
3. With the invention of new technology, has the idea of the workless weekend disappeared forever?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. When Jerry first started working for Capital Bank, he was told that every Friday was casual Friday. The first week he worked for the organization he wore jeans to work only to find out that everyone else was wearing khaki pants and a Capital Bank polo shirt tucked in. What aspect of formal communication did Jerry face in this example?
1. communication rule
2. communication norms
3. communication overtures
4. communication overload
5. communication underload
2. Which of Dover’s (1959) three eras of the history of downward communication was concerned with notices of birthdays and anniversaries, jokes, notices of local recreation and entertainment opportunities?
1. era of entertainment
2. era of information
3. era of interpretation
4. era of persuasion
5. era of reticence
3. Katherine is very unhappy with her organization’s stance on a new international advertising campaign. She finds the campaign racist but she feels that if she says anything at work people may retaliate against her. Instead, she anonymously blogs about her uneasiness on a website for marketing professionals. According to Jeffrey Kassing, Katherine is exhibiting what type of organizational dissent?
1. articulated
2. latent
3. displaced
4. mediated
5. whistleblowing
4. What are communication networks that exist outside the formal hierarchy of an organization?
1. formal
2. informal
3. mediated
4. social
5. capitalized
5. Kalina is on the Board of Directors of Children International, a large nonprofit trying to alleviate worldwide hunger. Kalina is also a member of the American Farmer’s Association. In her two roles, Kalina is often discussing how the two organizations can help each other. According to Rogers (1995), what critical role is Kalina playing in her communication network?
1. liaison
2. gatekeeper
3. cosmopolitan
4. isolate
5. bridge
1. b
2. a
3. c
4. b
5. e | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/05%3A_Communicating_Between_and_Among_Internal_Stakeholders/5.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
“Leadership” is probably the single most discussed topic in business literature today. An effective leader can inspire an organization to produce better quality products, ensure first-rate service to its customers, and make amazing profits for its stockholders. An ineffective leader, on the other hand, can not only negatively impact products, services, and profits, but ineffective leaders can also bring down an organization to the point of ruin. There should be no surprise that organizational leaders are very important and leave a lasting legacy not just on the companies they run but also on society as a whole.
• 6.1: Introduction
• 6.2: Approaches to Leadership
Although it’s relatively easy in hindsight to look at how effective an organizational leader was based on her or his accomplishments, determining whether or not someone will be an effective leader prior to their ascension is a difficult task. To help organizations select the “right” person for the leadership role, numerous scholars have come up with a variety of ways to describe and explain leadership. The rest of this section is going to explore these different approaches to leadership.
• 6.3: Followership
Followership is the act or condition under which an individual helps or supports a leader in the accomplishment of organizational goals. However, Jon Howell and Maria Mendez defined followership as less in terms of a straight-forward definition but more as different roles followership can take.
• 6.4: Mentoring and Coaching
We are now going to turn our attention to two very specific types of leader-follower behaviors: mentoring and coaching. The basic difference between mentoring and coaching is the desired result. The goal of mentoring is to help someone advance through the various hurdles associated with one’s career; whereas, coaching is about helping an individual engage in self-improvement in an effort to do her or his job better.
• 6.E: Exercises
06: Leader and Follower Behaviors and Perspectives
What is Leadership?
“Leadership” is probably the single most discussed topic in business literature today. An effective leader can inspire an organization to produce better quality products, ensure first-rate service to its customers, and make amazing profits for its stockholders. An ineffective leader, on the other hand, can not only negatively impact products, services, and profits, but ineffective leaders can also bring down an organization to the point of ruin. There should be no surprise that organizational leaders are very important and leave a lasting legacy not just on the companies they run but also on society as a whole. Table \(1\) contains a list of some important business leaders (you may or may not have heard of) from the 20th and 21st Centuries along with a brief description of what they accomplished. This amazing list of business leaders run the gamut from the small-town entrepreneur to people taking the helm at large international organizations. All of them are leaders, but their organizations vary greatly in what they deliver and their general purpose (both for-profit and non-profits).
Table \(1\) Management vs. Leadership
Name Company Accomplishment(s)
Jeff Bezos Amazon.com Revolutionized how people buy products using the internet and then spurred a secondary revolution in the use of electronic books with the Amazon Kindle.
Steve Case America Online Founded Quantum Computer Services (eventually America Online), which became the largest online service in the world. His leadership and championing of a flat-rate fee for internet subscribers ultimately made the internet accessible for the masses.
Cynthia Carroll Anglo American After becoming CEO of Anglo American in 2007, a large international energy company based out of London, Carroll became very concerned over the number of fatalities in its South African mining facility. After another fatality, she shut the mining operation down for indefinitely shut down the operation and invited all relevant stakeholders to the table to discuss mining safety. Her leadership ultimately led to a complete retraining of mine workers and a revolution in mining safety in South Africa. Her leadership on the topic led to a 62% reduction in fatalities within her own company in just five years.
Joan Ganz Cooney Sesame Workshop Founded the Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) and invited the collaboration of Jim Henson. Today, there are 145 Sesame Workshop locations around the world creating unique and culturally specific programs for young children. Sesame Street has won 118 Emmys, more than any other show in history, and 8 Grammys over the years.
Ruth Fertel Ruth’s Hospitality Group After taking out a second mortgage on her home to purchase a local New Orleans’ steak house in 1965 she named Ruth’s Chris Steak House, she grew the chain to more than 75 locations around the world. Now the company has multiple restaurant chains and is publicly traded on the stock market.
Ruth Handler Mattel & Nearly Me Cofounder of the giant children’s toy empire Mattel. Her most lasting legacy is probably the creation of the Barbie and Ken dolls. After retiring from Mattel, she heads the Nearly Me company, which sold prosthetic devices for victims of breast cancer.
Hu Maoyuan SAIC Motor Corporation Maoyuan is the CEO of the SAIC Motor Corporation, the largest state-run automotive manufacturer in China. Historically, the organization has used partnerships with other automotive giants (e.g., GM, Volkswagon, etc.) to fuel its automotive needs. Under Maoyuan’s leadership he is now trying to be an exporter of Chinese engineered and built cars around the world.
Howard Schultz Starbucks After buying out the founders of Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice, he created the niche industry of corner coffee shops. In an era when coffee consumption and sales were in a decline, Schultz created the largest coffee company and revolutionized how people socialized in society.
While the above list of diverse leaders is interesting, examining what others have done (and are doing) is not necessarily the best way to help us understand what “leadership” actually is. However, before we can explain what “leadership” is, we need to differentiate between two terms that are often confused for each other: management and leadership.
Management
When one hears the word “management,” there is an immediate corporatization of the concept that tends to accompany the term. However, management (the noun) or managing (the verb) are very important parts of any organization. With the rise of the modern corporation during the industrial revolution, there was a decent amount of research examining how one should manage. For our purposes, we define the term manageThe communicative process where an individual or group of individuals helps those below them in an organizational hierarchical structure accomplish the organization’s goals. as the communicative process where an individual or group of individuals helps those below them in an organizational hierarchical structure accomplish the organization’s goals. Notice that the term is communication focused and active. Meaning that managing is something that is active and ongoing. Therefore, managementThose individuals who use communication to help an organization achieve its goals through the proper utilization of the organization’s resources (e.g., employees, facilities, etc…). would refer to those individuals who use communication to help an organization achieve its goals through the proper utilization organizational resources (e.g., employees, facilities, etc…). Theodore Levitt describes management thusly:
Management consists of the rational assessment of a situation and the systematic selection of goals and purposes (what is to be done?); the systematic development of strategies to achieve these goals; the marshaling of the required resources; the rational design, organization, direction, and control of the activities required to attain the selected purposes; and, finally, the motivating and rewarding of people to do the work.Levitt, T. (1976). Management and the post industrial society. The Public Interest, summer, 69-103, pg. 72.
Notice that management is focused on the day-to-day accomplishing of an organization’s goals. Furthermore, management must rally their employees to accomplish these goals through motivation, rewards, and/or punishments. Lastly, management must ensure that they have the necessary resources to enable their employees to accomplish the organization’s goals.
Leadership
Where management is focused on accomplishing the organization’s goals, leadership is ultimately envisioning and articulating those goals to everyone. Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson define leadership from a communication perspective in this fashion, “LeadershipThe modification of attitudes, beleifs, and values of a group in order to further an organization’s goals, mission, and vision. is human (symbolic) communication, which modifies the attitudes and behaviors of others in order to meet shared group goals and needs.”Hackman, M. S., & Johnson, C. E. (2009). Leadership: A communication perspective (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland, pg. 11. From this perspective, leadership is less about simply getting goals accomplished, but rather about influencing the attitudes and behaviors necessary to meet the organization’s goals and needs.
Management vs. Leadership
So, how do we distinguish between management and leadership. One of the first researchers to really distinguish between management and leadership was Abraham Zaleznik who wrote that organizations often are caught between two conflicting needs: “one, for managers to maintain the balance of operations, and one for leaders to create new approaches and imagine new areas to explore.”Zaleznik, A. (1977). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 55(3), 67-78, pg. 67. Notice that Zaleznik argues that management is about maintaining the path of the organization and about handling the day-to-day operations of the organization. Leadership, on the other hand, is about creativity, innovation, and vision for the organization. Look back at the list of leaders profiled in Table 7.1, all of these leaders had a clearly vision for their organization that was articulated to their followers. If these followers hadn’t been persuaded by their leader, none of these leaders’ accomplishments would be known today. While leaders often get the bulk of notoriety, we would be remiss to remind you that every effective leader has a team of managers and employees that help the leader accomplish the organization’s goals. As such, leadership and management are symbiotic and both are highly necessary for an organization to accomplish its basic goals.
In a study by Shamus-Ur-Rehman ToorToor, S. U. R. (2011). Differentiating leadership from management: An empirical investigation of leaders and managers. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 11, 310-320., the researcher set out to empirically investigate the difference between leadership and management by asking 49 leaders and senior executives in the construction industry in Singapore to differentiate between the concepts of leadership and management. Overall, four clear difference themes emerged in his research: definition, conceptual, functional, and behavioral.
Definitional Differences
The first differences noted in this research are what Toor called “definitional differences.” In essence, while there is no clearly agreed upon definition for the term “leadership,” Toor noted that management was “described by fundamental functions that include planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources.”Toor, S. U. R. (2011). Differentiating leadership from management: An empirical investigation of leaders and managers. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 11, 310-320, pg. 313. In essence, leadership tends to be characterized by terms like vision, inspiration, and motivation, while management was defined by terms like action, day-to-day running of the organization, and the mundane aspects of making an organization function. In essence, leadership is defined by the ability to create a vision for the organization that managers can then carry out on a day-to-day basis.
Conceptual Distinctions
Toor admits that often people have a hard time clearly distinguishing between the terms “leadership” and “management” because there is a thin line between the two concepts. As one member of Toors study noted, “Leadership is something that subordinates or followers look up to. A leader would be able to manage well, too. But managers are not necessarily good leaders, and subordinates look up to them for instructions, not guidance.”Toor, S. U. R. (2011). Differentiating leadership from management: An empirical investigation of leaders and managers. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 11, 310-320, pg. 314. In essence, leadership encompasses management but is seen as “more than” just management. Many of Toor’s research participants suggest that all good leaders would have to be good managers, but not all good managers make good leaders.
Functional Divergences
When interviewing the various Singapore leaders, functional divergences also emerged in Toor’s research. Leadership was characterized by two primary functions: challenging and empowering. In essence, leaders should challenge their followers to do more and then empower them to take chances, make decisions, and innovate. Whereas, management was characterized by two different functions: imposing and stability/order. From this perspective, management should impose guidelines and ideas that are generated by organizational leadership on their followers in an attempt to create some semblance of stability and order within the organization. In essence, management is not making the “big” decisions, but rather relaying those decisions to their subordinates and then ensuring that those decisions get implemented within the organization itself.
Behavioral Differences
Lastly, Toor found what he termed “behavioral differences,” or there are clearly two different behavioral sets that govern management and leadership. Managers manage their subordinates work and leaders lead by example. While these explanations are not overtly concrete, one of the participants in Toor’s study put it this way, “Maybe the difference is basically that you just manage in management, and you lead in leadership. In management, you enforce the regulations, whereas in leadership, you lead by example. In management, people don’t follow you; they obey you. In leadership, people follow you by their own choice.”Toor, S. U. R. (2011). Differentiating leadership from management: An empirical investigation of leaders and managers. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 11, 310-320, pg. 315.
Overall, there are clear distinctions (although admittedly convoluted) between the two terms “leadership” and “management.” We hope this brief discussion of this research has at least grasped that there are fundamental differences between the two concepts. The rest of this chapter is really devoted to leadership. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/06%3A_Leader_and_Follower_Behaviors_and_Perspectives/6.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain the trait approach to leadership.
• Differentiate between Fred Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory as situational approaches to leadership.
• Understand the similarities and differences between Chester Barnard’s Functions of the Executive and Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats’ Classification of Functional Roles in Groups as functional approaches to leadership.
• Compare and contrast Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s Managerial Grid and George Graen’s Leader-Member Exchange Theory as relational approaches to leadership.
• Explain James MacGregor Burns’ Transformational Approach to leadership.
As with most major academic undertakings, there is little agreement in what makes a leader. Since the earliest days of the study of business, there have been discussions of leadership. However, leadership is hardly a discussion that was originated with the advent of the academic study of businesses. In fact, the oldest known text in the world, The Precepts of Ptah-hotep, was a treatise written for the Pharaoh Isesi’s son (of the fifth dynasty in Egypt) about being an effective Pharaoh (or leader).Wrench, J. S. (2013). How strategic workplace communication can save your organization. In J. S. Wrench (Ed.), Workplace communication for the 21st century: Tools and strategies that impact the bottom line: Vol. 2. External workplace communication (pp. 1-37). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Although it’s relatively easy in hindsight to look at how effective an organizational leader was based on her or his accomplishments, determining whether or not someone will be an effective leader prior to their ascension is a difficult task. To help organizations select the “right” person for the leadership role, numerous scholars have come up with a variety of ways to describe and explain leadership. According to Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson, “Over the past 100 years, five primary approaches for understanding and explaining leadership have evolved: the traits approach, the situational approach, the functional approach, the relational approach, and the transformational approach [emphasis in original].”Hackman, M. S., & Johnson, C. E. (2009). Leadership: A communication perspective (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland, pg. 72. The rest of this section is going to explore these different approaches to leadership.
Trait Approach
The first major approach to leadership is commonly referred to as the trait approach to leadership because the approach looks for a series of physical, mental, or personality traits that effective leaders possess that neither non-leaders nor ineffective leaders possess. We start with this approach to leadership predominantly because it’s the oldest of the major approaches to leadership and is an approach to leadership that is still very much in existence today. The first major study to synthesize the trait literature was conducted by Ralph Stogdill in 1948.Stogdill, R. M. (1948). Personal factors associated with leadership: A survey of the literature. Journal of Psychology, 25, 35-71. In 1970, Stogdill reanalyzed the literature and found six basic categories of characteristics that were associated with leadership: physical, social background, intelligence and ability, personality, task-related, and social.Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass and Stogdill’s handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Free Press. Table 7.2 contains a list of the personality traits from the 1970 study in addition to other researchers who have discovered a variety of other traits associated with leadership.
Table \(1\) Traits Associated with Leadership
Stogdill (1970) Adaptability
Adjustment
Assertiveness
Alertness
Creativity, Originality
Diplomacy
Dominance
Emotional Balance
Enthusiasm
Extraversion
Independence, Nonconformity
Objective, Tough-mindedness
Resourcefulness
Self-confidence
Sociability, Interpersonal Skills
Strength of Conviction
Tolerance of Stress
Mann (1959)Mann, R. D. (1959). A review of the relationship between personality and performance in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 241-270. Adjustment
Conservatism
Dominance
Extroversion
Intelligence
Masculinity
Kirpatrick and Locke (1991)Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1991). Leadership: Do traits matter? The Executive, 5, 48-60. Cognitive Ability
Integrity
Motivation
Task Knowledge
Lussier and Achua (2007)Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2007). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western. Dominance
Emotional Intelligence
Flexibility
High energy
Integrity
Intelligence
Confidence
Drive
Internal Locus-of-Control
Self-Confidence
Sensitivity to Others
Stability
From Table \(1\) you can start to see that research has found a variety of different traits associated with leadership over the years. Notice, that there is some overlap, but each list is clearly unique. In fact, one of the fundamental problems with the trait approach to leadership is that research has provided a never-ending list of personality traits that are associated with leadership, so no clear or replicable list of traits exists.
Even communication researchers have examined the possible relationship between leadership and various communication traits. In an experimental study conducted by Sean Limon and Betty La FranceLimon, M. S., & La France, B. H. (2005). Communication traits and leadership emergence: Examining the impact of argumentativeness, communication apprehension, and verbal aggressiveness in work groups. Communication Quarterly, 70, 123-133., the researchers set out to see if an individual’s level of three communication traits could predict leadership emergence within a group. The three communication traits of interest within this study were communication apprehension (“fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons”McCroskey, J. C. (1984). The communication apprehensive perspective. In J. A. Daly & J. C. McCroskey (Eds.), Avoiding communication: Shyness, reticence, and communication apprehension (pp. 13-38). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; pg. 13.), argumentativeness (“generally stable trait which predisposes the individual in communication situations to advocate positions on controversial issues and to attack verbally the positions which other people take on these issues”Infante, D. A., & Rancer, A. S. (1982). A conceptualization and measure of argumentativeness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 46, 72-80; pg. 72), and verbal aggressiveness (“attack one’s self-concept instead of, or in addition to, one’s positions on a topic of communication”Infante, D. A., & Wigley, C.J. (1986). Verbal aggressiveness: An interpersonal model and measure. Communication Monographs, 53, 61-69.). Ultimately, the researchers found that an individual’s level of argumentativeness positively predicted an individual’s likelihood of emerging as a leader while an individual’s communication apprehension negatively predicted an individual’s likelihood of emerging as a leader. Verbal aggression, in this study, was found to have no impact on an individual’s emergence as a leader. In other research, leader verbal aggression was found to negatively impact employee level of satisfaction and organizational commitment while argumentativeness positively related to employee level of satisfaction and organizational commitment.de Vries, R. E., Bakker-Pieper, A., & Oostenveld, W. (2010). Leadership = communication? The relations of leaders’ communication styles with leadership styles, knowledge sharing and leadership outcomes. Journal of Business Psychology, 25, 367-380. doi: 10.1007/s10869-009-9140-2 These three communication traits demonstrate that an individual leader’s communication traits can have an impact on both an individual’s emergence as a leader and how followers will perceive that leader.
The original notion that leaders were created through a magic checklist of personality traits has fallen out of favor in the leadership community.Dinh, J. E., & Lord, R. G. (2012). Implications of dispositional and process views of traits for individual difference research in leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 23(4), 651-669. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.03.003 However, more recent developments in leadership theory have been reintegrating the importance of personality traits as important aspects of the process of leadership. In Scott Shane’s book Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Genes Affect Your Work LifeShane, S. (2010). Born entrepreneurs, born leaders: How your genes affect your work life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press., he argues that while genetics may not cause humans to become leaders or entrepreneurs, one’s genetic makeup probably influences the likelihood that someone would become a leader or entrepreneur in the first place. In the same vein, Jessica Dinh and Robert LordZaccaro, S. J. (2007). Trait-based perspectives of leadership. American Psychologist, 62(1), 6-16. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.62.1.6 have argued that personality traits should be examined within specific leadership events instead of as fundamental aspects of some concrete phenomenon called “leadership.” In essence, Dinh and Lord argue that an individual’s personality traits may impact how they behave within specific leadership situations but that specific personality traits may not be seen across all leaders in all leadership contexts.
Situational Approach
As trait approaches became more passé, new approaches to leadership began emerging that theorized that leadership was contingent on a variety of situational factors (e.g., task to be completed, leader-follower relationships/interactions, follower motivation/commitment, etc.). These new theories of leadership are commonly referred to as the situational approaches. While there are numerous leadership theorists who fall into the situational approach, we’re going to briefly examine two of them here: Fred Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory.
Fred Fiedler’s Contingency Theory of Leader Effectiveness
Fred Fiedler began developing his theory of leadership in the 1950s and 60s and eventually coined it the “Contingency Theory of Leader Effectiveness.”Fiedler, F. E. (1967) A theory of leadership effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill. In his theory, Fiedler believed that leadership was a reflection of both a leader’s personality and behavior, which were constant. Fiedler believed that that leaders do not change their leadership styles, but rather when situations change, leaders must adapt their leadership strategies. Fiedler’s basic theory started with the notion that leaders typically were either task-oriented or relationship-oriented. Task-oriented leaders focused more on the task and accomplishing organizational goals. Relationship-oriented leaders focused on creating positive interactions with followers and establishing positive relationships based on mutual trust, respect, and confidence.
To determine a leader’s preference for tasks or relationships, leaders are asked to think about all of the followers with whom they’ve worked and select the one follower with whom they’ve had the most problems. By thinking about the follower with whom the leader has had the most problems, it’s generally very easy to determine if the leader is more task or relationship-oriented because that follower is generally the opposite. Fiedler, termed this follower the leader’s least preferred coworker (LPC).
Once a leader’s LPC is determined, Fielder’s model asks leaders to examine their situation favorableness, or the degree to which a leader can influence her or his followers within a given situation. To determine situational favorableness, leaders must examine three distinct aspects of their leadership style: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power.
Leader-Follower Relations
The first factor of situation favorableness leaders must attend to involves the nature of their relationship with their followers. Leaders who have positive relationships with their followers will have high levels of mutual trust, respect, and confidence; whereas leaders with negative relationships with their followers will have lower degrees of mutual trust, respect, and confidence. The more positive a leader’s relationships with her or his followers, the more favorable the situation will be for the leader.
Task Structure
Next, leaders must determine if the task at hand is one that is highly structured or one that that is unstructured. Highly structured tasks are ones that tend to be repetitive and unambiguous, so they are more easily understood by followers, which leads to a more favorable situation for the leader. If tasks are unstructured, then the leader will have followers who are less likely to understand the task, which will make for a less favorable leadership situation.
Position Power
Lastly, leaders need to know whether they are in a position of strong or weak power. Leaders who have the ability to exert power over followers (reward and punish followers), will have greater ability to exert the leader’s will on followers, which is more favorable for the leader. Leaders who do not have the ability to exert power over followers are in a much less favorable leadership situation.
Situational Favorableness
When one combines the three factors (leader-follower relations, task structure, and position power), the basic contingency model proposed by Fiedler emerges. Figure \(1\) illustrates the basic model proposed.
In this model, you can see that the combination of the three factors create a continuum of most favorable to least favorableness for the leader. Notice that there are eight basic levels ranging from the left side of the model, which is more favorable, to the right side of the model, which is least favorable. One area of concern that can impact the usability of this model is ultimately a leader’s LPC. If the situation matches a leader’s LPC, the leader is lucky and he or she doesn’t need to alter anything. However, often the situation leads to an imbalance between the leader’s LPC and the appropriate leader behavior necessitated by a situation. In this case, the leader can either attempt to alter her or his leadership style, which is not likely to lead to a positive outcome, or the leader can attempt to change the situation to match her or his LPC style, which will be more likely to lead to a positive outcome.
Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory
Like Fielder’s Contingency Model, the basic model proposed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard is also divided into task (leader directive behavior) and relational (leader supportive behavior) dimensions.Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. Training and Development Journal, 23(5), 26–34. However, Hersey and Blanchard’s theory of leadership starts with the basic notion that not all followers need the same task or relationship-based leadership, so the type of leadership a leader should utilize with a follower depends on the follower’s readiness. Figure 7.2 shows the basic model.
In the basic model seen in Figure \(2\), you have both dimensions of leadership behavior (supportive and directive). Based on these two dimensions, Hersey and Blanchard propose four basic types of leadership leaders can employ with various followers depending on the situational needs of the followers: directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Johnson, D. E. (2000). Management of organizational behavior: Leading human resources (8th ed.). Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Directing
The first type of leader discussed in Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory is the directing leader (originally termed telling). A directing leader is needed by followers who do lack both the skill and the motivation to perform a task. Hersey and Blanchard recommend against supportive behavior at this point because the supporting behavior may be perceived as a reward by the follower. Instead, these followers need a lot of task-directed communication and oversight.
Coaching
The second type of leader discussed in Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory is the coaching leader (originally termed selling). The coaching leader is necessary when followers have a high need for direction and a high need of support. Followers who are unable to perform or lack the confidence to perform the task but are committed to the task and/or organization need a coaching leader. In this case, the leader needs to have more direct control over the follower’s attempt to accomplish the task, but the leader should also provide a lot of encouragement along the way.
Supporting
Next, you have followers who still require low levels of direction from leaders but who need more support from their leaders. Hersey and Blanchard see these followers as individuals who more often than not have requisite skills but still need their leader for motivation. As such, supporting leaders should set about creating organizational environments that foster these followers’ motivations.
Delegating
Lastly, when a follower is both motivated and skilled, he or she needs a delegating leader. In this case, a leader can easily delegate tasks to this individual with the expectations that the follower will accomplish the tasks. However, leaders should not completely avoid supportive behavior because if a follower feels that he or she is being completely ignored, the relationship between the leader and follower could sour.
Functional Approach
In both the trait and situational approaches to leadership, the primary outcome called “leadership” is a series of characteristics that help create the concept. The functional approach, on the other hand, posits that it’s not a series of leadership characteristics that make a leader, but rather a leader is someone who looks like, acts like, and communicates like a leader. To help us understand the functional approach to leadership, we’ll examine two different sets of researchers commonly associated with this approach: Chester Barnard’s Functions of the Executive and Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats’ Classification of Functional Roles in Groups.
Chester Barnard’s (1938) The Functions of the Executive
The first major functional theorist was an organizational researcher by the name of Chester Barnard who published a ground-breaking book in 1938 titled The Functions of the Executive.Barnard, C. I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. It is from this book’s title that the functional approach to leadership gets its name. In this book, Barnard argues that executives have three basic functions.
Formulating Organizational Purposes and Objectives
The first function a leader should have is the creation (or formulation) of the organization’s basic purpose and its objectives. In essence, leaders should be able to form a clear vision for the organization and then set about creating the tasks necessary to help the organization accomplish that vision.
Securing Essential Services from Other Members
The second function of a leader according to Barnard’s framework was securing essential services from other members. Barnard realized that one of the inherent aspects of leadership was the leader’s ability to get the services he or she needs from followers. For example, it’s not just about hiring people and setting them about their tasks. Instead, it’s about hiring people and then inspiring those followers in an effort to get the best out of them. In an organization where someone has a position of leadership but is not at the top of the hierarchy, leadership also becomes important in an individual’s ability to reach out to other teams or divisions and secure resources and services to help the leader’s team accomplish its goals. Basically, leaders must actively work to help others accomplish the organization’s goals.
Establishing and Maintaining a System of Communication
According to Barnard, the first function of an executive should be to establish and maintain a system of communication. As such, Barnard came up with seven specific rules to help executives create a system of communication within their organizations:
• The channels of communication should be definite;
• Everyone should know of the channels of communication;
• Everyone should have access to the formal channels of communication;
• Lines of communication should be as short and as direct as possible;
• Competence of persons serving as communication centers should be adequate;
• The line of communication should not be interrupted when the organization is functioning; and
• Every communication should be authenticated.Barnard, C. I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; pp. 175-80.
From this perspective, leaders have a fundamental task in creating and controlling both the formal and informal communication systems within the organization. In fact, Chester Barnard was one of the first researchers to really extol the importance of understanding both the formal and informal communication within an organization.
Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats’ Classification of Functional Roles in Groups
Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats did not exactly set out to create a tool for analyzing and understanding the functional aspects of leadership. Instead, their 1948 article titled “Functional Roles of Group Members” was designed to analyze how people interact and behave within small group or team settings.Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (2007). Functional roles of group members. Group Facilitation: A Research & Applications Journal, 8, 30-35. (Reprinted from the Journal of Social Issues, 4, 41-49) The basic premise of Benne and Sheat’s 1948 article was that different people in different group situations will take on a variety of roles within a group. Some of these roles will be prosocial and help the group accomplish its basic goals, while other roles are clearly antisocial and can negatively impact a group’s ability to accomplish its basic goals. Benne and Sheats categorized the more prosocial roles as belonging to one of two groups: task and group building and maintenance roles. Task roles are those taken on by various group members to ensure that the group’s task is accomplished. Group building and maintenance roles, on the other hand, are those roles people take on that are “designed to alter or maintain the group way of working, to strengthen, regulate and perpetuate the group as a group.”Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (2007). Functional roles of group members. Group Facilitation: A Research & Applications Journal, 8, 30-35. (Reprinted from the Journal of Social Issues, 4, 41-49); pg. 31. The more anti-social (individual) roles are roles group members take on that are not relevant to neither the group nor the task at hand. Individuals embodying these roles will actually prevent the group from accomplishing its task in a timely and efficient manner. We will go into more detail about the specific nature of these various roles in Chapter 9, for now let’s just look at Table 7.3
Table \(2\): Prosocial and Antisocial Group Roles
Prosocial Group Roles Antisocial Group Roles
Task Roles Individual Roles
• initiator-contributor
• information seeker
• opinion seeker
• information giver
• opinion giver
• elaborator
• coordinator
• orienter
• evaluator-critic
• energizer
• procedural technician
• recorder
• aggressor
• blocker
• recognition-seeker
• self-confessor
• playboy
• dominator
• help-seeker
• special interest pleader
Group Building & Maintenance Roles
• encourager
• harmonizer
• compromiser
• gate-keeper/expediter
• standard setter/ego ideal
• group-observer/commentator
• follower
So, you may be wondering how these actually relates back to the notion of leadership. To help us understand why these roles are functions of leadership, let’s turn to the explanation provided by Michael Hackman and Craig Johnson:
Roles associated with the successful completion of the task and the development and maintenance of group interaction help facilitate goal achievement and the satisfaction of group needs. These roles serve a leadership function. Roles associated with the satisfaction of individual needs do not contribute to the goals of the group as a whole and are usually not associated with leadership. By engaging in task-related and group-building/maintenance role behaviors (and avoiding individual role behavior), a group member can perform leadership functions and increase the likelihood that he or she will achieve leadership status with the group.Hackman, M. S., & Johnson, C. E. (2009). Leadership: A communication perspective (5th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland, pg. 89.
In essence, leaders are people who perform task and relational roles while people who are non-leaders tend to focus on their own desires and needs and not the needs of the group itself. As such, each of the task and building/maintenance roles can be considered functions of effective leadership.
Relational Approach
The next approach to leadership is called the relational approach because it focuses not on traits, characteristics, or functions of leaders and followers, but instead the relational approach focuses on the types of relationships that develop between leaders and followers. To help us understand the relational approach to leadership, let’s examine two different perspectives on this approach: Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s Managerial Grid and George Graen’s Leader-Member Exchange Theory.
Robert Blake & Jane Mounton’s Managerial Grid
The first major relational approach we are going to discuss is Blake and Mounton’s Managerial Grid.Blake, R., & Mouton, J. (1964). The managerial grid: The key to leadership excellence. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing. While the grid is called a “management” grid, the subtitle clearly specifies that it is a tool for effective leadership. In the original grid created in 1965, the two researchers were concerned with whether or not a leader was concerned with her or his followers or with production. In the version we’ve recreated for you in Figure \(3\), we’ve relabeled the two as concern for relationships and concern for tasks to keep consistent with other leadership theories we’ve discussed in this chapter. The basic idea is that on each line of the axis (x-axis refers to task-focused leadership; y-axis refers to relationship-focused leadership) there are nine steps. Where an individual leader’s focus both for relationships and tasks will dictate where he or she falls as a leader on the Managerial Grid. As such, we end up with five basic management styles: impoverished, authority compliance, country club, team, and middle-of-the-road. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Impoverished Management
The basic approach a leader takes under the impoverished management style is completely hands off. This leader places someone in a job or assigns that person a task and then just expects it to be accomplished without any kind of oversight. In Blake and Mouton’s words, “the person managing 1,1 has learned to ‘be out of it,’ while remaining in the organization… [this manager’s] imprint is like a shadow on the sand. It passes over the ground, but leaves no permanent mark.”Blake, R., & Mouton, J. (2011). The managerial grid. In W. E. Natemeyer & P. Hersey (Eds.), Classics of Organizational Behavior (4th ed., pp. 308-322). (Reprinted from The managerial grid: The key to leadership excellence. Houston, TX: Gulf Coast); pgs. 315-316.
Authority-Compliance Management
The second leader is at the 9,1 coordinates in the leadership grid. The authority-compliance management style has a high concern for tasks but a low concern for establishing or fostering relationships with her or his followers. Consider this leader the closest to resemble Fredrick Taylor’s scientific management style of leadership. All of the decision-making is made by the leader and then dictated to her or his followers. Furthermore, this type of leader is very likely to micromanage or closely oversee and criticize followers as they set about accomplishing the tasks given to them.
Country Club Management
The third type of manager is called the country club management style and is the polar opposite of the authority-compliance manager. In this case, the manager is almost completely concerned about establishing or fostering relationships with her or his followers, but the task(s) needing to be accomplished disappears into the background. When assigning tasks to be accomplished, this leader empowers her or his followers and believes that the followers will accomplish the task and do it well without any kind of oversight. This type of leader also adheres to the advice of Thumper from the classic Disney movie Bambi, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”
Team Management
The next leadership style is at the high ends of concern for both task and relationships, which is referred to as the team management style. This type of leader realizes that “effective integration of people with production is possible by involving them and their ideas in determining the conditions and strategies of work. Needs of people to think, to apply mental effort in productive work and to establish sound and mature relationships with one another are utilized to accomplish organizational requirements.”Blake, R., & Mouton, J. (2011). The managerial grid. In W. E. Natemeyer & P. Hersey (Eds.), Classics of Organizational Behavior (4th ed., pp. 308-322). (Reprinted from The managerial grid: The key to leadership excellence. Houston, TX: Gulf Coast); pg. 317. Under this type of management, leaders believe that it is their purpose as leaders to foster environments that will encourage creativity, task accomplishment, and employee morale/motivation. This form of management is probably most closely aligned with Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y, which was discussed previously in Chapter 3.
Middle-of-the-Road Management
The final form of management discussed by Blake and Mouton was what has been deemed the middle-of-the-road management style. The reasoning behind this style of management is the assumption that “people are practical, they realize some effort will have to be exerted on the job. Also, by yielding some push for production and considering attitudes and feelings, people accept the situation and more or less ‘satisfied’ [emphasis in original].”Blake, R., & Mouton, J. (2011). The managerial grid. In W. E. Natemeyer & P. Hersey (Eds.), Classics of Organizational Behavior (4th ed., pp. 308-322). (Reprinted from The managerial grid: The key to leadership excellence. Houston, TX: Gulf Coast); pg. 316. In the day-to-day practicality of this approach, these leaders believe that any kind of extreme is not realistic, so finding some middle balance is ideal. If, and when, an imbalance occurs, these leaders seek out ways to eliminate the imbalance and get back to some state of moderation.
George Graen’s Leader-Member Exchange Theory
Starting in the mid-1970s, George Graen proposed a different type of theory for understanding leadership. Graen’s theory of leadership proposed that leadership must be understood as existing in three distinct domains: follower, leader, and relationship (Figure 7.4).Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, 6, 219-247. The basic idea is that leaders and followers exist within a dyadic relationship, so understanding leadership must examine the nature of that relationship.
When examining the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship, one must realize that leaders have only limited amounts of social, personal, and organizational resources, so leaders must be selective in how they distribute these resources to their followers. Ideally, every follower would have the same type of exchange relationship with their leader, but for a variety of reasons some followers receive more resources from a leader while others receive less resources from a leader. Ultimately, high-quality LMX relationships are those “characterized by greater input in decisions, mutual support, informal influence, trust, and greater negotiating latitude;” whereas, low-quality LMX relationships “are characterized by less support, more formal supervision, little or no involvement in decisions, and less trust and attention from the leader.”Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2007). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western; pg. 254.
Whether an individual follower is in a high-quality or low-quality LMX relationship really has a strong impact on their view towards the organization itself. Followers in high-quality LMX relationships (also referred to as in-groups) have higher perceptions of leader credibility and a greater regard for their leaders compared to those followers in low-quality LMX relationships (also referred to as out-groups). Not only does the nature of the relationship impact a follower’s perceptions of her or his leader, but research has shown that high-LMX relationships lead to greater productivity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.Gagnon, M. A., & Michael, J. H. (2004). Outcomes of perceived supervisor support for wood production employees. Forest Products Journal, 54, 172-178. Overall, research has shown many positive benefits for followers who have high-LMX relationships including:
• More productive (produce higher quality and quantity of work);
• Greater levels of job satisfaction;
• Higher levels of employee motivation;
• Greater satisfaction with immediate supervisor;
• Greater organizational commitment;
• Lower voluntary and involuntary turnover levels;
• Greater organizational participation;
• Greater satisfaction with the communication practices of the organization;
• Clearer understanding about her or his role within the organization;
• Greater exhibition of organizational citizenship behaviors;
• Greater long-term success in one’s career;
• Greater organizational commitment;
• Receive more desirable work assignments; and
• Receive more attention and support from organizational leaders. Gagnon, M. A., & Michael, J. H. (2004). Outcomes of perceived supervisor support for wood production employees. Forest Products Journal, 54, 172-178.,Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2007). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western.,Gagnon, M. A., & Michael, J. H. (2004). Outcomes of perceived supervisor support for wood production employees. Forest Products Journal, 54, 172-178.
One of the big questions that has arisen in the leadership literature is “how do leaders select followers to enter into a high-LMX relationship.” One possible explanation for why leaders choose some followers and not other followers for high-LMX relationships stems from the follower’s communication style. In a 2007 study, researchers examined the relationship between follower communication and whether or not they perceived themselves to be in a high-LMX relationship with their immediate supervisor.Madlock, P. E., Martin, M. M., Bogdan, L., & Ervin, M. (2007). The impact of communication traits on leader-member exchange. Human Communication, 10, 451-464. Not surprisingly, individuals who reported higher levels of assertiveness, responsiveness, friendliness, cognitive flexibility, attentiveness, and a generally relaxed nature were more likely to report having a high-LMX relationship. One variable that was negatively related to the likelihood of having a high-LMX relationship was a follower’s level of communication apprehension.
Transformational Approach
The final approach to leadership is one that clearly is popular among organizational theorists. Although the term “transformational leadership” was first coined by James Downtown in 1973, the term was truly popularized by political sociologist James MacGregor Burns in 1978. Downton, J. V. (1973). Rebel leadership: Commitment and charisma in the revolutionary process. New York, NY: Free Press.,Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper Collins. In a 2001 study conducted by Kevin Lowe and William Gardner, the researchers examined the types of articles that had been published in the premier academic journal on the subject of leadership, Leadership Quarterly.Lowe, K. B., & Gardner, W. L. (2001). Ten years of the Leadership Quarterly: Contributions and challenges for the future. Leadership Quarterly, 11, 459-514. The researchers examined the types of research published in the journal over the previous ten years, which found that one-third of the articles published within the journal examined transformational leadership.
To help understand leadership from this approach, it’s important to understand the two sides of leadership: transactional and transformational leadership. On the one hand you have transactional leadership, which focuses on an array of exchanges that can occur between a leader and her or his followers. The most obvious way transactional leadership is seen in corporate America is the use of promotions and pay raises. Transactional leaders offer promotions or pay raises to those followers who meet or exceed the leader’s goals. Rewards are seen as a tool that a leader utilizes to get the best performance out of her or his followers. If the rewards no longer exist, followers will no longer have the external motivation to meet or exceed goals.
Transformational leadership, on the other hand, can be defined as the “process whereby a person engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower.”Northhouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: Theory and practice (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; pg. 176. In essence, transformational leadership is more than just getting followers to meet or exceed goals because the leader provides the followers rewards. Bernie Bass proposed a more complete understanding of transformational leadership and noted three factors of transformational leadership: charismatic and inspirational leadership, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership: Good, better, best. Organizational Dynamics, 13(3), 26-40.,Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York, NY: Free Press.
Charismatic and Inspirational Leadership
The first factor Bass described for transformational leaders was charismatic and inspirational leadership. Charisma is a unique quality that not everyone possesses. Those who are charismatic have the ability to influence and inspire large numbers of people to accomplish specific organizational goals or tasks. Where the transactional leader rewards followers for accomplishing tasks, transformational leaders inspire their followers to accomplish goals and tasks with no promise of rewards. Instead, followers are inspired by a transformational leader to accomplish goals and tasks because they share the leader’s vision for the future. Bass later made inspirational motivation a unique factor unto itself to clearly separate its impact from charismatic leadership.Bass, B.M. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industrial, military, and educational impact. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Intellectual Stimulation
The second characteristic of transformational leaders is intellectual stimulation. In essence, transformational leaders “stimulates followers to be creative and innovative and to challenge their own beliefs and values as well as those of the leader and the organization.”Northhouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: Theory and practice (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; pg. 183. While both transactional and transformational leaders engage in intellectual stimulation themselves, the purpose of this intellectual stimulation differs. Transactional leaders tend to focus on how best to keep their organizations and the systems within their organizations functioning. Very little thought to innovation or improving the organization occurs because transactional leaders focus on maintaining everything as-is. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, are always looking for new and innovative ways to manage problems. As such, they also encourage those around them to “think outside the box” in an effort to make things better.
Individualized Consideration
The last factor of transformational leadership is individualized consideration, or seeing followers as individuals in need of individual development. Transformational leaders evaluate “followers’ potential both to perform their present job and to hold future positions of greater responsibility. The leader sets examples and assigns tasks on an individual basis to followers to help significantly alter their abilities and motivations as well as to satisfy immediate organizational needs.”Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership: Good, better, best. Organizational Dynamics, 13(3), 26-40; pg. 35. The goal of this individualized consideration is to help individual followers maximize their potential, which maximizes the leader’s use of her or his resources at the same time.
Key Takeaways
• The trait approach to leadership is the oldest approach to leadership and theorizes that certain individuals are born with specific personality or communication traits that enable leadership. As such, trait leadership scholars have examined thousands of possible traits that may have an impact on successful or unsuccessful leadership practices.
• The situational approach to leadership focuses on specific organizational contexts or situations that enable leadership. Fred Fiedler’s Contingency Theory examines an individual’s preference for either task or relationships and then theorizes that leaders who find themselves in situations that favor that type of leadership will be fine while leaders who are out of balance need to either change the situation or adjust their leadership styles. Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory, on the other hand, examines how leadership is dependent upon whether a follower is someone being developed or someone who has already been developed. New followers, Hersey and Blanchard theorize, need more guidance leaders should focus on the task and at hand and not on relationships with these followers. Old followers, on the other hand, need little guidance and little relationship building.
• The functional approach to leadership posits that a leader is someone who looks like, acts like, and communicates like a leader. Chester Barnard’s Functions of the Executive posits that leaders should engage in three specific functions: (1) formulating organizational purposes and objectives, (2) securing essential services from other members, and (3) establishing and maintaining a system of communication. A second functional approach is Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats’ Classification of Functional Roles in Groups, which examines how different people take on various group/team roles in an effort to keep the group/team striving towards a specific goal. Each of the roles that group/team members take on serve a specific function in the group/team decision making and implementing process.
• The relational approach to leadership theorizes that leadership is a matter of building and maintain relationships with one’s followers. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s Managerial Grid examine the intersection of relationship-oriented or task-oriented leader perspectives. Ultimately, Blake and Mounton propose five distinct types of leadership: (1) impoverished (low task, low relational), (2) authority-compliance (high task, low relational), (3) country club (low task, high relational), (4) team (high task, high relational), and (5) middle-of-the-road (moderate task, moderate relational). A second relational approach is George Graen’s Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory, which looks at the exchange relationship between a follower and a leader. Under LMX theory, leaders take on protégés into an interpersonal communicative relationship that enables a follower to succeed within an organization.
• The transformational approach to leadership espoused by James MacGregor Burns looks at leadership as a comparison to the traditional transactional model of leadership. In the transactional model of leadership, leaders promise to punish or reward followers in order gain support. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, occurs when a leader utilizes communication in an effort to increase follower morale, motivation, and performance to accomplish organizational goals.
Exercises
1. Fill out the Least Preferred Coworker Scale (www.msubillings.edu/BusinessF...orkerScale.pdf). After completing the measure, what did you learn about your own approach to leadership? According to Contingency Theory, what leadership situations will you succeed in and what leadership situations will you need to alter either the situation or your own leadership behavior?
2. Looking at Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, which type of leadership style do you respond best to? Why do you think you respond best to this leadership style? Do you think you lead others in this fashion? Why or why not?
3. Create a list of at least five transactional leaders and five transformational leaders. What differences do you see between these two lists and the types of organizational accomplishments they’ve had? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/06%3A_Leader_and_Follower_Behaviors_and_Perspectives/6.02%3A_Approaches_to_Leadership.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Define the term followership.
• Explain Ira Chaleff’s styles of followership.
• Describe Roger Adair’s 4-D Followership Model.
• Differentiate among McCroskey and Richmond’s three Organizational Orientations.
In 1988, Robert Kelley wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review where he explained that so much of the research on what happens between organizational members is written from the perspective that leadership is king and everything else is periphery.Kelley, R. E. (1988). In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, 66(6), 142-148. Instead, Kelley believed that followership should be center stage right along research and writing on leadership. Surprisingly, this article was met with a lot of controversy, “Some people just flat out didn’t like it, comparing followers to sled dogs whose destiny is always to look at the rear end of the dog in front of them, but never to see the wider horizon or make the decisions of the lead dog Other readers could not thank me enough for articulating what they secretly held in their hearts.”Kelley, R. E. (2008). Rethinking followership. In R. E. Riggio, I. Chaleff, & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.), The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp. 5-15). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; pg 6. Since 1988, writings in the popular press and in academic circles have routinely discussed the nature of followership. While there is still some controversy over the nature of followership, leadership researchers uniformly now examine and discuss the importance of followership in the corporate environment.
So what then is followership? As a basic concept, followershipThe act or condition under which an individual helps or supports a leader in the accomplishment of organizational goals. is the act or condition under which an individual helps or supports a leader in the accomplishment of organizational goals. However, Jon Howell and Maria Mendez defined followership as less in terms of a straight-forward definition but more as different roles followership can take. First, followership can take an interactive role, which means that a follower’s role is to complement and support her or his leader in accomplishing organizational goals. Second, followership can be an independent role, where followers act independently of their leaders with little necessity for oversight or management. Lastly, followership can take on a shifting role perspective, where followership is seen as less a concrete title or position but rather a state one embodies depending on the tasks at hands. In some situations, an individual may be a leader and in others a follower depending on the context of the organizational goals. The rest of this section is going to examine a series of different perspectives in the literature involving organizational followership: Ira Chaleff’s styles of followership, Roger Adair’s 4-D Followership Model, and McCroskey and Richmond’s Organizational Orientations.
Ira Chaleff’s Styles of Followership
One of the first models for understanding the nature of leader-follower interactions from the follower’s perspective is Ira Chaleff’s Styles of Followership she discussed in her ground breaking book The Courageous Follower.Chaleff, I. (2003). The courageous follower (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler. Based on the name of the book, Chaleff’s perspective is that followership is an act of courage that someone decides to take. As such, she sees followership as having the courage to engage in two different behaviors: the courage to support the leader and the courage to challenge the leader’s behavior and/or policies. Figure 7.5 demonstrates what happens when you combine the courage to challenge and support.
Resource
The first follower style discussed by Chaleff is the resourceFollower type described by Ira Chaleff who will not challenge nor support the leader doing only the minimal amount of work to keep her or his job.. The resource is someone who will not challenge nor support the leader. This follower basically does the minimal amount to keep her or his job, but nothing more.
Individualist
The second followership style is the individualistFollower type described by Ira Chaleff who will provide little to no support for her or his leader but has no problem challenging the leader’s behavior and policies.. This individual will provide little to no support for her or his leader, but has no problem challenging the leader’s behavior and policies. This individual is generally very argumentative and/or aggressive in her or his behavior. While this individual will often speak out when no one else will, people see this person as inherently contrarian so her or his ideas are generally marginalized.
Implementer
The third followership style is the implementerFollower type described by Ira Chaleff who will be more than happy to support her or his leader in any way possible, but the implementer will not challenge the leader’s behavior or policies even when the leader is making costly mistakes.. The implementer is more than happy to support her or his leader in any way possible, but the implementer will not challenge the leader’s behavior and/or policies even when the leader is making costly mistakes. The implementer simply sees it as her or his job to follow order, not question those orders. While this kind of pure-followership may be great in the military, it can be very harmful in the corporate world.
Partner
The final type of followership is the partnerFollower type described by Ira Chaleff who will support and challenge a leader because this follower sees her or himself as having a stake in the leader’s decisions.. Partner followership occurs when a follower is both supportive and challenging. This type of follower believes that he or she has a stake in a leader’s decisions, so he or she will act accordingly. If the partner thinks a leader’s decision is unwise, he or she will have no problem clearly dissenting within the organizational environment. At the same time, these followers will ultimately provide the most (and most informed) support possible to one’s leader.
Roger Adair’s 4-D Followership Model
In 2008 Roger Adair proposed the 4-D Followership model to help explain the types of people who exist within an organization.Adair, R. (2008). Developing great leaders, one follower at a time. In R. E. Riggio, I. Chaleff, & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.), The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp. 137-153). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. The basic model Adair proposed for understanding followers examines a follower’s level of job satisfaction and her or his productivity. Based on the combination of job satisfaction and productivity, Adair demonstrates the likelihood that someone will decide to leave the organization. The basic model can be seen in Figure 7.6.
Disgruntled
The first type of follower is called the disgruntledType of follower described by Roger Adair who has encountered some event within the organization that has left them feeling detached, angry, or displeased, which leads to low levels of job satisfaction and productivity. follower. He or she has low levels of job satisfaction and is not overly productive at work either. These followers have typically encountered some event within the organization that has left them feeling detached, angry, or displeased. Maybe this person was passed up for a job promotion or he or she is being bullied in the workplace. Whatever the initial trigger, these individuals are toxic to the work environment. If the disgruntled follower is caught early on in her or his downward slip into this state, there is a chance to pull her or him away from the disgruntled cliff. Unfortunately, too many leaders do not notice the signs early on and these followers either end up reacting negatively in the workplace or they job ship as soon as they get an offer.
Disengaged
The second type of follower is someone who is disengagedType of follower described by Roger Adair doesn’t see the value in her or his work so he or she opts to do the minimum necessary to ensure her or his employment., or someone who doesn’t see the value in her or his work, so he or she opts to do the minimum necessary to ensure her or his employment. Often these individuals perceive their work as meaningless or not really helping the organization achieve its basic goals, so they basically tune out. Often people who are disengaged become so because the original expectations they had for the job are simply not met, so they may feel lied to by the organization, which can lead to low levels of organizational commitment.
Doer
The third type of follower is called the doerType of follower described by Roger Adair is highly motivated and constantly looking for bigger and better work opportunities either within their current organization or in a new one.. Doers “are motivated, excited to be part of the team. They are enterprising people, and overall are considered high producers. The only real issue with these employees is that no matter where they go in an organization, the grass always looks greener elsewhere.”Adair, R. (2008). Developing great leaders, one follower at a time. In R. E. Riggio, I. Chaleff, & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.), The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp. 137-153). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; pg. 145. A doer often starts as someone who is upwardly mobile in the organization and become doers when one of two things occurs. First, doers want more out of life and if they don’t feel that there is continued possibilities for upward mobility within an organization, they are very likely to jump ship. Second, if a doer does not feel he or she is receiving adequate recognition for her or his contributions to the organization, then the doer will find someone who will give her or him that affirmation.
Disciple
The last type of follower is the discipleType of follower described by Roger Adair believs both in her or his work and in the overarching goal(s) of the organization, so this follower is highly satisfied and productive. and this individual is highly satisfied and highly productive. In an ideal world, only disciples would fall under leaders because they have no problem sacrificing their own personal lives for the betterment of the organization. These workers are true believers both in their work and in the overarching goal(s) of the organization. While some people may remain disciples for a lifetime, many more workers start as disciples and quickly become disengageds, disgruntleds, or doers. This generally happens because an organization’s own employees, processes, or systems do not encourage disciple behavior and eventually wear the disciple down to the point where their sunny organizational outlook becomes one filled with clouds.
James C. McCroskey and Virginia Richmond’s Organizational Orientations
In 1962, Robert Presthus created a theory of organizational life that defined three unique types of workers: upwardly mobiles, ambivalents, and indifferents. He defined these three terms thusly:
The upward-mobiles are those who react positively to the bureaucratic situation and succeed in it. The indifferents are the uncommitted majority who see their jobs as mere instruments to obtain off-work satisfactions. The ambivalents are a small, perpetually disturbed minority who can neither renounce their claims for status and power nor play the disciplined role that would enable them to cash in such claims [emphasis in original].Presthus, R. (1962). The organizational society: An analysis and a theory. New York, NY: Random House; pg. 15.
In 2004, James McCroskey and Virginia Richmond along with their students Aaron Johnson and Heather Smith created a measure to examine and test Presthus typology of workers to see whether the three organizational orientations held up to empirical scrutiny.McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., Johnson, A. D., & Smith, H. T. (2004). Organizational orientations theory and measurement: Development of measures and preliminary investigations. Communication Quarterly, 52, 1-14. Note 7.40 "Organizational Orientations—Short Form" contains a short version of the Organizational Orientations scale. Before continuing, please take a second to complete the measure.
Organizational Orientations—Short Form
Read the following questions and select the answer that corresponds with how you perceive your workplace. Do not be concerned if some of the items appear similar. Please use the scale below to rate the degree to which each statement applies to you:
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
1. _____One of my goals in life is excelling at in my job.
2. _____I would like to learn as much as possible in my job.
3. _____Most of all, I really want to be recognized for the excellent work I do in the workplace.
4. _____Accomplishing my organization’s goals is worth all the work you have to do.
5. _____I am willing to work hard to accomplish my organization’s goals.
6. _____Since I am a really good worker, I know I will succeed in my career.
7. _____A job is a job, it doesn’t really matter where you work.
8. _____I am generally indifferent to where I work.
9. _____Generally, I just do as much as is required by my supervisor to get a paycheck.
10. _____I don’t much care where I work, so long as I get a paycheck.
11. _____One job is pretty much like any other.
12. _____When it comes to choosing a workplace, I found the one that would let me get by doing the least amount of work.
13. _____I really dislike the rules and regulations I am forced to live with at my job.
14. _____Generally, I don’t like the rules that my workplace makes me follow.
15. _____Most of the time, a halfhearted effort is all I feel I need to give at work.
16. _____I really think my job should just give me a paycheck and leave me alone.
17. _____One job is about like any other, a pain in the backside.
18. _____What I want most in my job is to be left alone.
SCORING: To compute your scores follow the instructions below:
1. Upwardly Mobile
Scoring: Add scores for items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6
For Upwardly Mobiles, scores should be between 6 and 30. If your score is above 15, you are considered an upwardly mobile worker. If your score is below 15, you’re not considered an upwardly mobile worker.
2. Indifferent
Scoring: Add scores for items 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, & 18
For Indifferents, scores should be between 6 and 30. If your score is above 15, you are considered a highly indifferent worker. If your score is below 15, you’re not considered an indifferent worker.
3. Ambivalent
Scoring: Add scores for items 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12
For Ambivalents, scores should be between 6 and 30. If your score is above 15, you are considered an a highly ambivalent worker. If your score is below 15, you’re not considered an ambivalent worker.
Source: Wrench, J. S., Brogan, S. M., Fiore, A. M., & McKean, J. R. (2011, November). Consumerist education in America: When ideology impacts the basic purpose of higher education. Paper presented at the National Communication Association’s Convention, New Orleans, LA.
The Three Orientations
According to Virginia Richmond and James McCroskey, organizational orientations explain how followers orient themselves towards both their work and their workplace.Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2009). Organizational orientations. In Organizational Communication for Survival: Making work, work (4th ed., pp. 82-93). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. To help us understand the organizational orientations and their relationship to followership, let’s examine each one separately.
Upwardly Mobiles
The upwardly mobileOrganizational orientation described by James C. McCroskey and Virginia Richmond associated with individuals who are devoted to their work, their organization, and the organization’s goals. organizational orientation is one associated with individuals who are devoted to their work, their organization, and the organization’s goals. To these individuals, working and their jobs are an inherent part of their lives. In fact, these people often identify their jobs as being careers and not just jobs. To upwardly mobiles, a jobPost of employment for an individual who is just looking to earn money. is a way to earn money, but a careerPost of employment for an individual who is pursuing lifelong ambitions and goals related to one’s chosen occupation. involves the pursuit of lifelong ambition and goals related to one’s chosen occupation. Upwardly mobile individuals see themselves as having careers and not just jobs. In fact, an inherent part of the identity of an upwardly mobile relates to her or his career (e.g., I’m a lawyer, I’m a teacher, I’m an accountant, etc…). These individuals generally are great followers because they really see their lives and their careers as highly intertwined constructs. However, upwardly mobile individuals want to continue up the hierarchy and will consider jumping ship if they do not see a place for them within an organization in the future.
Indifferents
The second way people orient themselves at work is the indifferentOrganizational orientation described by James C. McCroskey and Virginia Richmond describing followers who go to work and do their jobs in order to get a paycheck, these followers really sees life as something thatbegins once they leave the workplace organizational orientation. Where upwardly mobile see themselves as having careers, indifferents clearly believe they have a job. In essence, the indifferent follower is one who sees work as a means to an end. The indifferent goes to work, does her or his job in order to get a paycheck, but the indifferent really sees life as something that begins once he or she has left the workplace. Indifferent followers need more guidance because they will do the minimum amount of work necessary to keep their job and earn a paycheck. Indifferents will look for a new job if they believe their current job is starting to encroach on their life outside of work. As for their communicative behavior at work, their “communication on the job is about their family or personal life. When encouraged to communicate about organizational matters with colleagues, they generally say nothing, change the topic, or suggest that others should discuss these matters.”Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2009). Organizational orientations. In Organizational Communication for Survival: Making work, work (4th ed., pp. 82-93). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon; pg. 84.
Ambivalents
The last group of followers commonly seen in the workplace are ambivalents. AmbivalentsOrganizational orientation described by James C. McCroskey and Virginia Richmond that depicts a follower who is disgruntled by the existing hierarchical structure, the tasks they are assigned, and/or the organizational goals. are somewhat hard to describe because they can be unpredictable. Where upwardly mobiles like to work within the hierarchy to accomplish goals, indifferents go along with the hierarchy and do what they are told to do, ambivalents tend to like neither the existing hierarchical structure, the tasks they are assigned, nor the organizational goals. These individuals are just generally discontent. In fact, these individuals often think the grass would be greener in a different pasture. However, when they jump ship to a new organization, they tend to find themselves making the same complaints about their new organization as well. Furthermore, their moods and their behaviors within the organization can change on a daily basis. “These people can be supportive one day and destructive the next. They are moody, which makes it difficult for people to work with or for them.”Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2009). Organizational orientations. In Organizational Communication for Survival: Making work, work (4th ed., pp. 82-93). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon; pg. 85. Sadly, most organizational members and leaders learn to keep their distance of ambivalents and keep their interactions with ambivalents to “small talk” to avoid setting them off. Most organizations (and its members) will be happier and more productive when these individuals leave.
Outcomes of Organizational Orientations
In the original study by McCroskey, Richmond, Johnson, and Smith examining organizational orientations, the researchers set out to examine how the three orientations related to a series of different communication and organizational variables.McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., Johnson, A. D., & Smith, H. T. (2004). Organizational orientations theory and measurement: Development of measures and preliminary investigations. Communication Quarterly, 52, 1-14. First, they found that upwardly mobile individuals were more motivated and higher levels of job satisfaction, while indifferents and ambivalents were neither motivated nor satisfied. As for their communication with others, upwardly mobile individuals were shown to be considerably more communicatively competent than either indifferents and ambivalents. The third major finding from the first study examined how an individual’s organizational orientation impact her or his views of their supervisor’s credibility. Not surprisingly, upwardly mobile followers saw their leaders as credible (competent, caring, and trustworthy), while indifferent and ambivalent followers did not. These results were later confirmed in a second study that compared both nonprofit and for-profit organizational members.McCroskey, L., McCroskey, J.C., & Richmond, V. P. (2005). Applying organizational Orientations theory to employees of profit and non-profit organizations. Communication Quarterly, 53, 21-40.
In a 2008 study conducted by Alan Goodboy and James McCroskey, the researchers furthered our understanding of organizational orientations by examining the relationship between the three organizational orientations and nonverbal immediacy and Machiavellianism.Goodboy, A. K., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Toward a theoretical model of the role of organizational orientations and Machiavellianism on nonverbal immediacy behavior and job satisfaction. Human Communication, 3, 293-308.Nonverbal immediacy is the perceived psychological or physical closeness between two people. The nonverbal literature has consistently shown that nonverbal immediacy (which can be influenced by effective eye contact, appropriate use of gestures, smiling, etc.) is a positive communication trait that improves a variety of different communicative interactions including both leader-follower relationships and coworker relationships. In this study, upwardly mobile individuals were more likely to be nonverbally immediate in the workplace when compared to either indifferents or ambivalents. Machiavellianism, on the other hand, is a personality trait associated with an individual’s tendency towards manipulating those around them. Both indifferents and ambivalents were more likely to be highly Machiavellian in the workplace when compared to their upwardly mobile counterparts.
Overall, these three studies clearly show that understanding one’s follower’s organizational orientations can be very important for follower-leader interactions in the workplace. While leaders should cultivate upwardly mobile they shouldn’t ignore either indifferents or ambivalents in order to have a more productive and harmonious working environment.
Key Takeaways
• Followership is the act or condition under which an individual helps or supports a leader in the accomplishment of organizational goals. Followership is considered an act because of the various behaviors associated with following someone. Followership is conserved a condition because of an individual’s place within an organizational hierarchy.
• Ira Chaleff’s styles of followership is based on the degree to which an individual follower will support her or his leader and the extent to which a follower will challenge her or his leader. Based on these two characteristics, Chaleff proposes four distinct follower types: (1) resource (low challenge, low support), (2) individualist (high challenge, low support), (3) implementer (low challenge, high support), and (4) partner (high challenge, high support).
• Roger Adair’s 4-D Followership Model looks at the combination of worker’s level of job satisfaction and her or his intentions to leave the organization. Based on these two levels, Adair proposed four distinct types of workers: (1) disengage (low job satisfaction, low turnover intention), (2) disgruntled (low job satisfaction, high turnover intention), (3) doer (high job satisfaction, high turnover intention), and (4) disciple (high job satisfaction, low turnover intention). Ultimately, Adair also notes that disengaged and disgruntled followers are not very productive while doers and disciples are very productive followers.
• Based on Robert Presthus created a theory of organizational life, McCroskey and Richmond have operationalized and studied three unique Organizational Orientations: upwardly mobiles (individuals who see their careers as a vibrant part of their daily lives, so they strive to be their best at work), indifferents (followers who see work as a means to an end and really see life as something that happens outside the workplace), and ambivalents (individuals who are disgruntled with existing hierarchical structures, the tasks they are assigned, and/or the organizational goals.). Upwardly mobile followers are generally more motivated, productive, and satisfied when compared to their indifferent and ambivalent peers.
Exercises
1. Thinking back to your most recent job, what type of follower would Ira Chaleff characterize you as? Why?
2. Thinking back to your most recent job, what type of follower would Roger Adair characterize you as? Why?
3. After completing the Organizational Orientations-Short Form scale in Note 7.40 "Organizational Orientations—Short Form", what organizational orientation is your most prominent? How do you think your organizational orientation affects your current job? Do you think your organizational orientation would change if you were in a job versus in a career? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/06%3A_Leader_and_Follower_Behaviors_and_Perspectives/6.03%3A_Followership.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate between the terms “mentoring” and “coaching.”
• Explain Gregory Dawson and Richard Watson three stages of mentoring.
• Describe Pamela Kalbfleisch’s mentoring enactment theory.
• Differentiate between executive and supervisory coaching.
• Describe and explain the three types of coaching.
This chapter has thus far focused on the nature of leadership and followership. We are now going to turn our attention to two very specific types of leader-follower behaviors: mentoring and coaching. Unfortunately, there tends to be some confusion within the organizational world as to the nature of these two terms, so let’s quickly define them here before exploring each one in more depth. Mentoring is “the transfer of your [mentor’s] knowledge or professional experience to another person [mentee or protégé] to advance their understanding or achievement.”Hicks, R., & McCracken, J. (2009). Mentoring vs. caching: Do you know the difference? Physician Executive, 35(4), 71-73; pg. 71. Coaching, on the other hand, is the process of providing advice, instruction, or support in an attempt to help an individual increase efficiency or productivity in the workplace. The basic difference between mentoring and coaching is the desired result. The goal of mentoring is to help someone advance through the various hurdles associated with one’s career; whereas, coaching is about helping an individual engage in self-improvement in an effort to do her or his job better. Now that we’ve explored the basic differences between mentoring and coaching, let’s explore each in turn.
Mentoring
MentoringThe transfer of experience or knowledge from a senior individual (the mentor) to a junior individual (the mentee or protégé) in an effort to help the junior individual learn the ins and outs of organizational life. is a term used throughout business and a variety of other endeavors in life, and the concept goes back thousands of years to Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. The Odyssey tells the story of an elderly and wise sea captain named Mentor who gives Odysseus’s sun, Telemachus, guidance while his father is off fighting the Trojan War. From the gentle guidance of Mentor to the more formalized and established mentoring programs commonly seen in corporate America, the word “mentoring” commonly refers to a relationship where one individual with more knowledge and experience (the mentor) aids another individual who has less knowledge and experience (the mentee or protégé).
So, why would any individual desire to belong to a mentoring relationship. According to Kathy Kram in her ground breaking book Mentoring at WorkKram, K. E. (1985). Mentoring at work. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman., mentoring provides two basic functions for mentees: career and psychosocial. Career functions are the ones people most commonly think of when they think about mentoring because career functions are associated with helping the mentee “learn the ropes” in the organization (or a field) in an effort to help that person climb the corporate-ladder. Mentors can engage in a number different behaviors to help a mentee do this. For example, a mentor can coach the mentee (more on this later in this section); a mentor can sponsor the mentee’s advancement by placing the mentee on interesting and challenging projects; a mentor can help mentee receive recognition and/or ensuring the mentee is widely visible; and a mentor can provide the mentee certain protections from organizational or field-based politics.Ragins, B. R., & Kram, K. E. (2007). The roots and meaning of mentoring. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 3-15). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. The psychosocial functions, on the other hand, include mentoring behaviors that “build on trust, intimacy, and interpersonal bonds in the relationship and include behaviors that enhance the protégé’s professional and personal growth, identity, self-worth, and self-efficacy.”Ragins, B. R., & Kram, K. E. (2007). The roots and meaning of mentoring. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 3-15). Los Angeles, CA: Sage; pg. 5. The goal of psychosocial functions is to help foster a relationship that is built on “acceptance and confirmation and providing counseling, friendship, and role-modeling” for the mentee.Ragins, B. R., & Kram, K. E. (2007). The roots and meaning of mentoring. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 3-15). Los Angeles, CA: Sage; pg. 5. In the rest of this section we are going to examine the basic stages that a mentoring relationship goes through, mentoring enactment theory, and the outcomes mentoring has for mentees, mentors, and organizations.
Stages of Mentoring
Mentors and mentoring is not a stagnant concept by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, mentoring relationships evolve over time and change as the mentee and mentor’s relationship changes. Gregory Dawson and Richard Watson explain mentoring as a three stage process: hierarchical years, junior/senior colleague years, and trusted sage years.Dawson, G. S., & Watson, R. T. (2007). Involved or committed? Similarities and differences in advising and mentoring in the academic and business world. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2007(20), 3-10.
Hierarchical Years
After either acquiring a mentor on one’s own or having one formally assigned to you, the first period in a mentoring relationship is one marked by formality. During these years, the mentor’s job is to direct and guide a mentee through corporate life. This period can last anything from three to five years and generally includes such behaviors as assisting “that person in understanding the corporate culture, getting appropriate work supplies, completing required forms, getting placed on an initial project and guiding the new professional through recurring yearly actions (e.g., performance appraisals).”Dawson, G. S., & Watson, R. T. (2007). Involved or committed? Similarities and differences in advising and mentoring in the academic and business world. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2007(20), 3-10; pg. 5.
Junior/Senior Colleague Years
The junior/senior colleague years are marked by a period when the mentor and mentee redefine their relationship based on the needs and goals of those involved in the relationship. One of the marked differences during this time period is the change from a directive approach to mentoring (where the mentor is advising and supervising the mentee) to one that is marked by mutual respect and collaboration. Instead of the mentor inviting the mentee to participate on projects, the mentee is now dealing with her or his own projects and may or may not invite her or his mentor to participate as an equal partner on projects. During this period, the mentee should further expand her or his professional network and be seen as someone who can launch out on her or his own. You’ll notice that this period has both the notion of junior and senior colleague. This shift happens naturally over time. As someone starts out as a junior college, there is the expectation that the mentee will take on more and more projects of increasing complexity. Eventually, these projects become more central to the organization’s mission and the individual takes on senior status as a colleague to her or his mentor.
Trusted Sage Years
The final stage of the mentoring relationship occurs when the mentor and mentee are no longer bound by notions of organizational hierarchy and truly develop a working friendship with one another. During this stage it becomes even more important for an individual to have their own mentees as a way to pass on the legacy they received from their own mentor(s). Probably the number one hallmark of going from the colleague years to the trusted sage years is the establishing of one’s own mentoring relationships with mentees.
Pamela Kalbfleisch’s Mentoring Enactment Theory
Now that we’ve explored the basic stages of mentoring, we are going to switch gears and try to understand a more general understanding of the initiating, maintaining, and repairing of mentoring relationships. To help us understand how mentor-mentee relationships functions from a communication perspective, Pamela Kalbfleisch developed the mentoring enactment theory.Kalbfleisch, P. J. (2002). Communicating in mentoring relationships: A theory for enactment. Communication Theory, 12, 63-69.From Kalbfleisch’s theory on mentoring, we learn that the very center of the mentor-mentee relationship are two people who are joined together either formally or informally for the explicit purpose of achieving success. While mentees desire mentoring relationships because of the known value of mentoring on one’s career trajectory (see mentee outcomes below), mentors experience inherent costs.
For example, there are costs associated with “loss of time spent coaching a protégé, vulnerability through sharing hard-earned techniques and secrets, and potentially developing difficulties in one’s personal and professional life because of a relationship with a protégé.”Kalbfleisch, P. J. (2002). Communicating in mentoring relationships: A theory for enactment. Communication Theory, 12, 63-69; pg. 64. So, why then do mentors opt to enter into mentoring relationships? Well, there is not a single answer to this question. Different people have a variety of different answers depending on their own organizational and personal perceptions of mentoring itself. According to Kalbfleisch there are four common reasons people decide to mentor a protégé: altruism, pay-it-forward, organizational expectations, or self-interest. First, a mentor could enter a mentoring relationship out of pure altruism. The mentor may feel some kind of deeply held obligation to help others, so he or she seeks out and enters into mentoring relationships out of a simple desire to see others grow. Second, a mentor could enter a mentoring relationship because he or she feels the need to pay-it-forward. The notion of paying-it-forward is based on the idea that the second generation mentor was at one point a protégé, so he or she feels a sense of obligation to her or his mentor, so the second generation mentor pays the debt to her or his mentor by opting to take on protégés. In this sense, you’re paying-the-mentoring forward to a new generation of protégés. The third reason a mentor may opt to take on a protégé is a result of organizational expectations. Many organizations have formal mentoring requirements for individuals who reach a certain seniority stage. Often in these formal mentoring situations, the mentor may not have a choice in the choosing of her or his protégés, so these mentoring relationships may not be the most effective because the mentor may feel strong-armed into the relationship. The final reason some mentors take on a protégé is out of pure self-interest. Some mentors want a protégé for no other reason than they want someone can help “accomplish outcomes or for an entourage to follow in one’s wake.”Kalbfleisch, P. J. (2002). Communicating in mentoring relationships: A theory for enactment. Communication Theory, 12, 63-69; pg. 64. When it’s all said and done, there are a variety of reasons or even a combination of reasons why a mentor ultimately decides to enter into a mentoring relationship.
Kalbfleisch’s mentoring enactment theory was developed by applying the knowledge communication scholars have about a range of other interpersonal relationships. After examining what researchers know about interpersonal relationships, Kalbfleisch proposed nine basic propositions related to the enactment of mentoring relationships (Table \(1\)).
Table \(1\): Mentoring Enactment Theory PropositionsKalbfleisch, P. J. (2002). Communicating in mentoring relationships: A theory for enactment. Communication Theory, 12, 63-69; pgs. 66-68.
Proposition # Proposition
Proposition 1 Generally, requests to a more advanced other to be a mentor to the requestor are likely to be rejected in initial interactions between the advanced other and the requestor.
Proposition 2 Generally, requests to a more advanced other to be a mentor to the requestor are more likely to be rejected than are requests for help on a specific task made by this same requestor.
Proposition 3 Requests made to a more advanced other to be a mentor to the requester will be more likely to be accepted when the advanced other previously has agreed with a third party to serve as a mentor in a relationship.
Proposition 4 Offers made to a less advanced other to be a protégé are likely to be accepted.
Proposition 5 Offers of help made to a less advanced other are likely to be accepted.
Proposition 6 Protégés will be more likely than mentors to direct their conversational goals and communication strategies toward initiating, maintaining, and repairing their mentoring relationship.
Proposition 7 The closer a mentor is linked to a protégé’s career success, the greater the protégé’s communicative attempts to initiate, maintain, and repair a mentoring relationship.
Proposition 8 Female protégées will be more likely than male protégés to direct their conversational goals and communication strategies toward initiating, maintaining, and repairing their relationship with their mentor.
Proposition 9 Mentors will be more likely to direct their conversational goals and communication strategies toward maintaining and repairing their relationship when invested in the mentoring relationship.
The first three propositions are all geared to examine the initiation of mentoring relationships. In essence, mentors are not likely to take on a protégé when the protégé approaches the mentor and asks for that mentoring relationship. However, mentors are more likely to help a potential protégé with a specific task. In essence, it’s better as someone looking for a mentor to ask for help on a specific task and then let the relationship develop naturally. The one case when this isn’t true occurs when a potential mentor as previously agreed to mentor someone. In these cases, the mentor has already been primed to taking on the role of mentor, so he or she tends to be more open in these cases to taking on a mentor.
The four and fifth propositions approach mentoring initiation from the mentor’s perspective instead of the protégés’. In proposition four, Kalbfleisch theorizes that when a mentor asks a protégé to initiate a mentoring relationship, the protégé is more likely than not to agree to the relationship. This is also true if a mentor reaches out to a potential protégé offering a helping hand (as seen in the 5th proposition). In both of these cases, individuals who are less-advanced in a hierarchical structure are willing and will accept both offers of help and offers of mentorship.
Propositions six, seven, and eight examine the role of communication within a mentor-protégé relationship. Specifically, Kalbfleisch theorizes that protégés will use conversations and strategic communication to initiate, maintain, and repair their mentoring relationships. Kalbfleisch predicts that this is more likely if someone is in a mentoring relationship that impacts the protégé’s success in the workplace or if the protégé is a female. Obviously, if someone’s success is in the hands of a mentor, making sure that relationship is effective is of paramount importance to the protégé. As such, the protégé is going to strategically use communication to ensure that the mentoring relationship is stable and healthy. Kalbfleisch also predicts that women will engage in this behavior to a greater degree than men, which has been supported by previous research on mentoring.Kalbfleisch, P. J. (1997). Appeasing the mentor. Aggressive Behavior, 23, 389-403.
The final proposition for the enactment of mentoring relationships theorizes that as mentors become more involved in the mentoring relationship, the mentors will become more likely to direct conversational goals and communication strategies towards maintaining and repairing that relationship with their protégés. In the initial stages of a mentoring relationship, the mentor really has nothing to gain from the mentoring relationship but incurs a number of costs. As the relationship progresses, the mentor invests a lot of time and resources into developing her or his protégé, so it should be no surprise then that the mentor will want to protect that relationship because of the investment.
Outcomes for Mentoring
By now you may be wondering why mentoring is so important, well we’re here to tell you that there a wide range of positive outcomes that happen as a result of mentoring. To help us understand the importance of mentoring in the modern organization, let’s examine outcomes related to mentees, mentors, and organizations.
Mentee Outcomes
In a 2007 analysis of 20 years of mentoring research, Thomas Dougherty and George Dreher found a wide range of positive benefits for everyone involved in the mentoring process.Dougherty, T. W., & Dreher, G. F. (2007). Mentoring and career outcomes. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 51-93). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Here is a partial list of the outcomes mentoring can have on a mentee over the course of her or his career. All of these outcomes are positively related to mentoring unless otherwise stated in the outcome:
• Career Commitment
• Career Mobility
• Career Opportunity
• Career Recognition
• Employee Motivation
• Hierarchical Level
• Job Satisfaction
• Lower Levels of Work Stress
• Lower Turnover Intentions
• Number of Promotions
• Organizational Commitment
• Organizational Socialization
• Performance
• Productivity
• Total Annual Compensation
Mentor Outcomes
While there has been a lot of research examining how mentoring is beneficial for the protégé, there has not been as much research examining possible benefits to the mentor-mentee relationship from the perspective of the mentor. As noted earlier, there are a range of reasons an individual may opt to become a mentor, so some of the outcomes are intrinsically tied to the original reason(s) someone opts to engage in a mentoring relationship with a potential protégé. However, the following tangible benefits have been seen for the mentor:Allen, T. D. (2007). Mentoring relationships: From the perspective of the mentor. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 123-147). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
• Job Satisfaction
• Lower Burnout Rates
• Lower Turnover Intentions
• Number of Promotions
• Organizational Commitment
• Salary
• Subjective Career Success
One theoretical reason for why mentors actually have positive outcomes (especially those related to promotions and salaries) may have to do with the fact that “mentors may be rewarded by organizations because they are recognized as good organizational citizens.”Allen, T. D. (2007). Mentoring relationships: From the perspective of the mentor. In B. R. Ragins & K. E. Kram (Eds.), The handbook of mentoring at work: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 123-147). Los Angeles, CA: Sage; pg. 135.
Organizational Outcomes
Many of the outcomes seen for both the mentor and the mentee are also outcomes for the organization itself. For example, organizations benefit from employees who are motivated, satisfied, less likely to leave, and show higher performance and productivity levels. Based on these factors alone, you would think organizations would spend more time formalizing the mentoring process to ensure that all employees receive these kinds of opportunities and advancements within the organization. Furthermore, numerous studies have found a very strong return on investment for organizations who engage in formal mentoring programs, so formalized mentoring programs really do make business sense.Kaye, B., & Scheef, D. (2000, April). Mentoring. In ASTD’s, Info-line Series. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development
Coaching
As discussed at the beginning of this section, coachingThe process of providing advice, instruction, or support in an attempt to help an individual be more efficient or productive in the workplace. can be defined as the process of providing advice, instruction, or support in an attempt to help an individual be more efficient or productive in the workplace. From this perspective, the goal of coaching is to help individuals succeed in the workplace. Where the goal of mentoring is to help someone advance through a mentee’s career, coaching focuses on helping an individual engage in self-improvement in an effort to do her or his job better.
Now before we go into more detail about coaching, we should differentiate between two basic types of coaching commonly discussed in the management literature. First, we have executive coachingThe establishment of a professional relationship between a hired individual (professional coach or therapist) whose job it is to help an individual within a leadership position and that person within a leadership position become all that he or she can be within an organizational environment., or the “process of a one-on-one relationship between a professional coach and an executive (the person coached) for the purpose of enhancing behavioral change through self-awareness and learning, and thus ultimately for the success of the individual and the organization.”Baek-Kyoo, B. J., Sushko, J. S., & McLean, G. N. (2012). Multiple faces of coaching: Manager-as-coach, executive coaching, and formal mentoring. Organization Development Journal, 30, 19-38; pg. 26. In the world of executive coaching, a leader within an organization hires an executive coach for the pure purposes of improving that leader’s performance within the organization. An entire sub-field of executive coaches exist in today’s marketplace. Some executive coaches are very effective and have helped the top CEOs in the county become better leaders and achieve their organization’s goals. However, there are many charlatans that exist within this market, so we do not really recommend just hiring an executive coach on a whim.
Supervisory coachingThe communicative process of helping a subordinate improve her or his performance through direction, encouragement, and support., on the other hand, involves “an ongoing process for improving problematic work performance; helping employees recognize opportunities to improve their performance and capabilities; empowering employees to exceed prior levels of performance; and giving guidance, encouragement and support to the learner.”Baek-Kyoo, B. J., Sushko, J. S., & McLean, G. N. (2012). Multiple faces of coaching: Manager-as-coach, executive coaching, and formal mentoring. Organization Development Journal, 30, 19-38. This form of coaching involves what most people in the workplace will encounter with regards to coaching. We term this supervisory coaching because in this instance the coaching is actually being conducted by one’s supervisor in the workplace.
Three Types of Coaching
In 1948 during the American Psychological Association Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, Benjamin Bloom led a discussion about creating a common language for test developers and educators. Through a series of conference presentations from 1949 to 1953 groups met to discuss the idea of a common language, which ultimately culminated in the publication of the ground-breaking book Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; Handbook I: Cognitive Domain in 1965.Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York, NY: David McKay. In this book, Bloom and his colleagues noted that there are three primary dimensions of learning that teachers should be concerned with in the classroom: of cognitive (knowledge), psychomotor (skill), and affective (attitude). Before we explain what each of these three domains of learning are, please take a second and complete the Organizational Coaching Scale found in Note 7.53 "Organizational Coaching Scale".
Organizational Coaching Scale
This survey includes a number of statements about how you may feel about your current working condition. You will probably find that you agree with some of the statements and disagree with others, to varying extents. Please indicate your reaction to each of the statements by marking your opinion to the left of each statement according to the following scale:
Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5
1. _____My supervisor works with me to improve my on-the-job skills.
2. _____My job skills have gotten better as a result of my supervisor’s training.
3. _____My supervisor has not helped me with any job skills necessary to complete my work.
4. _____My supervisor has not attempted to correct any of my job related behaviors.
5. _____My supervisor trains new employees on any necessary skills to completely function in our workplace.
6. _____My supervisor does not work with me to improve my on the job skills.
7. _____My job skills are not improving because of a lack of training from my supervisor.
8. _____My supervisor has helped me improve my job skills.
9. _____My supervisor corrects job-related behavior problems when he or she sees them.
10. _____My supervisor makes sure all new-hires are completely trained on skills that are necessary to function in our workplace.
11. _____My supervisor makes sure I have all necessary information to complete my job.
12. _____My supervisor withholds information that could help me function better as an employee.
13. _____My supervisor makes sure my information needs are fulfilled.
14. _____My supervisor makes sure I understand what I’m doing at work.
15. _____My supervisor provides me with all the information I need to be a competent worker.
16. _____My supervisor prevents me from getting necessary information to complete my job.
17. _____My supervisor gives me all the information I need to help me function better as an employee.
18. _____My supervisor does not make sure that I understand what’s going on at work.
19. _____My supervisor does not make sure my information needs are fulfilled.
20. _____My supervisor does not make any attempt to see if I understand what is going on at work, or not.
21. _____My supervisor is concerned with whether, or not, I enjoy what I’m doing while at work.
22. _____My supervisor does not care if I think my job is dull.
23. _____My supervisor clearly is involved with trying to motivate me to be a better employee.
24. _____My supervisor wants to make sure that I’m not bored on the job.
25. _____My supervisor is only concerned with whether, or not, I get my work done.
26. _____My supervisor does not try to motivate me on the job.
27. _____My supervisor does not care if I am interested in the work at all.
28. _____My supervisor tries to make sure I’m excited to be at work.
29. _____My supervisor doesn’t care about how I feel about my job.
30. _____My supervisor creates a positive working atmosphere.
SCORING: To compute your scores follow the instructions below:
1. Skills-Based Coaching
Step One: Add scores for items 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, & 10
Step Two: Add scores for items 3, 4, 6, & 7
Step Three: Add 24 to Step 2.
Step Four: Subtract the score for Step two from the score for Step Three.
For Skills-Based Coaching, scores should be between 10 and 50. If your score is above 50, you perceive your supervisor to be teaching you the skills you need to perform your job. If your score is 29 or below, you do not perceive your supervisor as teaching you the skills you need to perform your job.
2. Cognitive-Based Coaching
Step One: Add scores for items 11, 13, 14, 15, & 17
Step Two: Add scores for items 12, 16, 18, 19, & 20
Step Three: Add 30 to Step 2.
Step Four: Subtract the score for Step two from the score for Step Three.
For Cognitive-Based Coaching, scores should be between 10 and 50. If your score is above 50, you perceive your supervisor to be providing you the knowledge you need to perform your job. If your score is 29 or below, you do not perceive your supervisor as providing you the information you need to perform your job.
3. Affective-Based Coaching
Step One: Add scores for items 21, 23, 24, 28, & 30
Step Two: Add scores for items 22, 25, 26, 27, & 29
Step Three: Add 30 to Step 2.
Step Four: Subtract the score for Step two from the score for Step Three.
For Affective-Based Coaching, scores should be between 10 and 50. If your score is above 50, you perceive your supervisor to be promoting in you a positive attitude about your job. If your score is 29 or below, you do not perceive your supervisor is either unconcerned with your attitude about your job or is actually creating a negative organizational environment.
Source: Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., Berletch, N., Powley, C., & Wehr, A. (2008). Organizational coaching as instructional communication. Human Communication, 11, 279–292.
You may be wondering what three domains of learning has to do with organizational coaching. Quite a lot actually. In a 2008 study conducted by Wrench, McCroskey, Berletch, Powley, and WehrWrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., Berletch, N., Powley, C., & Wehr, A. (2008). Organizational coaching as instructional communication. Human Communication, 11, 279-292., the researchers argued that organizational coaching is fundamentally related to learning, so examining organizational coaching in-light of the three domains of learning made conceptual sense. We should also note that the three domains of learning have been applied in other non-educational settings. For example, the three domains of learning are commonly referred to as the KSAs (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) in both training and development and human performance improvement.Biech, E. (Ed.). (2008). ASTD handbook for workplace learning professionals. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development.
Cognitive/Knowledge
The first domain of coaching is referred to as cognitive-based coachingThe coaching process associated with the acquisition or enhancement of recognition and recall of information and the development of intellectual abilities and skills., which refers to the recognition and recall of information and the development of intellectual abilities and skills. Let’s look at both parts of this definition. First, individuals undergoing cognitive coaching will be taught how to recognize and recall information that will help them perform their jobs better. This could be anything from learning how to recognize and troubleshoot problems as they arise in the workplace to more simplistic tasks like knowing who to call when you have a question. The second part of coaching involves the development of intellectual abilities and skills. Overtime, a good coach will help her or his subordinates develop themselves intellectually.
When it comes to developing someone intellectually, you want to stretch the subordinate and give them new cognitive tasks that will be a reach for the person without too much undue stress. For example, one of our colleagues had a secretary who was not technically savvy. When he became the secretary’s immediate supervisor, he decided he wanted to use an electronic calendar instead of the more traditional paper and pen calendar for keeping his meetings. While this may not seem like a big deal, this secretary needed to be coached and taught how to use the computer scheduling program. This new cognitive task was just enough of a stretch for the secretary without causing her complete frustration and a huge amount of stress.
Psychomotor/Behavior
The second type of coaching, skills-based coachingThe coaching process associated with the acquisition or enhancement a specific skill that can help someone be more productive or efficient., is one that is very important in the workplace even though it’s a domain of learning often overlooked in the educational system. Psychomotor learning emphasizes “some muscular or motor skill, some manipulation of material objects, or some act which requires neuromuscular co-ordination.”Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives; the classification of educational goals. Handbook II: The affective domain. New York, NY: David McKay, p. 7 The goal of psychomotor learning is the acquisition of a specific skill that can help someone be more productive or efficient. Think back across your own life. You’ve learned many skills that make you more productive and efficient in life. Maybe you’ve learned to use a computer keyboard and no longer need to look at your fingers while typing. Maybe you’ve learned how to use the bells and whistles of a specific software program like Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite. When we learn these skills, they clearly involve cognitive power, but we refer to them as psychomotor because it’s the manipulation of your body to complete a task, which is a fundamentally different type of learning. Think about when you learned to ride a bicycle. You could have all the knowledge in the world about gravity and the engineering of a bicycle, but just having the cognitive knowledge is not enough to get you upright and moving down a road successfully.
A great deal of coaching in the workplace involves psychomotor coaching because the professional world is filled with skills that workers need to learn. Everything from learning how to put together a burger at a fast food restaurant to computer programming involves learning specific skills sets in the workplace.
Affective/Attitude
The final type of coaching that happens in the workplace relates to the affective nature of one’s work. The affective domain of coaching is one where “objectives which emphasize a feeling tone, an emotion, or a degree of acceptance or rejection. Affective objectives vary from simple acceptance to selected phenomena to complex but inherently consistent qualities of character and conscience [learning about] interests, attitudes, appreciations, values, emotional sets or biases.”Krathwohl, D. R., Bloom, B. S., & Masia, B. B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives; the classification of educational goals. Handbook II: The affective domain. New York, NY: David McKay, p. 7 In other words, affective coachingThe coaching process associated with the acquisition or enhancement positive emotional reactions to an individual’s work and working environment. examines an individual’s emotional reaction to her or his work and working environment.
First, affective coaching involves ensuring that one’s subordinate has a positive attitude towards the work he or she is accomplishing. When subordinates do not see the value of their work or how their work fits into the larger picture of the organization, it’s very common that they will become disillusioned and not be optimal workers. As such, supervisors have a responsibility to ensure that their subordinates maintain a positive attitude about the work. In fact, subordinates often take their cues from supervisors with regards to how they emotionally approach a task. If a supervisor assigns a task with a grimace on her or his face, then of course the subordinate is going to approach that same task with some trepidation and disappointment. Ultimately, supervisors, through their coaching capacity, need to check in with subordinates and see how they are emotionally reacting to their work.
Second, affective coaching involves ensuring that employees are working in and helping to create a positive working environment. In some organizations where supervisors are removed from their subordinates, they may have no idea when an organizational climate is becoming toxic. For our purposes, we want supervisors who are tied into the organization and actually go about fostering and encouraging a positive working climate for their subordinates.
Outcomes of Coaching
Now that we’ve examined the basic types of coaching in the workplace, let’s talk about some of the research that’s been conducted examining organizational coaching. In the original study that created the Organizational Coaching Scale, the researchers found that individuals who had supervisors who utilized all three forms of coaching were more motivated, satisfied, and productive.Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., Berletch, N., Powley, C., & Wehr, A. (2008). Organizational coaching as instructional communication. Human Communication, 11, 279-292. Furthermore, subordinates who reported having coaching supervisors reported fewer disengagement strategies. Disengagement strategies are strategies that an individual uses to decrease closeness or termination relationships in the workplace.Sias, P. M., & Perry, T. (2004). Disengaging from workplace relationships. Human Communication Research, 30, 589-602. In essence, people who have a positive coaching relationship with their supervisor feel more connected to their organizations, so they are less likely to start to disengage from their relationships in the workplace. Furthermore, a subsequent study examining cognitive, skill, and affective coaching in an organization found that individuals who received all three types of coaching were less likely to engage in latent dissent in the workplace (see Chapter 5 for a refresher on organizational dissent).Berletch, N., Powley, C., Wrench, J. S., & Wehr, A. (2007, April). The interrelationships between positive feedback and coaching in the workplace. Paper presented at the Eastern Communication Association’s Convention, Providence, RI.
Overall, the research results clearly indicate that organizational coaching is an important part of the success of an organization. For this reason, supervisors should create clear strategies for how they go about cognitive, skill, and affective coaching to ensure that it is happening in a systematic manner. Too often, coaching is left to chance in the modern workplace to the organization’s detriment.
Key Takeaways
• Differentiate between the terms “mentoring” and “coaching.”
• Explain Gregory Dawson and Richard Watson three stages of mentoring. The first stage, the hierarchical years, occurs after a protégé has gotten and a job and the mentor’s job is to direct and guide a mentee through corporate life. The second stage, the junior/senior colleague years, marked by a period when the mentor and mentee redefine their relationship based on the needs and goals of those involved in the relationship. During this stage, the mentor-mentee relationship changes from a directive approach to mentoring (where the mentor is advising and supervising the mentee) to one that is marked by mutual respect and collaboration. The final stage of mentoring, the trusted sage years, occurs when the mentor and mentee are no longer bound by notions of organizational hierarchy and truly develop a working friendship with one another.
• Pamela Kalbfleisch created mentoring enactment theory as a way to explain the establishment and enactment of mentoring relationships within organizational settings. The theory examines a series of conversational goals and communication strategies that both mentors and mentees utilize within a mentoring relationship. The nine propositions proposed in the theory can be seen in Note 7.53 "Organizational Coaching Scale".
• Executive coaching occurs when an individual, the leader, hires an external consultant who functions in the position as paid-for mentor (usually a professional coach or therapist specializing in leader development). The goal of executive coaching is to help the leader become all the he or she can be within her or his leadership position. Supervisory coaching, on the other hand, includes the day-to-day work that a person in a supervisory position does with someone in a subordinate position. The goal of supervisory coaching is to help the subordinate improve her or his performance through direction, encouragement, and support.
• Famed educational researcher Benjamin Bloom and a group of colleagues first noted there were three domains of learning. McCroskey, Berletch, Powley, and Wehr furthered these notions of learning domains but attaching them to supervisory coaching. The three forms of coaching are: cognitive-based coaching (recognition and recall of information and the development of intellectual abilities and skills), skills-based coaching (acquisition or enhancement of a specific skill that can help someone be more productive or efficient), and affective coaching (acquisition or enhancement positive emotional reactions to an individual’s work and working environment).
Exercises
1. Think of a time when you’ve been mentored? At what stages do you think your mentoring relationship reached? Did you get all the way to trusted-sage? Why or why not?
2. Apply Pamela Kalbfleisch’s mentoring enactment theory to one of your own mentoring relationships (either as a mentor or mentee).
3. Complete the Organizational Coaching Scale in Note 7.53 "Organizational Coaching Scale". Based on the results from your analysis of your supervisor’s coaching behavior, what areas do you think your supervisor could improve on? Why do you think your supervisor coaches you in the way he or she does? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/06%3A_Leader_and_Follower_Behaviors_and_Perspectives/6.04%3A_Mentoring_and_Coaching.txt |
Real World Case Study
The following case is based on a consulting experience of one of our colleagues. Names and institutions have been altered for this case.
Janet, an organizational consultant, was approached to serve as an executive coach for a financial wizard at an auditing the firm named Jerry. Jerry had everything senior management was looking for in a star employee. His projects came in on time and always under budget using fewer company resources than his counterparts. However, there was one problem the company had with Jerry—no one wanted to work with Jerry. Jerry was known for belittling and yelling at subordinates who did not turn in assignments on time and up to Jerry’s high standards.
Janet was contacted to work one-on-one with Jerry and help him develop various interaction skills. The company wanted to keep Jerry, but it needed Jerry to start acting and playing like someone on a team. Janet’s first contact with Jerry went about as bad as one would expect. Jerry didn’t understand why Janet was there and really thought the whole coaching process was a waste of money. Furthermore, Jerry really believed that there was nothing wrong with how he communicated with others. In his own words, “I’m just honest. I may be blunt, but that’s because I don’t have time to play wet nurse to a bunch of junior colleagues who shouldn’t be in corporate America.” Over time, Jerry became more and more aggressive as their coaching sessions continued. In fact, Jerry showed a clear resistance to coaching and the reports of aggressive behavior from his subordinates to human resources escalated.
1. Can all employees be coached?
2. If you were Janet, how would you handle this situation?
3. Is it every appropriate for a consultant to fire a client who just has no desire to change?
4. If you were Jerry’s boss, how would you handle his behavior and his lack of a desire to change his behavior?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. Jonathan is a leadership researcher. He is currently trying to determine if an individual’s communication apprehension (a commonly study communication trait) impacts the effectiveness of an individual’s leadership within a nonprofit. Which approach to leadership is Jonathan employing?
1. functional
2. relational
3. situational
4. trait
5. transformational
2. Tika’s new boss is so much fun to work for. Basically, the job is almost like a party on most days. Her boss is more concerned with building morale and relationships than micromanaging people to ensure that the group gets their work done. According to Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Grid, what type of leaders is Tika’s new boss?
1. authority-compliance
2. country club
3. impoverished
4. middle-of-the-road
5. team
3. Which of the following is NOT an outcome of a leader-member exchange relationship?
1. greater follower organizational commitment
2. greater follower organizational commitment
3. greater follower organizational participation
4. lower voluntary turnover intentions of a follower
5. lower follower exhibition of organizational citizenship behaviors
4. Joaquin is a definite go-getter. Whiel Joaquin is one of the most productive individuals at X-corp, he also realizes that X-corp may not necessary be the best organization for him to escalate up the corporate ladder. As such, he’s always checking want-ads on Moster.com and LinkedIn. What type of follower would Roger Adair classify Joaquin as?
1. disciple
2. disengaged
3. disgruntled
4. doer
5. dramatic
5. Bob has a phone call every Monday morning with a paid consultant. The consultant’s job is to help Bob, the CEO of a small tech-firm in California, direct his company’s future and help Bob realize his own goals. What type of coaching is Bob involved in?
1. supervisory-coaching
2. skills-based coaching
3. executive coaching
4. affective coaching
5. cognitive-based coaching
1. A
2. B
3. E
4. D
5. C | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/06%3A_Leader_and_Follower_Behaviors_and_Perspectives/6.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
To convey its identity to the world, however, the organization must first establish its own firm sense of who “we” are. And because “we” means everyone, then organizational identity is not just a corporate matter to be decided by management. To carry off its corporate image, individual organization members—from executives to employees—must buy into and identify with the organization.
• 7.1: Introduction to Organizational Identity and Diversity
In this chapter, then, we have paired identity and diversity as two aspects of organizational life that exist in a tension which must be successfully balanced. This is true for leaders who must manage public impressions about the organization and, simultaneously, who must manage employees so that they identity sufficiently with the organization to support the desired corporate identity. But this need to manage the tension between identity and diversity is also true for individual organization me
• 7.2: Identity and the Organization
Because it raises questions of ontology, epistemology and axiology, the concept of identity evokes debate among organizational communication scholars which reflects larger controversies in the field. One review noted that, while “interest in concepts of organizational identity has grown” and “the literature is expanding rapidly,” the notion “has been subjected to much scrutiny and debate, [and] definitions and conceptualizations of the topic remain essentially contested.”
• 7.3: Identity and the Organization Member
While organizational identity may be developed by an organization, organizational identification may be developed by its members. In introducing their concept of organizational identification, Blake Ashforth and Fred Mael started with social identity theory—which holds that one’s self-concept combines a “personal identity” based on individual traits with a “social identity” based on group classifications—and originated the concept of organizational identification.
• 7.4: Diversity and the Organization
• 7.E: Exercises
Thumbnail: Organizational Identity and Culture: Hatch & Schultz. Image used with permiussion (CC BY-SA-NC; anonymous).
07: Organizational Identity and Diversity
Who Are “We”?
It’s a weeknight, you’ve worked late, and you don’t feel like making dinner when you get home. So you de to grab a bite on the way. Having opted for fast food, you consider the choices. There’s the leading national burger chain; if you go there, then you know exactly what you’ll get no matter which location you visit. One rival burger chain, however, works hard at promoting a reputation for higher-quality meat, while another advertises higher-quality sandwiches. Then there are the alternatives to hamburgers: a national chain that proffers a home-style menu; another that promotes chicken as a kind of anti-burger; yet another that specializes in Mexican-themed foods. Among all these different chains, their corporate identities have been respectively conveyed through the symbols of a clown, a king, a redhead, a colonel, a cow, and a dog.
This scenario highlights some basic issues of organizational identity. Each of the organizations referenced above is trying to foster a unique identity in a world already saturated with competing messages. George Cheney and Lars Christensen likened this challenge to that of a shipwrecked castaway who, after putting a message in a bottle, goes to throw it in the ocean but “cannot see the water [because] it is covered with messages in bottles.”Cheney, G., & Christensen, L. T. (2001). Organizational identity: Linkages between internal and external communication. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The nmew handbook of organizational communication (pp. 231–269). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; pg. 240. To convey its identity to the world, however, the organization must first establish its own firm sense of who “we” are. And because “we” means everyone, then organizational identity is not just a corporate matter to be decided by management. To carry off its corporate image, individual organization members—from executives to employees—must buy into and identify with the organization.
Then, too, if organizational identity starts with members and is then projected to others, the traditional distinction between “external” and “internal” communication becomes blurred. Communication activities—including advertising, marketing, and public relations—that convey an organization’s identity to external audiences are, in fact, the flip side of internal communication activities by which members make sense of who “we” are. The concept of identity casts organizational communication as a dialectic: organization members negotiate who “we” are; that identity is negotiated with the organization’s environment; and then the organization adjusts its identity in response to how it is perceived. To return to our opening scenario, the external activities by which each fast food chain communicates its identity to consumers cannot be divorced from the internal communications by which that same identity is fostered among members of each organization. Thus, the basic issues of organizational identity can be expressed by a series of questions:
• How do communications between members of an organization develop a sense of who “we” are?
• As this sense is developed, how is organizational identity maintained and transmitted to new members?
• How is this identity conveyed to persons who are, at least in a formal sense, outside the organization?
The first question is of greater interest to managers of new organizations, while the second and third are concerns for managers of established organizations. Indeed, organizational identification is a prime corporate objective as management strives to cultivate employees who feel strongly attached and loyal to the organization and its values. At the same time, leaders engage in impression management to engender positive feelings among the various publics—from customers, to shareholders, to the media—on whose goodwill the organization depends. Nevertheless, the managerial drive to maintain a stable corporate identity and foster strong organizational identification among employees has certain risks. Too much homogeneity can cause an organization to be set in its ways and respond too slowly to changes in the marketplace; for example, IBM ruled the computer world through the 1980s but its organizational identity as a maker of “business machines” may have caused it to miss the personal-computer revolution. Moreover, too much homogeneity in a workforce can lead to groupthink and deny organizations the diverse mix of employees and viewpoints that boosts creativity and leads to better decisions.
In this chapter, then, we have paired identity and diversity as two aspects of organizational life that exist in a tension which must be successfully balanced. This is true for leaders who must manage public impressions about the organization and, simultaneously, who must manage employees so that they identity sufficiently with the organization to support the desired corporate identity. But this need to manage the tension between identity and diversity is also true for individual organization members.
Since the Industrial Revolution and then with accelerating force in the twentieth century, organizations have become major sources of personal identity for many people. In traditional societies, the bonds of local community and local authority supplied stable roles for people. In modern societies, however, people derive a major part of their identities from the organizations with which they affiliate. Perhaps you know people who identify so completely with an organization that its values form their personal sense of moral duty. Perhaps you have experienced this feeling yourself about a sports team on which you played, a church or mosque to which you belong, a club that you joined, or even the college you now attend. For individuals, the tension between organizational identity and diversity is sometimes called the work-life conflict. At work you want to be a valued “team player” who helps to achieve organizational goals, and yet you also want to retain your own identity. First, you desire to give your employer the advantage of your own unique perspectives; second, you understand the personal need to “get a life.”
Then, too, the social contract between employers and employees has changed over the past two generations in response to globalization. Until the 1970s people generally believed that employees who strongly and loyally identified with their organizations would be rewarded with job security and a reasonable expectation of a lifelong career. Today, employees realize they have no such guarantees and do not expect to spend their entire adult lives working for a single company. Under this new social contract you must balance the level of organizational identification needed to do your work effectively and gain satisfaction from your employment, with the knowledge that you must build a personal “brand” that is separate from your current organization. Why? Chances are that you will be working for another company someday. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/07%3A_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity/7.01%3A_Introduction_to_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity.txt |
Learning Objectives
• See how different approaches to the nature of organizations lead to different perspectives on organizational identity.
• Understand the concept of organizational identity, both its roots in theories of individual identity and how the literature on organizational identity has developed to the present.
• Differentiate between organizational identity, organizational culture and organizational image, and grasp the dynamic relationships between them.
• See how organizational identity can be unstable and mutable, changing and adapting in response to external feedback or events that challenge an organization’s image and reputation.
• Understand the danger of self-referential auto-communication and the ethical challenges posed.
Because it raises questions of ontology, epistemology and axiology (see Chapter 4), the concept of identity evokes debate among organizational communication scholars which reflects larger controversies in the field. One review noted that, while “interest in concepts of organizational identity has grown” and “the literature is expanding rapidly,” the notion “has been subjected to much scrutiny and debate, [and] definitions and conceptualizations of the topic remain essentially contested.”Seidl, D. (2005). Organizational identity and self-transformation: An autopoietic perspective. Burlington, VT: Ashgate; pg. 67.
From a postmodern perspective the very concepts of identity and individuality are suspect. Where Western philosophy views each person as a self-contained unit who is in charge of his or her intentions, postmodernists regard each person as “site” where the flux of larger historical and cultural discourses conditions our thoughts and intentions. From a critical perspective, on the other hand, the concept of identity is entangled with societal structures of power that “colonize” individual consciousnesses in order to make the dominant order seem normal and natural. These two approaches, postmodern and critical, may also be extended from personal identity to organizational identity. Postmodernists would question the assumption that organizations have autonomous identities and instead view organizations as sites where larger historical discourses compete. And critical scholars might analyze how management cultivates an organizational identity that legitimates its own interests and, by making those interests seem the natural order of things, brings workers under its control and domination.
The concept of organizational identity also raises a question similar to one we explored in Chapter 6 about organizational culture. In other words, is organizational identity just one attribute, among a set of many different attributes, that an organization “has,” a variable that leaders can “manage” to boost performance? (This would be the postpositive or functionalist view.) Or should identity be seen as a phenomenon that emerges from members’ communicative interactions, and thus part of what an organization “is”? (This would be the interpretive view.) Table \(1\) below suggests how the four approaches to organizations—postpositive, interpretive, critical, and postmodern—might view organizational identity.See also Gioia, D. A. (1998). From individual to organizational identity. In D. A. Whetten & P. C. Godfrey (Eds.), Identity in organizations” Building theory through conversations (pgs. 17–31). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Table \(1\) Approaches to Organizational Identity
Approach to Organizations View of Organizational Identity
Functionalist Identity is one of the attributes that an organization “has” and may be managed to improve organizational performance
Interpretive Identity is an emergent phenomenon that arises from the social and communicative interactions between organization members
Critical Identity is a tool that management can manipulate to universalize its interests (i.e., equate “company interests” with managerial interests)
Postmodern Identity is a modern conceit; an organization does not have a unique “self” for its intentions are conditioned by larger historical discourses; if anything, organizations are fragmented into multiple identities
We will explore postmodern and critical views of organizational identity in greater detail later in the chapter. But we start with an interpretive perspective since the concept of organizational identity originated in that tradition. To get a grip on the concept, we begin with two basic metaphors: the organization as a biological organism, and the organization as a person. The first metaphor will help us grasp the organizational aspect of identity and the second to comprehend the communicative aspect.
Two Metaphors
As we learned in Chapter 4, systems theory is based on the metaphor that an organization can be likened to biological organism. From that perspective, we can understand how a living thing must somehow maintain a boundary between itself and the environment. The boundary may be permeable as resources pass between the organism and the environment. But if there is no boundary then the organism would cease to exist as an identifiable entity. Now let us apply the metaphor to organizations.
We do not speak of a “civilization” as an “organization”; a civilization is, practically speaking, unbounded. On the other hand, a basic function of any organization is to continually organize a boundary between itself and its environment. Establishing a boundary is accomplished in two ways. First, an organization sets up formal hierarchies: for example, a company adopts a form of ownership and a corporate structure, sets hiring and firing procedures for determining who can be an employee, and establishes locations where work takes place. But since all organizations establish formal boundaries, something is still missing: What makes “us” different from “them”? Thus, a second way that an organization creates and maintains a boundary is by developing a sense of “who we are” that distinguishes it from other organizations. This second type of boundary is one way to define the concept of organizational identity. From this standpoint, then, one basic organizing function of an organization is to continually organize an identity that distinguishes it from the environment of other organizations.
Our second metaphor likens an organization to a person. More than a century ago, Charles Horton Cooley asserted that identity is constructed through language and has both an individual and a social aspect; indeed, identity is partly shaped as each of us mentally constructs a looking-glass selfA term coined by Charles Horton Cooley, the looking-glass self is a mental image of how you think others perceive you and which drives the social aspect of your self. based on how we believe others perceive us.Cooley, C. H. (1922). Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner. Writing at about the same time as Cooley, George Herbert Mead likewise described how speech is the means by which each person develops a unique sense of self.Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. He reasoned that if each human lived alone then there would be no need for a “self.” The need arises from the fact that humans live in societies. Like Cooley, he conceptualized the self as having individual and social aspects; Mead called the individual element the “I”As first described by George Herbert Mead, the “I” is the individual aspect of your self and the “me” is the social aspect of your self. and the social element the “me.” The “I” is the spontaneous and creative self; the “me” is the looking-glass self (a term Mead borrowed from Cooley) a person constructs by imagining how a “generalized other” (a composite mental picture of society) perceives him or her. Acquiring and maintaining a “self” comes through negotiating it with others. In turn, negotiation is accomplished via language and talk—by communicating. Mead held that each person negotiates a sense of self by imagining what others think of him or her and then negotiating a self that will be accepted by others. A later theorist, Erving Goffman, built on Cooley’s and Mead’s theories by likening humans’ everyday relations to a drama; people are actors who each present a faceAccording to Erving Goffman, constructing your self is like a drama; that is, you are like an actor who presents a face to an audience and, as in a play, stages a life-story that you hope will gain social acceptance. and stage a (continually updated and amended) life story that will gain them social approval. The notion that the events of your life folded in a logical progression and can be told as a sequential narrative is really a conceit; events happen randomly so that, in fact, you must impose a “plot” upon them. And yet, just as in a play, your “audience” participates by suspending its disbelief in order to benefit from larger truths. So to play the game, save face with others and feel good about yourself, you must have coherent and satisfying life story to tell.Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. If we extend these ideas to organizations, we can grasp how development of an organizational identity is a process of communicatively (and continually) negotiating (and adjusting) an organizational “self” by telling a coherent story that the organization’s members and publics will accept.
How people use communication to negotiate and manage their identities is a vital field of research of research in communication studies. William Cupach and Tadasu Imahori proposed an Identity Management Theory to explain the communication strategies that individuals use to manage their identities, or “support” their “faces,” at various stages of their interpersonal relationships.Cupach, W. R., & Imahori, T. T. (1993). Identity management theory: Communication competition in intercultural episodes and relationships. In R. L. Wiseman & J. Koester (Eds.), Intercultural communication competence (pp. 112–131). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. The impact of group affinities (family, gender, ethnic, cultural) and intergroup encounters on identity is explored by Stella Ting-Toomey’s Identity Negotiation Theory.Ting-Toomey, S. (1993). Communication resourcefulness: An identity negotiation perspective. In R. L. Wiseman & J. Koester (Eds.), Intercultural communication competence (pgs. 72–111). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (2005) etc Michael Hecht and his colleagues look at identity as a layered phenomenon that has individual, social, and communal properties which are enacted via communication.Hecht, M. L., Warren, J. R., Jung, E., & Krieger, J. L. (2005). The communication theory of identity: Development, theoretical perspective, and future directions. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Theorizing about intercultural communication (pgs. 257–278). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Interest in exploring the formation of individual and group identities through communication arose in the 1980s and has remained strong. Not surprisingly, this movement also stimulated scholarly interest in theorizing the dynamics of organizational identity.
The Concept of Organizational Identity
Through the biological metaphor we grasped how an organization must establish boundaries, even if permeable and blurred, in order for the notion of an “organization” to have any meaning. And through likening the organization to a person, we saw how these boundaries must be communicatively negotiated in ways that distinguish the organization’s story from those of other organizations in a socially acceptable manner. We chose this way of introducing our topic because, as Dennis Gioia observed, the “important features of individual identity supply the basis for the extension of the notion to organizations.”Gioia, D., op cit., pg. 20. Blake Ashforth and Fred Mael similarly noted that identity has been researched at the level of the individual, group and, more recently, the organization because of the many parallels across the three levels.”Ashforth, B. E., & Mael, F. (1996). Organizational identity and strategy as a context for the individual. Advances in Strategic Management, 13, 19–64.
So we turn now to the literature on organizational identityIn Stuart Albert and David Whetten’s original conception, organizational identity has three dimensions as its reflects the central character of an organization and its own claims of distinctiveness, and as it endures over time; subsequent scholars have explored how organizational identity can change and how an organization can have multiple identities., a concept that originated in 1985 with Stuart Albert and David Whetten. They defined organizational identity as a tripartite combination of “the central character of an organization” (e.g., its values, practices, services, products, structure, ownership), the distinctive qualities that it claims to possess, and the enduring manifestation of its identity over time.Albert, S. A, & Whetten, D. A. (1985). Organizational identity. Research in Organizational Behavior, 7, 263–295; pg. 292. According to this definition, then, the fast food chains described in the opening scenario of this chapter have formed identities that bring together their central characters as retail restaurants operated through a franchise business model, their individual claims to distinction vis-à-vis the other chains, and their consistency in sticking with their respective identities. Albert and Whetten did not suggest leaders “decide” the identities of their organizations. Rather, identity formation is an interactive process in which outsiders voice perceptions of an organization, so that the organization’s definition of itself is influenced as it considers this feedback and reflects on how it fits into its environment.Ibid, pg. 273.
Their conception was modeled on the processes of individual identity formation theorized by Cooley, Mead, and Goffman. Writing a few years later, Ashforth and Mael further grounded organizational identity in social identity theoryProposed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, social identity theory (SIT) holds that one’s self-concept combines a “personal identity” based on individual traits with a “social identity” based on group classifications. (SIT).Ashforth, B. E., & Mael, F. (1989). Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of Management Review, 14, 20–39; pg. 21 This psychological theory, proposed in the 1970s by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, holds that one’s self-concept combines a “personal identity” based on individual traits with a “social identity” based on group classifications.Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 38–43). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. At the time, most social psychologists believed a group identity was generated through competition with other groups; Tajfael and Turner contended that a group identity can emerge when members feel like insiders. SIT thus provided an insight that, through Ashford and Mael’s application, aided in further developing the concept of organizational identity. As David Seidl noted, SIT explained how “the individual member uses descriptions of the organization as part of his [sic] own self-descriptions” and thereby opened the door “to apply psychological identity theories to organizations.”Seidl, D., op cit., pg. 72.
Since the work of Albert and Whetten and Ashford and Mael in the 1980s, the literature on organizational identity has continued to expand. Over three decades, the concept has moved from Albert and Whetten’s original thesis—that organizational identity is central, distinctive, and enduring—to a more nuanced view: identity is adaptive, even unstable, and exists in dynamic relation with external audiences’ and internal members’ perceptions of an organization. In particular, researchers question whether identity can be seen as enduring when today’s organizations exist in a world of accelerating change and many are now set up as loosely structured networks. Recently, Mary Jo Hatch and Majken SchultzHatch, M. J., & Schultze, M. (2004). Organizational identity: A reader. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. summarized the major developments in theorizing organizational identity, which are presented in Table \(1\) below.
Table \(1\) ROOTS IN SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYTheoretical Developments: Hatch & Schultz
CooleyCooley, C. H., op cit. 1902 The self has both individual and social aspects. The social aspect is constructed as a “looking-glass self” when a person considers how others may perceive him or her.
MeadMead, op. cit. 1934 The self is comprised of an “I” (the spontaneous and creative aspects of self) and a “me” (the looking-glass self that imagines how it is perceived by the “generalized others”).
GoffmanGoffman, op cit. 1959 The self is a “face” that each person “presents” to others. Negotiating and maintaining the self is like a drama; a person strives to present a face that will be accepted by an audience of others.
Tajfel & TurnerTajfel & Turner, op cit. 1979 One’s self-concept combines a personal identity based on individual traits with a social identity based on group classifications. Group identities can emerge as members feel like insiders.
Brewer & GardnerBrewer, M. B., & Gardner, W. (1996). Who is this “we”? Levels of collective identity and self representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 83–93. 1996 The self can be analyzed at three levels: personal self-concept, relational self-concept, and collective self-concept.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT
Albert & WhettenAlbert & Whetten, op cit. 1985 Originated concept of organizational identity, theorized as a combination of an organization’s central character, the distinctive qualities it claims to possess, and the enduring manifestation of an identity over time.
SchwartzSchwartz, H. S. (1987). Anti-social actions of committed organizational participants: An existential psychoanalytic perspective. Organization Studies, 8, 327–340. 1987 Proposed that research on organizational identity can be pursued through a psychoanalytic framework.
Ashforth & MaelAshforth & Mael, Social identity theory, op cit. 1989 Applied Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory to organization studies and introduced the concept of “organizational identification” to describe how individual members identify with an organization.
AlvessonAlvesson, M. (1990). Organization: From substance to image? Organization Studies, 11, 373–394. 1990 Introduced the concept of “organizational image” as an aspect of organizational identity.
Dutton & DukerichDutton, J. E., & Dukerich, J. M. (1991). Keeping an eye on the mirror: Image and identity in organizational adaptation. Academy of Management Journal, 34, 517–514. 1991 Investigated how organizational identities adapt in response to an organization’s environment and concerns for how it is perceived.
Ginzel, Kramer & SuttonGinzel, L. E., Kramer, R. M., & Sutton, R. I. (1993). Organizational impression management as a reciprocal influence process: The neglected role of the organizational audience. Research in Organizational Behavior, 15, 227–266. 1993 Adapted Goffman’s notion of impression management to organizations, thus envisioning impression management not as merely a managerial function but as a negotiation between an organization and its audiences.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: MULTIPLE IDENTITIES
Pratt & RafaeliPratt, M. G., & Rafaeli, A. (1997). Organizational dress as a symbol of multilayered social identities. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 862–898. 1997 Organization members manage multiple identities; for example, their identities as members of a specific organization and their identities as members of their professional community.
Golden-Biddle & RaoGolden-Biddle, K., & Rao, H. (1997). Breaches in the Boardroom: Organizational identity and conflicts of commitment in a nonprofit organization. Organization Science, 8, 593–611. 1997 Different segments of an organization may have different identities, which may lead to “hybrid identities” as members combine different (and sometimes conflicting) identities.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: STABILITY AND CHANGE
Gioia, Schultz & CorleyGioia, D. A., Schultze, M., & Corley, K. G. (2000). Organizational identity, image, and adaptive instability. Academy of Management Review, 25, 63–81. 2000 Contrary to Albert and Whetten’s description of organizational identity as enduring, identity is dynamically unstable and adaptive. The label given to an organization may be stable, but the meaning of the label changes.
Hatch & SchultzHatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (2002). The dynamics of organizational identity. Human Relations, 55, 989–1018. 2002 Organizational identity is formed, maintained, and transformed through the dynamic interaction of organizational identity, organizational image, and organizational culture.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: NARRATIVE AND DISCOURSE
Czarniawska-JoergesCzarniuawska-Joerges, B. (1997). Narratives of individual and organizational identities. Communication Yearbook, 17, 193–221. 1997 Organizational identity may be analyzed as a narrative production or a story that an organization tells to gain acceptance.
Alvesson & WillmottAlvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 619–644. 2002 Managerial interests attempt to regulate organizational identity in order to “produce” an “appropriate” member and thus maintain control.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: AUDIENCES
Elsbach & KramerElsbach, K. D., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Members’ response to organizational identity threats: Encountering and countering the Business Week rankings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 442–476. 1996 Threats to organizational identity (e.g., criticism in the media) prompt members to respond with various strategies to affirm and repair the threatened identity and thus restore their own social identities.
Cheney & ChristensenCheney & Christensen, op. cit. 2001 An organization’s internal and external communication is linked through its identity. How an organization sees itself and believes others see it will affect corporate issue management.
To get a sense of where the theory of organizational identity is headed, consider how fast food chains have been transformed over the years. In the 1960s and 70s when families seldom ate out, McDonald’s advertising proclaimed “You Deserve a Break Today.” Back then its main rival, Burger King, trumpeted the slogan “Special Orders Don’t Upset Us” to reassure moms that their finicky kids would not balk at going out to dinner. Television commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken were aimed at mothers who could enjoy an occasional respite from the stove by putting a ready-made, home-style meal on the family dinner table. Today, of course, families eat out regularly and fast fare, rather than home cooking, sets consumer taste preferences. As their environment has changed, the chains have adapted their identities—and are adapting again, even now, in response to concerns about “McDonaldization” and obesity. With people spending more time and eating more meals in fast food establishments, all of the major chains are cultivating identities akin to comfortable sit-down restaurants with quality menus.
A further challenge for research on organizational identity is a problem that has confronted those who study organizational culture. As we learned in Chapter 6, the idea of organizational culture was popularized in the 1980s by the business press and, at the same time, separate literatures developed in management science (taking the view that an organization “has” a culture which can be managed) and organization studies (taking the view that an organization “is” a culture). A similar situation exists in the expanding literature on organizational identity. The business press has offered popularized notions of organizational (or corporate) identity (or image); the management science literature has explored how organization leaders can form, maintain, and transform identity; and the organization studies literature—as seen in Table 8.2 above—has investigated identity as a phenomenon that emerges through social interaction. Through it all, terms such as organizational identity, corporate identity, organizational image, corporate image, organizational culture, and corporate culture have assumed different meanings to different scholars and researchers.
Hatch and Schultz attempted to sort out and synthesize these literatures with a theory that not only distinguishes the differences between identity, image and culture, but shows how each dynamically impacts on the other. Along the way, they put forth a theory of how organizational identity is formed, maintained, and transformed.
Identity, Image, Culture
While the term organizational identity is common in the literature of organization studies, Hatch and Schultz found that the term corporate identity appears frequently in the literature on managerial strategy and marketing. Upon review, they discovered that the term “organizational identity” typically connoted something that was transmitted internally via interpersonal communication and was shared by all organization members. In contrast, “corporate identity” often connoted a managerial perspective that was transmitted to external stakeholders via mediated communication. But “instead of choosing between corporate and organizational identity” as a preferred term, Hatch and Schultz “advocate combining the understandings . . . into a single concept of identity defined at the defined at the organizational level of analysis.”Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (2000). Scaling the Tower of Babel: Relational differences between identity, image, and culture in organizations. In M. Schultz, M. J. Hatch & M. H. Larsen (Eds.), The expressive organization: Linking identity, reputation, and the corporate brand (pp. 13–35). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; pg. 17. Their proposal is grounded in the notion, described at the outset of this chapter, of organizational identity as a dialectic phenomenon in which internal sense-making about “who we are” interacts dynamically with the perceptions of external stakeholders.
To construct a concept of organizational identity that unifies its internal and external aspects, Hatch and Schultz’s began by defining what identity is not. They observed in the organizational literature that identity and image were often linked, as were identityand culture. But is identity synonymous with image? Or is it synonymous with culture? And if not, what are the differences? To spell them out Hatch and Schultz delineated, as illustrated in Table \(1\) below, how the concepts might be distinguished.
Table \(1\) Identity, Image, and Culture: Hatch & Schultz
Distinguishing Culture and Identity Distinguishing Identity and Image
CULTURE IDENTITY IDENTITY IMAGE
Contextual Textual Internal External
taken-for-granted assumptions and meanings that shape everyday organizational life narrative of organization whose “text” its members “read” and shapes sense of “who we are” perspective on the organization held by its own members perspective on the organization held by its external stakeholders
Tacit Explicit Self Other
taken-for-granted assumptions and meanings that do not require conscious reflection reflections by members about the meaning of the organization which occur at a conscious level perspective held by insiders who regard the organization as a “self” perspective held by outsiders who regard the organization as an “other”
Emergent Instrumental Singularity Multiplicity
members’ own local constructions of symbols out of organizational artifacts and meanings use of organizational symbols and artifacts to express and communicate “who we are” perspective of insiders who interpret the organization based primarily on the organization as a source perspective of outsiders who interpret the organization based on multiple sources of information
Organizational identityIn Stuart Albert and David Whetten’s original conception, organizational identity has three dimensions as its reflects the central character of an organization and its own claims of distinctiveness, and as it endures over time; subsequent scholars have explored how organizational identity can change and how an organization can have multiple identities., then, is according to Hatch and Shultz the internal perspective of members who identify with the organizational “self” as they “read” its narrative, base their interpretations on internal information, reflect consciously on its meaning, and deploy symbols and artifacts to express their collective identity. Organizational cultureTo distinguish organizational culture from organizational identity, Hatch and Schultz described culture as emerging from members’ symbolic constructions to form unconsciously accepted assumptions and meanings that shape everyday organizational life. Organizational image is the perspective held by external stakeholders who view the organization as “other” to themselves and interpret the organization based not only on the organization itself but on multiple sources. emerges from members’ symbolic constructions to form unconsciously accepted assumptions and meanings that shape everyday organizational life. Organizational imageTo distinguish organizational image from organizational identity, Hatch and Schultz defined image as a perspective held by external stakeholders who view the organization as “other” to themselves and interpret the organization based not only on the organization itself but on multiple sources. is the perspective held by external stakeholders who view the organization as “other” to themselves and interpret the organization based not only on the organization itself but on multiple sources.
By these definitions, Hatch and Schultz mark out organizational identity, culture, and image as distinct phenomena. Nevertheless, these phenomena do not operate in isolation but exist in dynamic relationships by which identity and culture, and identity and image, influence one another. Their Organizational Identity Dynamics Model holds that identity and culture are related as conscious “reflecting embeds identity in culture” and “identity expresses cultural understandings,” and that identity and image are related as “expressed identity leavers impressions on others and “identity mirrors the images of others.”Hatch & Schultz, The dynamics of organizational identity, op cit.; pg. 379. In other words, as members consciously reflect on an organization’s identity, their shared understandings become internalized and part of a tacit culture whose taken-for-granted assumptions are manifested through the symbols and artifacts that members construct to express “who we are.” And as those expressions of “who we are” leave impressions on outsiders to create the organization’s external image, the image becomes the organization’s own looking-glass self by which the organization consider how it is generally perceived and accordingly adjusts and (re)negotiates its identity. Hatch and Schultz graphically represented the identity/culture and identity/image dyads as shown in Figure 8.1 and Figure 8.2 below.
Figure \(1\) Organizational Identity and Culture: Hatch & Schultz
Taking their cue from Mead, Hatch and Schultz labeled the identity/culture dyad as the organizational analog for the “I” of the organizational self, and the identity/image dyad as the analog of the “me.” Thus, through the dynamic interrelationship between organizational identity and culture, members construct an organizational “I” that is tacit internalized, and furnishes the context for making meaning. And through the dynamic interrelationship between identity and image, members construct an organizational “me” that must be continually negotiated with others. Yet Mead’s original theory also held that the “I” and the “me” shaped one another. Hatch and Schultz’s Organizational Identity Dynamics Model therefore combines the two dyads and puts identity as the nexus between the organizational “I” and “me,” as shown in Figure 8.3 below.
Figure \(3\) Organizational Identity Dynamics Model
By extending Hatch and Schultz’s Organizational Identity Dynamics Model, as depicted in Figure 8.4, we can see how identity mediates—provides a transmission belt, if you will—between internal culture and external image. The figure below shows how organizational culture and image are integrated through the two processes of reflection on identity and expression of identity.
Identity as a Mutable Quality
Conscious reflection on organizational identity is a key to the notion of adaptive instabilityChallenging Albert and Whetten’s thesis that organizational identity is enduring, Dennis Gioia and his colleagues argued that identity has the quality of adaptive instability as external feedback and events trigger challenges to an organization’s image and the organization responds by reflecting on how it sees itself and how others see it. advanced by Gioia, Schultz, and Corley.Gioia et al., Organizational identity, image, and adaptive instability, op cit. Their theory addresses a trend that was recognized by Stuart Albert, who originated the concept of organization a generation earlier. In the twenty-first century, organizations operate in a world characterized by the “flattening of hierarchies, the growth in teamwork and empowerment, the outsourcing of secondary competencies, and so on [that] are means of creating flexible pools of sophisticated capacities.”Albert, S., Ashforth, B. E., & Dutton, J. E. (2000). Organizational identity and identification: Charting new waters and building new bridges. Academy of Management Review, 25, 13–17; pg. 13. In such a world, can organizational identity be an enduring trait? Albert and his colleagues argued that the dismantling of bureaucratic structures increases the need for cognitive structures—that is, identities—which give organizations a rudder to steer by. But Gioia, Schultz, and Corley challenged the notion that organizational identity is enduring—which, together with centrality and distinctiveness, is one of the three dimensions contained in Albert and Whetten’s original definition.
In their model—as in the Organizational Identity Dynamics Model described earlier—identity and image are distinct but interdependent phenomena. As the external impressions that form an organization’s reputation are inevitably subjected to feedback and events, members ask themselves four questions. Two are questions of self-reflection: Who do we think we are? Who do we think we should be? Two are questions of other-reflection: Who do “they” think we are? Who do “they” think we should be? If a discrepancy is detected between self-perception and other-perception, and if action is believed to be warranted, then organization members must ask: How should we change our identity (the way we think about ourselves) to sustain a new image? And how should we change our image (the way outsiders perceive us) to sustain a new corporate identity? The changes are projected to outsiders, external impressions of the organization are altered, and the adaptive process—shown in Figure 8.5 below—reboots (and continually recurs) all over again. As such, argued Gioia, Schultz and Corley, organizational identity is best seen as unstable and mutable rather than enduring.
Communicating Organizational Identity
Organizational identity is projected to external audiences through various means of communication—a topic we will explore at length in Chapter 14. Taken together, these are often called “strategic communication” or “integrated marketing communication.” Separately, scholars and practitioners designate these means of communication as advertising, marketing, and public relations. As David Guth and Charles Marsh explain:
• Advertising is “the use of controlled media (media in which one pays for the privilege of dictating message content, placement, and frequency) in an attempt to influence the actions of targeted publics.”
• Marketing is “the process of researching, creating, refining, and promoting a product or service to targeted consumers.”
• Public relations is “the management of relationships between an organization and its publics.”Guth, D. W., & Marsh, C. (2012). Public relations: A value-driven approach (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon; pg. 11.
If you are majoring in communication then you may be concentrating on advertising, marketing, and public relations; you may aspire to do these activities as a career. Certainly, many communication majors end up as advertising, marketing, or public relations professionals. Traditionally, these activities are treated as linear communication (see Chapter 4) in which a sender conveys a message through a channel to a receiver. Theories of mass communication have progressed over the past eighty years from the simplistic “magic bullet theory” (mass media direct sway the public) and two-step theory (mass media reach opinion leaders, who sway the public), to the n-step theory (mass media reach the different opinion leaders on various issues, who sway the public on those issues) and diffusion theory (mass media influence people who then influence their peers), and to agenda-setting theory (mass media do not determine what people think but, rather, what they think about)McCombs, M. & Shaw, D. (1972). The agenda-setting function of the mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176–187. and uses and gratifications they (people are not passive users of media but choose their information sources).Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973/1974). Uses and gratifications research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37, 509–523. The latter theory envisions mass communication as a two-way process in which media users’ choices influence media producers, even as media producers’ messages influence users who choose to consumer their programming. Similarly, public relations theory views “PR” not as one-way and asymmetrical, but as a two-way symmetrical process by which an organization and its stakeholders mutually resolve conflicts.Hunt, J. E., & Grunig, L. A. (1992). Models of public relations and communication. In J. E. Grunig (Ed.), Excellence in public relations and communication management (pp. 285–326). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
With this growing appreciation for the two-way nature of external organizational communication, George Cheney and Lars Christensen have injected the concept of organizational identity into the mix. Corporate communication campaigns are generally viewed as linear or interactional: organizational leaders think up a message, strategically choose the channels that most effectively reach the desired recipients, and measure results to determine success and guide future campaigns. In other words, corporate communications are formulated according to the rational intentions of corporate communicators. But Cheney and Christensen challenged this assumption: “[I]nternal perceptions (identities, expectations, and strategies) strongly affect what problems are ‘seen,’ what potential solutions are envisioned, and how the problems are ultimately addressed.” Thus, “organizational identity affects the diagnosis of issues” and how corporate leaders manage them.Cheney & Christensen, op cit., pg. 249. This leads Cheney and Christensen to observe that, if organizational identity is the reference point for corporate communicators, then corporate communication and issue management are self-referential and, even though they “seem to be directed toward others, [they] may actually be auto-communicativeAs George Cheney and Lars Christensen noted, an organization’s identity shapes how its leaders and managers diagnose and address problems; thus, since corporate issue management is self-referential, corporate communication (advertising, marketing, public relations) that seems directed to external audiences may actually be auto-communication as the organization in reality talks primarily to itself., that is, directed primarily toward the [organizational] self.”Ibid, pg. 258.
This startling observation has profound meaning for anyone who is, or aspires to be, a corporate communicator. Cheney and Christensen laid out a number of ethical concerns. For example, as a corporate communicator you may need to ask yourself whether your organization’s culture is disposed toward actions of integrity or of harm. You may need to question whether you are conveying “truth” when, because your point of reference is a given organizational identity, your messages emerge from your own perspective. At worst, your messages may have become so auto-communicative, and thus your system so closed, that you are only talking to yourself. The antidote to self-referentiality, argue Cheney and Christensen, is self-reflexivity. “To know the environment better, organizations should, in other words, try to know themselves.” Only by bringing core meanings and assumptions to the surface and by being “sensitive to . . . one’s own auto-communicative predispositions . . . can organizations hope to counter the self-referential tendencies” that can lead to unethical communications.Ibid, pgs. 263–264.
Key Takeaways
• Different ontologies about organizations (i.e., the nature of their being) lead to different perspectives on organizational identity. A functionalist (or postpositive) ontology regards identity as one of a set of attributes that an organization “has” and which therefore can be managed to optimize performance. An interpretive ontology regards identity as part of what an organization “is” since it emerges from the communicative interactions that constitute an organization. A critical ontology may see organizational identity as a tool of management to make its interests seem normal and natural. A postmodern ontology “de-centers” the very notion of identity by seeing organizations and individuals not as autonomous units but as sites of contestation between multiple discourses.
• In originating the concept of organizational identity, Stuart Albert and David Whetten built on theories of how individual identities are formed. They looked to the theories of Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Erving Goffman who held that the “self” has both an individual and a social aspect. Extending these ideas to organizations, Albert and Whetten argued that organizational identity is the central character of an organization, the distinctive qualities it claims to possess, and the enduring manifestation of its identity over time. Formation of this identity, however, is an interactive process in which outsiders voice perceptions that influence the organization’s definition of itself. Since Albert and Whetten introduced their thesis in 1985, subsequent scholars have explored how organizations can have multiple identities and how organizational identities can change.
• To distinguish between organizational identity, organizational culture and organizational image, Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz advanced a single theory to delineate each concept and explains how each phenomenon is interrelated with the other. Identity is a conscious perspective shared by members; culture emerges from members’ symbolic constructions to form tacit assumptions and meanings; and image is a perspective held by external stakeholders. Organizational identity and culture are interrelated because members’ reflections on identity become embedded in culture, even as identity comes to express cultural understandings. Organizational identity and image are interrelated because the expression of identity leaves impressions on outsiders, even as the organization takes those impressions into account in forming its identity. The identity/culture dynamic is the organizational equivalent to the individual aspect of the self, and the identity/image dynamic is equivalent to the social aspect.
• Dennis Gioia, Majken Schultz, and Kevin Corley challenged Albert and Whetten’s original assertion that organizational identity is enduring. Instead they argued that organizational identity is unstable and mutable. As external feedback and events trigger challenges to an organization’s image, its identity takes on the quality of “adaptive instability.” The organization reflects on itself, reflects on how it is perceived, compares its identity and its image, addresses any discrepancy by adjusting its identity to generate a desired image, projects the image to its external environment, and the process starts over again.
• An organization externally communicates its identity through advertising, marketing, and public relations. By these communications, organizations engage in corporate issue management. George Cheney and Lars Christensen pointed out that an organization’s identity—how it sees itself—shapes the problems it perceives and the solutions it formulates. When issue management becomes “self-referential” then corporate communication can actually become “auto-communication.” Though advertising, marketing, and marketing are purportedly directed to external audiences, the organization is really talking to itself. To avoid unethical communication, leaders and managers must be aware of their potential for auto-communication.
Exercises
1. Think of an organization to which you have belonged. It might be a sports team on which you played, a club that you joined, a company where you worked, a church or mosque or synagogue where you have worshipped, or the college you now attend. What was (or is) its organizational identity? Now as you think of that identity, think of how it may have formed. How would you compare the formation of its identity to the way a person forms his or her identity? Are the theories of Cooley, Mead, and Goffman applicable to organizations? If so, how?
2. Consider again the organization you named in Exercise 1. Describe how (using Albert and Whetten’s definition) its identity reflects its central character and the distinctive qualities it claims to possess, and how the identity has endured over time. Now, referring to Hatch and Schultz’s theory, describe how its identity, culture, and image are interrelated. Finally, referring to Gioia, Schultz and Corley’s theory of adaptive instability, describe how the organization’s identity has changed in response to external feedback and events that have challenged its image.
3. Finally, think again of the organization you analyzed in Exercises 1 and 2. In what ways might its organizational identity—the way it sees itself—have shaped the problems it perceives and the solutions it formulates? Do you see, as Cheney and Christensen cautioned, any auto-communication in its advertising, marketing, and public relations? Explain your answer. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/07%3A_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity/7.02%3A_Identity_and_the_Organization.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Distinguish between organizational identity and identification.
• Recognize how management strives to guide employees’ socialization into the organization so employees strongly identify with the organization.
• Understand the processes by which organization members come to identify with the organization and incorporate that affinity into their self-identities.
• Grasp the postmodern and critical concern that managerial interests can use organizational identity and identification to sustain their control.
While organizational identity may be developed by an organization, organizational identification may be developed by its members. In introducing their concept of organizational identificationBlake Ashforth and Fred Mael started with social identity theory—which holds that one’s self-concept combines a “personal identity” based on individual traits with a “social identity” based on group classifications—and originated the concept of organizational identification by defining it as a specific form of social identification or perception of oneness with a group., Ashforth and Mael defined it as “a specific form of social identification,” where identification is “the perception of oneness with or belongingness to a group, involving direct or vicarious experience of its successes and failures.”Ashforth & Mael, Social identity theory, op cit., pgs. 22, 34. As noted above, you may have felt such identification with a sports team, a club, a house of worship, your alma mater, your place of work, or any number of organizations to which you have belonged. In a moment we will look at the psychological components that Asforth and Mael ascribed to organizational identification. But first, let us review the issue from the corporate side rather than the individual side.
From the Organizational Perspective
Leaders expend much effort toward managing employees’ identification with the organization in hopes of producing a workforce that is committed and loyal. So they pay much attention to ensuring new members “learn the ropes” and are socialized into the values and practices of the organization. As we review at length in Chapter 12, Fredric JablinJablin, F. M. (1987). Organizational entry, assimilation, and exit. In F. M. Jablin, L. L. Putnam, K. H. Roberts, & L. W Porter (Eds.), Handbook of organizational communication: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 679–740). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.,Jablin, F. M. (2001). Organizational entry, assimilation, and disengagement/exit. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 732–818). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. proposed that organizational socializationThrough processes initiated by management and through your own information gathering, you are socialized into the values and practices of an organization. occurs in three phases: anticipatory socializationAccording to Frederic Jablin’s framework, this is the first phase of organizational socialization in which, prior to formal entry, your environmental influences (e.g., family, media, peers, education, previous organizational experiences) and the employer’s recruiting process begins your socialization and aligns you with the organization’s identity., organizational entryThis second phase of organizational socialization spans the period from your initial employment offer, to your start on the job, to your full assimilation into the organization. and assimilation, and organizational disengagementDuring the third and final phase of organizational socialization you are separated from the organization; the manner of your disengagement is governed by the manner of your exit: whether by retirement, taking another job, or being discharged. and exit. These are illustrated in Figure 8.6 below.
In the first phase, anticipatory socialization, you envision a specific job or career; this vision, according to Jablin, is likely influenced by family, media, peers, education, and any previous organizational experiences you have had. Along with environmental influences, noted Michael Kramer, the process of anticipatory socialization also takes in process of being recruited and hired by a specific organization.Kramer, M. W. (2010). Organizational socialization: Joining and leaving organizations. Malden, MA: Polity. Hiring, of course, leads to organizational entry and assimilation, the next phase of socialization. Jablin broke this phase down into three segments.Jablin, F. M. (2001). Organizational entry, assimilation, and disengagement/exit. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (pp. 732–818). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. During preentryDuring the preentry segment of organizational entry, when you have been offered a job but not yet begun, messages from your employer and the formation of initial impressions (on both sides) continue your organizational socialization. when you have been offered a job but not formally begun, you receive messages from the employer and initial impressions—both by and about you—are formed. Then during formal entryDuring the period of your initial formal entry into an organization, socialization continues as managers and coworkers help you “get on board” and as you try to make sense of how you fit in. the organization strives to acclimate you to its ways, while you try to make sense of how you fit in—until you experience the metamorphosisIn the last segment of the entry phase of organizational socialization, you experience the metamorphosis of full assimilation as an established member of the organization. of assimilation as an established member. Finally, the phase of organizational disengagement and exit occurs as you leave your employment. Through the first two phases in which you are recruited and hired, and then initiated and assimilated, organizations use many methods to “get you on board” and foster strong identification: new employee orientation programs, training programs, mentoring programs, information giving, and more.
From the perspective of organization leaders, the goal of the socialization is to produce employees who adopt—as we learned in Chapter 7—a desirable followership styleThe concept of different leadership styles has prompted the complementary concept of different followership styles; the literature on management generally presupposes that strong organizational identification is a component of the followership style that effective managerial leadership should produce.. Ira Chaleff described the ideal follower as one how supports the leader and offers corrective feedback when needed.Chaleff, I. (2003). The courageous follower (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler. Roger Adair contrasted the Disgruntled follower and the Disengaged follower, with the excited and motivated Doer and the self-sacrificing Disciple.Adair, R. (2008). Developing great leaders, one follower at a time. In R. E. Riggio, I. Chaleff, & J. Lipman-Blumen (Eds.), The art of followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations (pp. 137–153). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Robert Presthus divided followers into Upwardly Mobiles who revel in an organization’s system, Indifferents who go along, and Ambivalents who resist.Presthus, R. (1962). The organizational society: An analysis and a theory. New York, NY: Random House; pg. 15. Robert Kelley proposed a typology of Alienated, Passive, Conformist, and Exemplary followers—the latter combining active engaged in an organization with independent thought and judgment for achieving organizational goals.Kelley, R. (1992). The power of followership: How to create leaders that people want to follow and followers who lead themselves. New York: Doubleday/Currency. A common thread that runs through all of these typologies is the assumption that followers should identify strongly enough with an organization to perform their duties with motivation and commit their independent thought and judgment to the service and benefit of the group.
From an Individual Perspective
Fostering organizational identification is seen by leaders as an essential management function. But for individuals, the implications are more complex. As we noted at the outset of the chapter, people in modern societies derive much of their self-identities from the organizations with which they affiliate. Evaluating the implications must start with a better understanding of organizational identity as a psychological phenomenon. Since much of the research follows Ashforth and Mael’s construct of organizational identity, then that is where we will begin.Ashforth & Mael, Social identity theory, op cit.
Table 8.2 above illustrates how Ashforth and Mael applied to organizations the social identity theory of Tajfel and Turner—who, in turn, had built on the work of Cooley and Mead. Ashforth and Mael surveyed the extant literature and found that the term organizational identification was sometimes used interchangeably with such terms as commitment and internalization. Guided by social identity theory, they defined identificationAshforth and Mael defined identification as a cognitive construct (or mental picture of one’s self as intertwined with a group) as opposed to a set of behaviors or emotions; further, identification attaches the self to a social categories (“I am”), while internalization attaches the self to guiding principles (“I believe”). as a “cognitive construct that is not necessarily associated with any specific behaviors or affective states” since “an individual need only perceive him- or herself as psychologically intertwined with the fate of the group” and he or she “personally experienc[es] the successes and failures.”Ibid, pg. 21. In other words, your identification with a social group (such as an organization) is a mental picture rather than a set of actions or feelings. Further, identification can be distinguished from internalization: “Whereas identification refers to self in terms of social categories (I am), internalization refers to the incorporation of values, attitudes, and so forth within the self as guiding principles (I believe).”Ibid, pgs. 21–22. Table \(1\) below puts these ideas into perspective by suggesting how an employee of the (hypothetical) Better Burgers franchise might express affinity with her organization.
Table \(1\) Distinguishing Organizational Identification
Phenomenon Example Explanation
Identification “I’m Better!” The employee cognitively constructs a mental picture of her social self as intertwined with Better Burgers.
Behavior “I’m loyal” The employee takes the action of being committed to her association with Better Burgers
Emotion “I’m love my job” The employee enjoys feelings of satisfaction through her association with Better Burgers
Internalization “I’m a burgerista The employee takes as her guiding principle the value that Better Burgers places on creativity and quality
Ashforth and Mael argue that social identification can drive your actions and feelings, or vice versa. But when organizational identification is understood as a specific form of social identification—and when identification is seen as a cognitive construction or mental picture of the self, rather than a set of behaviors of feelings—then social identity theory suggests five factors can push employees and managers to identify with their organizations:
• The distinctiveness of the organization, so that membership confers a unique self-identity.
• The prestige of the organization, so that membership boosts self-esteem.
• An awareness of out-groups (i.e., other organizations), so that awareness of the in-group (i.e., one’s own organization) is reinforced.
• Competition with other organizations, so that distinctions are more clearly delineated.
• Groups formation factors that may include physical proximity, interpersonal relations, attractiveness, similarity, shared background, and common threats or aspirations.Ibid, pgs. 24–25.
Think again of the fast food chains we have used as an example throughout this chapter. If you were employed by one of these chains then (ideally, from management’s point of view) you might identify with the chain as your own self-identity becomes intertwined with its distinctiveness (“Our burgers are uniquely best!”) and prestige (“We’re the leading national chain!”) and with its contrasts to other chains (“The other chains want to be like us” and “The competitions won’t beat us because their burgers aren’t as good!”). In addition, your organizational identification might be enhanced if your restaurant is in your own neighborhood, if get along well with your manager and coworkers, and if your fellow employees are nice people who have similar personalities, background, dreams, and challenges.
For your manager—and more broadly, for the fast food chain’s corporate leadership—a prime goal is to “produce” employees with the organizational identification described above. Of course, if you like where you work and feel a sense of belonging and purpose, then your organizational identification will tend to boost your job satisfaction. But it also follows that an organization’s attempts to “manage” your identity is tied to corporate leadership’s desire for control and predictability. Phillip Tompkins and George Cheney have called this concertive controlIn Tompkins and Cheney’s theory of organizational control, management gains concertive control when employees internalize approved attitudes and behaviors and discipline themselves.. Drawing on structuration theory (see Chapter 4), they proposed that and identity-identification dualityUsing structuration theory as a framework, Phillip Tompkins and George Cheney argued that members’ identification with an organization’s identity furnishes a medium for members to act socially within the organization; in so doing, they reproduce the system so that member identification and organizational identity also become outcomes of their action—hence, an identity-identitfication duality. operates within organizations.Tompkins, P. K. & Cheney, G. (1985). Communication and unobtrusive control in contemporary organizations. In R. D. McPhee & P. K. Tompkins (Eds.), Organizational communication: Traditional themes and new directions (pp. 179–210). Newbury Park, CA: Sage; see also Scott, C. R., Corman, S. A., & Cheney, G. (1998). The development of a structurational theory of identification in the organization. Communication Theory, 8, 298–336. The more you are linked with other organization members that share the same premises, the more you will all cultivate like identities for yourselves and, in turn, be self-actualized by relationships with likeminded coworkers. Thus, identity and identification are both mediums and outcomes of social action. Tompkins and Cheney theorized that organizations deploy communication to control their members in five ways starting with simple controlIn Tompkins and Cheney’s theory of organizational control, the direct and open use of power by management is called simple control. through direct and open use of power, technical controlIn Tompkins and Cheney’s theory of organizational control, management’s selection of the communication tools employees are expected to employ is called technical control. that selects the communication tools members are expected to employ, and bureaucratic controlIn Tompkins and Cheney’s theory of organizational control, management’s determination of formal policies and procedures employees must follow is called bureaucratic control. that determines formal policies and procedures members must follow. Then through cultural controlIn Tompkins and Cheney’s theory of organizational control, management’s attempts to inculcate common values and practices around which members form their interests and relationships is called cultural control. organizations seek to inculcate common values and practices around which members form their interests and relationships, while through concertive control organizations induce members to discipline themselves as approved attitudes and behaviors come to seem natural and normal. As members accept these unwritten rules they in turn reinforce and reproduce them—individually and through interactions with other members—until these expectations become the very goals which motivate members and form their sense of obligation.
Tompkins and Cheney also drew on rhetorical theory (see Chapter 4), citing Kenneth Burke’s concept of identification as a process in which consubstantiationRhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke (whom Tompkins and Cheney reference in their theory of organizational control) contended that persuasion cannot occur without identification; the basis for one person to persuade another is consubstantation or a sharing of substances that causes a listener to identify with a speaker., or a sharing of substances, causes persons to identify with one another and makes persuasion possible.Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Identification with an organization occurs as members imbibe its premises, shape their own identities by these premises, and ultimately reason by them. They likewise drew on Aristotle’s concept of the enthymemeAristotelian rhetorical theory (which Tompkins and Cheney reference in their theory of organizational control) holds that argument syllogistically from major premise, to minor premise, to conclusion; a skillful speaker who knows the mind of an audience can omit a well-known premise, which the audience mentally supplies and thus is drawn along to the speaker’s conclusion..Aristotle (2007). On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse (2nd ed.) (G. A. Kennedy, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press. Reasoning in organizations occurs syllogistically—often from a major premise, to a minor premise, to a conclusion. Enthymemic argument occurs when a premise is widely shared by an audience. A speaker merely omits that premise from the argument and thus impels the audience to fill in the missing premise and be drawn along to the speaker’s conclusion. So for example, when management and workers share the premise that profits are good for everyone, managers need only urge employees to practice “customer service excellence” and employees will supply the missing premise that “satisfied customers are repeat customers” and so be drawn along to the conclusion that making a profit is an imperative. When such identification occurs, the organization has gained concertive control over its members.
From Postmodern and Critical Perspectives
Writing in the 1970s, French philosopher Michel Foucault described a fundamental change from premodern to modern societies. In the old era of kings, discipline was achieved through direct and physical punishments such as public beheadings of people who offended the order of the realm. In the present era of bureaucracies, however, discipline is achieved not through direct and physical means but through indirect and intangible means, such that people come to discipline themselves. Foucault gave the analogy of a state prison, which is an invention of modern society. Inmates are aware of the faceless, all-seeing (or “panoptic”) guard tower above them. Knowing they are not watched every moment but could be at any moment, they discipline themselves.Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage. (Original work published 1975) In a modern organization the method of surveillance may not be visual means such as cameras; bureaucracies have methods of reporting and accounting that keep tabs on people. Foucault became interested in the development of the concept of “self” throughout Western history and concluded that the “self” has become one of four “technologies” that operate in the modern world. These include:
(1) technologies of productionFour “technologies” or modes for getting things done, theorized Michel Foucault, operate in the modern world; technologies of production permit us to manipulate the physical world., which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systemsFour “technologies” or modes for getting things done, theorized Michel Foucault, operate in the modern world; technologies of sign systems permit us to communicate., which permits us to use signs, meanings, symbols, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of powerFour “technologies” or modes for getting things done, theorized Michel Foucault, operate in the modern world; technologies of power submit individuals to domination and determine their conduct., which, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the selfFour “technologies” or modes for getting things done, theorized Michel Foucault, operate in the modern world; technologies of the self permit individuals to modify their bodies, thoughts, conduct, and ways of being to attain desired ends., which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. . . . each one of them is associated with a certain type of domination. Each implies certain modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes.Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16–49). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press; pg. 18.
In Foucault’s formulation, “technologies” is not meant in the popular sense of machines but, rather, simply as ways of getting things done. Thus, modern society has ways of manipulating the physical world, of communicating, of hierarchizing human relationships (since a completely egalitarian society is an impossibility), and of modifying the self (since living with other people makes the unmodified self an impossibility). Each way of getting things done implies submission to the larger historical and cultural discourses that are the dominant discourses in a given society. Numerous scholars in organization studies have applied Foucault’s ideas to organizational settings.For example, see Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, post modernism, and organizational analysis 2: The contribution of Michel Foucault. Organization Studies, 9, 221–235; McKinlay, A., & Starkey, K. (1998). Foucault, management, and organization theory. London: Sage. Thus, as Mike Savage demonstrated in his study of a major nineteenth-century railroad, employees readily disciplined themselves in return for pay increases and a career ladder that offered upward mobility.Savage, M., (1998). Discipline, surveillance, and the “career”: Employment on the Great Western Railway, 1833–1914. In A. McKinlay & K. Starkey (Eds.), Foucault, management, and organization theory (pp. 65–92). London: Sage. Foucault himself examined the implications of his thesis and argued that individuals, when confronted with pressures by dominant discourses to modify their selves, could respond ethnically by asking four questions:
1. Ethical substance: Which part of myself or my behavior is influenced or concerned with moral conduct? What do I do because I want to be ethical?
2. Mode of subjection: How am I being told to act morally? Who is asking? To whose values am I being subjected?
3. Ethical work: How must I change myself or my actions in order to become ethical in this situation?
4. Ethical goal: Do I agree with this definition of morality? Do I consent to becoming this character in this situation? To what am I aspiring to when I behave ethically?Faber, B. (1999). Intuitive ethics: Understanding and critiquing the role of intuition in ethical decisions. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8(2), 189–202; adapted from Foucault, M. (1984). On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 352–355). New York: Pantheon; also see Moore, M. C. (1987). Ethical discourse and Foucault’s conception of ethics. Human Studies, 10, 81–95.
While Foucault’s ideas provide a framework for many scholars to explore questions of the self in organizational settings, Matts Alvesson and Hugh Willmott took their own critical look starting with the literature—reviewed above—on organizational identity and identification. They argued that management engages in identity regulationMatt Alvesson and Hugh Willmott argue that, as means of organizational control, managerial interests engage in identity regulation through discursive practices that shape the processes of employees’ identity formation and thus “produce” the “appropriate” employee. as a form of organizational control in order to “produce” the “appropriate” individuals that management desires.Alvesson & Willmott, Identity regulation, op cit. Identity regulation, believed Alvesson and Willmott, is accomplished as management promulgates a discourse that defines identity and thus shapes processes of identity formation and change. This managerial discourse addresses four targets and is conducted in nine modes, as shown in Table \(2\) below.
Table \(2\) Identity Regulation: Alvesson & Willmott
Target Mode Example
Employee Defining the person directly “A male middle manager” may do his “managing” by following directives from above but then hides his subordinate position by projecting masculine values
Defining a person by defining others A group of salesmen are constructed as “real men” because management believes women lack a “killer instinct” and thus does not hire them
Action orientations Providing a specific vocabulary of motives A manager tells new employees the company pays fair wages and does not “bid” for recruits, implying they should be motivated intrinsically and not by pay
Explicating morals and values The organization espouses certain values and heroes, so that employees cannot resist without losing their dignity and being made to feel unworthy
Knowledge and skills The organization conducts management training that prompts managers to identify with the company as a whole and not with a department or specialty
Social relations Group categorization and affiliation Giving employees emotional gratification as “team members” counters any tendency for employees to think of themselves as individuals
Hierarchical location The social status of units in the organization (leaders, executives, middle and junior managers, employees, etc) is supported by their positions in the hierarchy
Scene Establishing and clarifying a distinct set of rules of the game A “team player” ethos causes employees to rein in their own traits (brilliance, ability, aggressiveness, personal values, etc) so others do not feel threatened
Defining the context Management talks about the uncertainty, competition and changes that globalization is bringing, thus implying that employees must be adaptable and enterprising
Thus, identity regulation “encompasses the more or less intentional effects of social practices upon processes of identity construction and reconstruction” and includes “induction, training, and promotion procedures [that] are developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of identity.”Ibid, pg. 625. These practices are intended to influence what Alvesson and Willmott call the identity workAll employees engage in identity work, theorized Alvesson and Willmott, as they interpret organizational discourses in light of their own central life interest, desires for coherence and distinctiveness, need for direction and self-affirming social values, and emerging self-awareness. that all members do to ascertain the nature of the organization and their parts in it. This identity work explores six aspects of self-identityIn Alvesson and Willmott’s theory, identity work produces a (precarious) self-identity; the managerial objective in identity regulation is to shape the processes of identity work and this produce appropriate employees.: central life interest, coherence, distinctiveness, direction, positive value, and self-awareness. In particular:
• A person’s central life interest is bound up in the questions of “Who am I?” and “What are we?”
• The desire for coherence is felt as a need to tell one’s life story as a narrative with a discernible sequence rather than a fragmented jumble of random events
• The desire for distinctiveness is akin to the need, discussed earlier in the chapter, to set boundaries that distinguish “me” from others
• Direction provides a (if often vague) basis of what is appropriate, desired, and valued on which a person can decide what is reasonable
• A set of positive social values lend self-esteem to a person’s identity
• A person gains a self-identity, in part, when he or she has acquired a self-awareness of that identity.
Thus, identity work is the process by which “people are continuously engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising the constructions that are productive of a precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness.”Ibid, pg. 626. Having defined the three concepts of identity regulation, identity work and self-identity, Alvesson and Willmott saw them working in a dynamic relation as shown in Figure 8.7 below. Their conclusion: identity is “an important yet still insufficiently explored dimension of organizational control,” and one whose importance will increase in a post-bureaucratic world of loosely networked organizations where control must be accomplished by managing the “insides” of employees.Ibid, pg. 620.
Key Takeaways
• Organizational identity is the collective identity that an organization may form; organizational identification is developed by individual members as they identify with the organization. The concept of organizational identification originated with Blake Ashford and Fred Mael. In applying social identity theory—which holds that one’s self-concept combines a “personal identity” based on individual traits with a “social identity” based on group classifications—they defined organizational identification as a form of social identification as members perceive oneness or belonging with the organization.
• A key management objective is to foster strong organizational identification among employees. This occurs through conscious efforts to socialize employees into the values and practices of the organization so that they “get on board” and feel an affinity with the organization’s identity. Frederic Jablin described how this socialization occurs in three phases: anticipatory socialization, organizational entry and assimilation, and organizational disengagement and exit. During the first two phases especially, management strives to encourage organizational identification through such means as recruiting and hiring communications, new employee orientation programs, training programs, and mentoring programs.
• While management strives to encourage organizational identification, these efforts are not the whole story of how employees come to identity with an organization. Taking their cue from social identity theory, Ashforth and Mael observed that feelings of oneness and belonging are fostered as the organization is seen as distinctive and prestigious, and as comparisons to and competitions with other organizations delineate differences between “us” versus “them.” However, Phillip Tompkins and George Cheney drew on structuration theory to posit an identity-identification duality. Identification is not only a means for organizations to engage in social actions; identification is also an outcome of those actions. The more employees who identify with an organization act together with other such coworkers, the more they identify with the organization. Over time, believed Tompkins and Cheney, increasing identification leads to concertive control as members so identify with an organization that they discipline themselves to conform to managerially approved values.
• French philosopher Michel Foucault described how premodern societies enforced discipline through direct physical means, whereas modern societies enforce discipline through the possibility of indirect surveillance that compels people to discipline themselves. Matts Alvesson and Hugh Willmott, working from the literature on organizational identification, posited that identity regulation affords management a means of control through “producing” the “appropriate” employee. All organization members must do identity work to form an organizational self-identity. Identity regulation occurs as management engages is discourses that attempt to shape employees’ identity work. These management discourses may strive to define the appropriate employee, appropriate actions, appropriate relations, and appropriate rules and contexts for organizational life.
Exercises
1. In the exercises for Section 8.1 above, you were asked you to think of an organization to which you have belonged—perhaps a sports team on which you played, a club that you joined, a company where you worked, a church or mosque or synagogue where you have worshipped, or the college you now attend. In section 8.1 we asked you to explore that organization’s identity; now we ask you think about your own identification with that organization. Describe how the organization guided your socialization, first through the anticipatory socialization phase prior to your actual joining, and then through the phase of your formal entry and assimilation. What methods did the organization use in encouraging you to strongly identify with that organization?
2. Thinking of the same organization you analyzed in Exercise 1, switch your gaze from the ways it tried to socialize you and instead consider your own responses. Following Ashforth and Meal’s framework: Did the organization’s distinctiveness make you, as a member, feel unique? Did its prestige boost your self-esteem? As you became aware of other similar organizations, did the comparisons highlight what was different about your organization? Did that make you feel more a part of the “in” group? Was this feeling heightened by any actual or perceived competition with the other organizations? And as Tompkins and Cheney suggested, did your organizational identification increase as you spent more time with other members who also identified with the organization? Did you ultimately conform to the organization’s values and practices, without being told, because you felt they were your own?
3. Finally, consider again the organization you analyzed in Exercises 1 and 2. Now refer to Table 8.5 above which lists the targets and discourses that organization leaders and managers can use to engage in identity regulation. The left column lists discursive targets, the second lists discursive modes, and the third lists examples given by Alvesson and Willmott. Make a chart of your own and, in the third column, list your own examples of how the organization to which you belonged may have engaged in identity regulation. After listing your examples, jot down some thoughts on how these discourses may have shaped your identity work and influenced your self-identity in the organization. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/07%3A_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity/7.03%3A_Identity_and_the_Organization_Member.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Identify demographic changes that are producing an increasingly diverse labor force and the opportunities (improved recruiting, creativity, problem-solving, flexibility, marketing) and challenges (prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes, ethnocentrism) of this trend for organizations.
• Understand that balancing your organizational identification and your personal identity—in other words, balancing work and life—ultimately requires a change in organizational cultures so that flexibility becomes the norm and expectation for employers and employees alike.
In thinking about identity and identification, we can easily slip into the trap of thinking the organization has an identity and that, likewise, the employee has an identity. In other words, each has one unified and integrated identity. This mode of thinking is, in fact, the “default” position in Western culture. We think of a each person as a single unit so that, metaphorically, we project this same quality onto the “super-person” which is the organization. Yet Albert and Whetten’s original thesis about organizational identity readily allowed that organizations can have multiple identities.Albert & Whetten, op cit. Communication scholars, as well as researchers in psychology and other fields, have long recognized that the same is true of individuals. Each one of us constructs our sense of self from a multitude of identities—perhaps our family, ethnicity, gender, age country of origin, region or city, religion, hobbies, clubs, alma maters, political affiliations, profession, employer, and work department. Moreover, identity is an ongoing construction that must be constantly negotiated, renegotiated, and adjusted in light of new experiences as you encounter new people and situations. (And from a postmodern perspective, the “self” is a fiction since each person is a “site” where multiple discourses compete. Thoughts and intentions are shaped and conditioned by those discourses and by the language with which to express them.)
To illustrate how people with different (and multiple) identities must mesh to accomplish work, consider this textbook. Under the auspices of a publisher, the three authors came together to perform the work. We share an interest in organizational communication and yet our identities (and their components) are very different. One author (Wrench) is a white male, a member of Generation X who hails from Texas, earned his doctorate in West Virginia, moved from Ohio to New York, has a special interest in learning processes, and identifies with his roles as department chair, teacher, scholar, author, speaker, and consultant. Another author (Punyanunt-Carter) is a woman of color and member of Generation X who also attended universities in Texas and Ohio, and now teaches at her Texas alma mater where she researches, among other interests, faither-daughter communication. The third author (Ward) is a Baby Boomer who almost exactly mirrors the average (documented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) of holding 11.3 jobs through the first three decades of his career.Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012, July 25). Number of jobs held, labor market activity, and earnings growth among the youngest baby boomers: Results from a longitudinal survey summary. Retrieved from: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/nlsoy.nr0.htm White, middle-aged, male, American, Southerner, proud of his alma maters in Virginia and South Carolina, he self-identifies as an academic, teacher, faculty member of his Texas institution, and specialist in organizational and religious communication. Yet through a dozen job changes his identity has varied: writer/editor, corporate communication director, broadcaster, freelance and, upon entering academe in midlife, graduate student, and college professor. Furthermore, two of the authors favor social-scientific research methods while the third holds to an interpretive epistemology. To write this textbook, then, we found ways of making our diversity an advantage rather than a liability.
Or consider your Organizational Communication class. Your class is analogous to an organization with a governing board (the administration), CEO (your instructor), and members (the students). Probably you have experienced how different classes have different “personalities” or, if you will, organizational identities. Somehow, the climate and culture of one class—even just the atmosphere when you walk in the door—is completely different than another class. That identity is driven by many factors: the university, the subject of the class, the instructor, and the composition of the students. And college professors know that different sections of the same course, even during the same semester, have different identities. Thus, for every class in which you are enrolled—including your Organizational Communication class—you must work through the diverse identities of your teachers, your classmates, and yourself in order to pass the course. You must find a way to work with your instructor, and you must cooperate with other students for class discussions and group projects that are integral to the work of each course.
In a very real sense, your textbook and your Organizational Communication class are microcosms of processes that occur daily in the workplace—as individuals and organizations balance the need for a shared identity with the need to accommodate a diverse identities and collectively leverage the strengths they bring to the table. That is the tension we will explore in this section.
Theory and Reality
The notion of boosting performance by encouraging a diverse workforce takes us a long way from the classical theories of management that we encountered in Chapter 3. The theories of Frederick Taylor envisioned the organization as a homogeneous “machine” whose inputs and outputs could be scientifically managed. Max Weber held that bureaucratic management according to impersonal and but fair rules was preferable to the personalized leadership that characterized nineteenth-century capitalism. And Henri Fayol advocated a military style of management based on unity of direction and command. With all these classical theories, individual identities should be left at the factory gate and a diversity of perspectives and opinions would detract from Taylor’s control, Weber’s impartiality, and Fayol’s unity. Yet as we also saw in Chapter 3, the human relations approach to organizations recognized that workers have felt needs, while human resources theories encouraged management to tap worker creativity by enlisting their participation in organizational decision-making. Systems theory likewise, as we learned in Chapter 4, acknowledges that an organization needs a diversity of resources that is sufficient to handle the complexity of its environment. Intepretive approaches suggest that an organization “is” its diversity since the organization and its culture are constituted by the communicative interactions of its various members. Postmodern and critical approaches celebrate diversity by recovering voices that have been historically marginalized in organizations.
Quite apart from theory, however, is the practical reality of an increasingly diverse workforce in the United States and many other nations. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks numerous demographic traits including age, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, family and marital status, educational attainment, military veteran status, and more. Each trait can be an integral component of a person’s self-identity both in private life and on the job—and in the aggregate, the demographic mix is constantly changing. Organizations must keep abreast of these changes to find and attract the best talent; managers must stay on top of these changes to best help their employees succeed; employees must be aware of these changes to work effectively with coworkers. In 2006, a BLS report projected the composition of the U.S. labor by decade through 2050.Toossi, M. (2006, November). A new look at long-term labor force projections to 2050. Monthly Labor Review [electronic version]. Retrieved October 26, 2012, from http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2006/11/art3full.pdf The projections, shown in Figure \(1\), Figure \(2\), Figure \(3\), and Figure \(4\) below, suggest steady growth in the numbers of black, Asian, and Hispanic men and women as percentages of the workforce. But despite the growing numbers of workers in these categories, the agency estimates that overall growth in the U.S. labor force will slow significantly as compared the previous half-century. The Baby Boom generation is aging, while the participation rate of women in the labor force is leveling off after previous decades of rapid growth.
*”All other” includes those classified as of multiple racial origin and the race categories of American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islanders.
*”All other” includes those classified as of multiple racial origin and the race categories of American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islanders.
Given the trend toward increasingly multicultural workplaces, organizations have solid business reasons to keep pace. Taylor Cox and Stacy Blake summarized these reasons in six arguments for embracing diversity: (1) Organizations with a reputation for welcoming diverse employees will gain a recruiting edge in a shrinking labor pool, while (2) those that struggle with integrating women and minorities will face increased costs as the labor pool steadily diversifies. Further, organizations with diverse workforces will benefit from the improved (3) creativity, (4) problem-solving and (5) managerial flexibility spurred by multiple viewpoints, even as they (6) gain greater insights for marketing products and services to an increasingly diverse public.Cox, T. H., & Blake, S. (1991). Managing cultural diversity: Implications for organizational effectiveness. Academy of Management Executive, 5(3), 45–56. Nevertheless, achieving these benefits is not easy because accustomed modes of thinking—whether in an organizational culture, or in the surrounding society—may be transmitted over generations, be deeply ingrained, and be slow to change. A sense of the challenge is suggested in Table \(1\) below, which lists employment practices prohibited by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and examples of violations cited by the agency.U.S. Equal Employment Opportinty Commission (n.d.). Prohibited employment policies/practices. Retrieved October 26, 2012, from http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm
Table \(1\): Prohibited Employment Practices: EEOC
Protected categories “Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to retaliate against a person because he or she complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit.”
General principles “The laws enforced by EEOC prohibit an employer or other covered entity from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative effect on applicants or employees of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), or national origin, or on an individual with a disability or class of individuals with disabilities, if the polices or practices at issue are not job-related and necessary to the operation of the business. The laws enforced by EEOC also prohibit an employer from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative impact on applicants or employees age 40 or older, if the policies or practices at issue are not based on a reasonable factor other than age.”
Aspect of employment Prohibited practice Example
Job advertisements “It is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “For example, a help-wanted ad that seeks ‘females’ or ‘recent college graduates’ may discourage men and people over 40 from applying and may violate the law.”
Recruitment “It is also illegal for an employer to recruit new employees in a way that discriminates against them because of their race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic.”
Application and hiring “It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against a job applicant because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” For example, an employer may not refuse to give employment applications to people of a certain race.
“An employer may not base hiring decisions on stereotypes and assumptions about a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”
“If an employer requires job applicants to take a test, the test must be necessary and related to the job and the employer may not exclude people of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, or individuals with disabilities.”
“In addition, the employer may not use a test that excludes applicants age 40 or older if the test is not based on a reasonable factor other than age.”
“If a job applicant with a disability needs an accommodation (such as a sign language interpreter) to apply for a job, the employer is required to provide the accommodation, so long as the accommodation does not cause the employer significant difficulty or expense.”
Job referrals “It is illegal for an employer, employment agency or union to take into account a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information when making decisions about job referrals.”
Job assignments and promotions “It is illegal for an employer to make decisions about job assignments and promotions based on an employee's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “For example, an employer may not give preference to employees of a certain race when making shift assignments and may not segregate employees of a particular national origin from other employees or from customers.”
“An employer may not base assignment and promotion decisions on stereotypes and assumptions about a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”
“If an employer requires employees to take a test before making decisions about assignments or promotions, the test may not exclude people of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), or national origin, or individuals with disabilities, unless the employer can show that the test is necessary and related to the job.”
“In addition, the employer may not use a test that excludes employees age 40 or older if the test is not based on a reasonable factor other than age.”
Pay and benefits “It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee in the payment of wages or employee benefits on the bases of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “For example, an employer many not pay Hispanic workers less than African-American workers because of their national origin, and men and women in the same workplace must be given equal pay for equal work.”
“In some situations, an employer may be allowed to reduce some employee benefits for older workers, but only if the cost of providing the reduced benefits is the same as the cost of providing benefits to younger workers.”
Discipline and discharge “An employer may not take into account a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information when making decisions about discipline or discharge.” “For example, if two employees commit a similar offense, an employer many not discipline them differently because of their race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”
“When deciding which employees will be laid off, an employer may not choose the oldest workers because of their age. Employers also may not discriminate when deciding which workers to recall after a layoff.”
Employment references “It is illegal for an employer to give a negative or false employment reference (or refuse to give a reference) because of a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”
Reasonable accommodation and disability “The law requires that an employer provide reasonable accommodation to an employee or job applicant with a disability, unless doing so would cause significant difficulty or expense for the employer.” “Reasonable accommodation might include, for example, providing a ramp for a wheelchair user or providing a reader or interpreter for a blind or deaf employee or applicant.”
“A reasonable accommodation is any change in the workplace (or in the ways things are usually done) to help a person with a disability apply for a job, perform the duties of a job, or enjoy the benefits and privileges of employment.”
Reasonable accomodation and religion “The law requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause difficulty or expense for the employer.” “This means an employer may have to make reasonable adjustments at work that will allow the employee to practice his or her religion, such as allowing an employee to voluntarily swap shifts with a co-worker so that he or she can attend religious services.”
Training and apprenticeship programs “It is illegal for a training or apprenticeship program to discriminate on the bases of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “For example, an employer may not deny training opportunities to African-American employees because of their race.”
“In some situations, an employer may be allowed to set age limits for participation in an apprenticeship program.”
Harassment “It is illegal to harass an employee because of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “Harassment can take the form of slurs, graffiti, offensive or derogatory comments, or other verbal or physical conduct. Sexual harassment (including unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other conduct of a sexual nature) is also unlawful.”
“It is also illegal to harass someone because they have complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit.” “The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.”
“Although the law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal if it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or if it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).” “Harassment outside of the workplace may also be illegal if there is a link with the workplace. For example, if a supervisor harasses an employee while driving the employee to a meeting.”
Terms and conditions of employment “The law makes it illegal for an employer to make any employment decision because of a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” “That means an employer may not discriminate when it comes to such things as hiring, firing, promotions, and pay. It also means an employer may not discriminate, for example, when granting breaks, approving leave, assigning work stations, or setting any other term or condition of employment—however small.”
Pre-employment inquiries “As a general rule, the information obtained and requested through the pre-employment process should be limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job; whereas, information regarding race, sex, national origin, age, and religion are irrelevant in such determinations. Employers are explicitly prohibited from making pre-employment inquiries about disability.” “Therefore, inquiries about organizations, clubs, societies, and lodges of which an applicant may be a member or any other questions, which may indicate the applicant's race, sex, national origin, disability status, age, religion, color or ancestry if answered, should generally be avoided.”
“Although state and federal equal opportunity laws do not clearly forbid employers from making pre-employment inquiries that relate to, or disproportionately screen out members based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, such inquiries may be used as evidence of an employer's intent to discriminate unless the questions asked can be justified by some business purpose.” “Similarly, employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant. If needed for identification purposes, a photograph may be obtained after an offer of employment is made and accepted.”
Dress code “In general, an employer may establish a dress code which applies to all employees or employees within certain job categories. However, there are a few possible exceptions.” “For example, a dress code that prohibits certain kinds of ethnic dress, such as traditional African or East Indian attire, but otherwise permits casual dress would treat some employees less favorably because of their national origin.”
“While an employer may require all workers to follow a uniform dress code even if the dress code conflicts with some workers' ethnic beliefs or practices, a dress code must not treat some employees less favorably because of their national origin.”
“Moreover, if the dress code conflicts with an employee's religious practices and the employee requests an accommodation, the employer must modify the dress code or permit an exception to the dress code unless doing so would result in undue hardship.”
“Similarly, if an employee requests an accommodation to the dress code because of his disability, the employer must modify the dress code or permit an exception to the dress code, unless doing so would result in undue hardship.”
Constructive discharge/ forced to resign “Discriminatory practices under the laws EEOC enforces also include constructive discharge or forcing an employee to resign by making the work environment so intolerable a reasonable person would not be able to stay.”
Still, the laws inforced by the EEOC can only address discrimination and not prejudice. PrejudiceThe unseen attitudes that lead to discrimination. is an unseen attitude; discriminationThe observable actions that are prompted by prejudicial attitudes. is the observable behavior driven by prejudice. Prejudicial attitudes need not consist of active malice; a prejudicial attitude can stem from ethnocentrismThe belief that one’s own culture is the most natural and is superior to others.—the belief that one’s own culture is the best or most natural—and from stereotypesGeneralizations that ascribe certain traits to all members of a social classification; e.g., older persons are forgetful, women are emotional, the differently abled are helpless, religious believers are judgmental, gay men are effeminate, or persons of a given racial or ethnic heritage are lazy, or unscrupulous, or dirty, or timid. which portray older persons as forgetful, or women as emotional, or the differently abled as helpless, or religious believers as judgmental, or gay men as effeminate, or persons of a given racial or ethnic heritage as lazy, or unscrupulous, or dirty, or timid. Though more than 100,000 individual charge filings were lodged with the EEOC in 2011, enforcement alone cannot end prejudice and its effects.U.S. Equal Employment Opportinty Commission (n.d.). EEOC charge receipts by state (includes U.S. territories) and basis for 2011. Retrieved October 26, 2012, from www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/state_11.cfmThere can be, for example, the silent discrimination that limits the access of women and minorities to informal communication networks and to professional mentors, or turns them into “tokens” so that employers feel no obligation to recruit more. The real path to embracing diverse identities within today’s organizations is in the everyday business of working out relationships of mutual respect and dignity. Brenda Allen, in her study of social identities and communication, concluded with three simple recommendations: be mindful of your own biases, be proactive in setting aside those biases, and fill your communication toolbox with a repertoire of skills for effective and empatheic listening and dialogue.Allen, B. J. (2011). Difference matters: Communicating social identity. Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
Balancing Identification and Identity
We opened the chapter by pairing identity and diversity as aspects of organizational life that exist in a tension which must be balanced. This is just as true for you, as an organization member, as it is for the organization. In this concluding section we will cast the identity/diversity balance for individuals as an identification/identity balance. In other words, how do you balance your organizational identification with your personal identity—that is, your need to identify with the organizational sufficiently to be a team member and get satisfaction from you job, with the need to “be your own person” and “have a life”? Concern about work-life balanceTerm often used to describe the issues that arise as individuals attempt to balance the sometimes conflicting demands of their work and their personal lives. is not new; much was said in the postwar years as fathers went back to work and climbed the new corporate ladders, and again a generation later when the rise of two-income households put terms such as latchkey kidand supermom into the popular vocabulary. Today with the rise of the Internet and social media, many are concerned about the subtle ways that work is “colonizing” personal life as employees are increasingly pressured to answer work-related emails at home and be available 24/7 to answer phone calls, texts, and tweets from supervisors, coworkers, clients, and customers.
Since the 1990s some organizations have experimented with alternative work arrangements including flex time (flexible working hours), telecommuting or flex place (working from home a certain number of days per week), and job sharing (allowing a full-time job to be shared by two or more part-time employees). Yet the Families and Work Institute (FWI), in its 2012 National Study of Employers, found that the “culture of flexibility” had stagnated due to the economic pressures of the 2008–09 recession.Matos, K., & Galinsky, E. (2012). 2012 National Study of Employers. New York: Families and Work Institute; pg. 6. After surveying more than a thousand U.S. organizations of all sizes and occupations, FWI discovered that on the one hand, since 2005 “employers have increased their provision of options that allow employees to better manage the times and places in which they work” through flex time, flex place, and other policies. But on the other hand, “employers have reduced their provision of options that involve employees spending significant amounts of time away from full-time work” through opportunities to move between full- and part-time status and with career breaks for personal or family responsibilities. Employees thus have more options for managing their daily time but fewer options for managing their lives and careers.
Still, the availability of more flex time is a positive step. But why, then, did a 2008 FWI study find that between two-thirds and three-quarters of employee in various occupations reported “not having enough time” to spend with their spouses, partners, or children?Matos, K., & Galinsky, E. (2011). Workplace flexibility in the United States: A status report. New York: Families and Work Institute; pgs. 12–13. The same survey revealed that, even when employees have access to schedule flexibility, 70 percent use it no more than once a month and 19 percent never use it. Even to care for a sick child, employed parents took an average of only 3.6 days off per year.Ibid, pg. 5. “[H]aving access to flexibility options is one thing, but having a culture that supports their use is another. Employees can have substantial access to flexibility, but when they feel that its use is not condoned, they might as well not have access. . . . [A] culture of flexibility is as, if not more, important than simply having access to flexibility options.”Ibid, pg. 14. Since 89 percent or more of employees in all occupations surveyed reported that their supervisors are responsive to requests for time off, then “the obstacles to using flexibility likely reside with coworkers, senior leaders, clients, and with employees’ perceptions of the organizational norms.”Ibid, pg. 14.
This returns us, of course, to the issue of balancing identification and identity—how much you identify with your organization, versus how much you construct your identity from other sources and maintain that identity. In modern societies where many people spend the bulk of their waking hours at work—and where many people accept job transfers that uproot them from traditional sources of identity—striking a good balance between work and life is a challenge. In the United States, the “culture of flexibility” that organizations need to accommodate a diverse workforce has run up against the ingrained expectation that employees should, heart and soul, be “company people.” The “right” balance between work and life, between organizational identification and self-identity, is different for each person. You will need to decide what is right for you. But knowledge is power. In this chapter we have learned about the processes by which an organization forms an identity, by which it attempts to socialize employees into that identity, and by which employees acquire an organizational identification. We have learned about identity regulation, concertive control, and technologies of the body through which modern organizations “produce” employees who discipline themselves according to desired norms. With this knowledge you can look squarely at organizational processes, question assumptions that may be taken for granted as normal and natural, and make informed choices about your own participation.
Key Takeaways
• Black, Asian, and Hispanic men and women will comprise steadily increasing percentages of the U.S. labor force through at least 2050. Yet the total labor force will grow slowly as Baby Boomers retire and the participation rate of women levels off after rising rapidly in previous decades. Organizations that embrace a diverse labor force will, as Cox and Blake summarized, enjoy a recruiting edge in a shrinking labor pool and benefit from the creativity, problem-solving, flexibility, and marketing insights generated by diverse perspectives. But as large number of charges filed annually with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suggest, prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes still lead to workplace discrimination. This discrimination may be subtle, perhaps as women and minorities are denied access to informal networks and mentors. Brenda Allen recommends three simple steps: be mindful, be proactive, and fill your communication toolbox with effective listening and dialogue skills.
• Although organizations are increasingly willing to provide some measure of daily schedule flexibility for their employees, they have been less willing in recent years to give significant time off (beyond what the law requires) to employees who desire a career break for parenting or other caregiving responsibilities. Even so, large majorities of employees who do have access to scheduling flexibility seldom or never use it. The reason is not that supervisors are unresponsive. Rather, the cultures of most workplaces assume that strong organizational identification and dedication should be the norm. Awareness of how organizational identity and identification are formed can help you assess the processes occurring around you and make informed choices for balancing work and life.
Exercises
1. Throughout the section exercises in this chapter, you have thought about a specific organization to which you have belonged—perhaps a sport teams, a club, a house of worship, a workplace, or the college you attend. Think one more time about this organization. Could it benefit from taking a more proactive stance toward recruiting a diverse membership? If so, make a list of how the organization would gain a recruiting edge over other organizations, and how a greater diversity of perspectives within its membership could improve creativity and problem-solving and help the organization do a better job of getting its message out to a diverse public. Think of specific instances when the organization’s actions could have been more effective if its membership and leadership were more diverse.
2. Chances are that you have struggled with balancing your personal life with your work—whether that work was a job, or school, or your involvement in community organizations or clubs. To what extent do you think that your decisions about the amount of time you spend at work, at school, or in other involvements are shaped by your identification with the organization in question? To what extent is it shaped by the norms and expectations of that organization’s culture? Has there ever been a time when you overcommitted yourself? Why? Jot down your thoughts. How could the information in this chapter have helped you make more informed choices? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/07%3A_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity/7.04%3A_Diversity_and_the_Organization.txt |
Real World Case Study
An important and frequently cited article in the literature on organizational identity explored the case of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.Dutton & Dukerich, op cit. Established in 1921, the Port Authority develops and operates transportation facilities that serve a two-state region. These include three airports (Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark), a major downtown bus terminal, a train service, various bridges, tunnels and harbor facilities, and—at the time the study was conducted in the 1980s—the World Trade Centers in Manhattan. Researchers Jane Dutton and Janet Dukerich interviewed managers and employees and found they most frequently described the Port Authority’s identity as a technically expert professional organization and not a social services agency, as ethically high-minded, as a superior provider of quality transportation services, as committed to the betterment of the region and indeed a symbol of the region, as a “fixer” with an “can-do” ethos, and as a “family” that deserved employee loyalty.
This identity was externally challenged in 1982 when the numbers of homeless persons frequenting the downtown Port Authority bus terminal increased. Improvements in the Manhattan real estate market prompted to closure of many single-occupancy hotels, putting hundreds of men on the street. Their increasing presence at the bus terminal was all the more noticeable because the Port Authority had just completed a major facelift and enlargement of the facility.
The Port Authority, which maintains a large police force, saw the homeless as a police issue and invoked New York’s anti-loitering law to evict offenders from the terminal. By 1985, however, the homeless could be found not only in the bus terminal but in the Port Authority’s flagship facilities including its three airports and the World Trade Centers. Now the homeless were not just an issue for the bus terminal, but for the entire organization. Facility managers were compelled to formally budget funds for dealing with the problem. Their focus was still on removing the homeless, but now the bus terminal managers sought out social services agencies to take them.
Several events in 1987 marked a turning point. New York City repealed its anti-loitering law; the appearance of crack cocaine in the city increased the number of homeless; and the police union, to gain leverage in a contract dispute, circulated negative stories about the Port Authority in the press. Public concerns were voiced that the Port Authority was inhumanely evicting the homeless. Recognizing that a coordinated response was needed, the Port Authority formed a centralized Homeless Project Team and funded a research project. For the organization, homelessness had now become a business problem with a moral dimension. By 1988, Port Authority leaders publicly argued that homelessness was a regional problem and funded construction of two drop-in centers, one near the bus terminal and the other near the World Trade Centers. But when municipal authorities balked at running the shelters, Port Authority personnel became increasingly resigned to—and began to feel heroic about—dealing with the homeless themselves. By the time Dutton and Dukerich ended their research in 1989, the Port Authority had come to see itself as a “quiet advocate” for the homeless—and even bolstering the economic competitiveness of the region by providing model leadership on an issue faced by transportation services in cities and regions nationwide.
1. How did the Port Authority’s organizational identity change? At the same time, how was the changed identity rooted in its original identity as technically expert, professional, ethical, a service provider, a “can-do” fixer, and a regional symbol?
2. Using Hatch and Schultz’s Organizational Identity Dynamics Model (see Figure 8.3), explain how the Port Authority’s identity and culture were interrelated, and how its identity and image were interrelated.
3. Using Gioia, Schultz, and Corley’s model for identity-image interdependence (see Figure 8.5), describe the external event of the homelessness issue triggered at the Port Authority a process of self-reflection and other-reflection as managers compared their organizational identity and organizational image, perceived discrepancies, and made changes. Continue your analysis by following the model of Gioia et al. through the successive phases of the homelessness issue.
4. Cheney and Christensen argued that organizational identity strongly affects the problems that corporate leaders “see” and their strategies for managing those issues. To what extent was this dynamic at work in the Port Authority’s responses to the homelessness issue? Did the Port Authority’s public communication ever reach the point of being auto-communicative; i.e., the organizational mostly talking to itself?
5. Dutton and Dukerich found that many of the personnel they interviewed exhibited a strong identification with the Port Authority? Using Ashforth and Mael’s framework (in-group distinctiveness and prestige; awareness of and competition with other groups), how do you think these employees formed such a strong organizational identification? Using Alvesson and Willmott’s model (see Figure 8.7), how do you think these employees’ identity work was shaped by the discourses of Port Authority management?
6. Dutton and Dukerich did not document the diversity of the Port Authority’s management and workforce. But as a general proposition, how do you think a diverse and multicultural organization might have approached the homelessness issue described in the case study? Would the response be different than the response of the Port Authority?
End-of-Chapter Assessment Head
1. According to Albert and Whetten’s original definition, organizational identity refers to features of an organization that are:
1. internal, external, and environmental
2. formal, informal, and cultural
3. cognitive, affective, and behavioral
4. central, distinctive, and enduring
5. structural, cultural, and adaptive
2. According to Hatch and Shultz, organizational identity is distinguishable from organizational culture because it is:
1. contextual, tacit, and emergent
2. textual, explicit, and instrumental
3. internal, self-referential, and singular
4. external, other-focused, and multiple
5. cognitive, affective, and behavioral
3. According to Ashforth and Mael, organizational identification is a:
1. set of feelings
2. set of behaviors
3. set of guiding principles
4. cognitive construct
5. cultural assumption
4. According to Tompkins and Cheney, when organization members discipline themselves to conform to desired norms then the organization has achieved:
1. simple control
2. technical control
3. bureaucratic control
4. cultural control
5. concertive control
5. According to Alvesson and Willmott, management engages in discursive strategies to shape the processes of employees’ identity formation; these discourses are called:
1. identity construction
2. identity work
3. identity regulation
4. identity control
5. identity production
1. D
2. B
3. D
4. E
5. C | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/07%3A_Organizational_Identity_and_Diversity/7.E%3A_Exercises.txt |
Many people work together in teams in organizations. Think about all the teams and groups that you belong, such as family, friends, work, church, etc. We are involved with a variety of groups for different reasons. You are probably involved with certain groups and teams based on your abilities, experiences, and/or talents. Your participation and the degree to which you contribute will often depend on the communication interactions in that group. In this chapter, we will discuss the importance of teams. We will discuss the characteristics of teams, types of teams and downside to teams.
• 8.1: Introduction
• 8.2: Group
Many organizations have several different kinds of groups. These groups can be informal or formal. Formal groups are usually assigned by a supervisor or higher administrator. Formal groups can include: sales teams, work teams, problem-solving groups, management teams, and unions. Informal groups usually occur due to common interests and/or social compatibility. Informal groups can include: Christmas office particies, coffee breaks, poker night, car pooling, and complaining sessions.
• 8.3: Types of Teams
Work teams are integral for an organization because they have the have the objective of completing certain outcomes. Parallel teams are formed externally. Parallel teams look at specific items that the organization might overlook or not perceive accurately. Project teams are composed of specific/specialized members that need to obtain a goal in a set amount of time. Management teams have the responsibility of running and maintaining the organization.
• 8.4: The Downside to Teams
Not only are there different types of groups and teams, there are also different types of outcomes and challenges that groups can encounter. In this section, we will look at some of the negative challenges to teams. In this section, you will learn about the downside to teams and ways to prevent them from happening.
• 8.5: Group Communication Roles
Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats created a scheme for understand the functional roles of group members. It was created by the First National Training Laboratory in Group Development in 1947. They classified three types: (1) Group task roles, (2) Group building and maintenance roles, and (3) Individual roles.
• 8.E: Exercises
08: Teams in the Workplace
Teams in the Workplace
In your college experience, one of your professors will most likely assign you to work on a group project. Sometimes, your professor will allow you to pick the other members of your group and sometimes you are not allowed to pick your group members. Unless you are very fortunate, you probably did not have a very good experience working on the group project. This is because most people do not know how to work in groups. To be more specific, most people do not know how to interact or communicate in groups and teams. Often times, there might be what Andy Hargreaves and Ruth Dawe identify as “contrived collegiality”, in which everyone works on similar jobs as quickly as possible, they don’t discuss anything, make poor judgment decisions, and are more concern with completion than quality.Hargreaves, A. & Dawe, R. (1990). Paths of professional development: Contrived collegiality, collaborative culture, and the case of peer coaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 6(3), 227–241.
Many people work together in teams in organizations. Think about all the teams and groups that you belong, such as family, friends, work, church, etc. We are involved with a variety of groups for different reasons. You are probably involved with certain groups and teams based on your abilities, experiences, and/or talents. Your participation and the degree to which you contribute will often depend on the communication interactions in that group. In this chapter, we will discuss the importance of teams. We will discuss the characteristics of teams, types of teams and downside to teams. | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/08%3A_Teams_in_the_Workplace/8.01%3A_Introduction.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Explain the definition of group.
• Differentiate between group and teams.
• Understand the models of team development.
• Understand the stages of the team performance model.
Looking at the picture above, can you tell if it is a group or a team? How do you know it is a group? Many organizations have several different kinds of groups. These groups can be informal or formal. Formal groups are usually assigned by a supervisor or higher administrator. Formal groups can include: sales teams, work teams, problem-solving groups, management teams, and unions. Informal groups usually occur due to common interests and/or social compatibility. Informal groups can include: Christmas office particies, coffee breaks, poker night, car pooling, and complaining sessions. Informal groups do not have specific rules about membership or the types of communication in that group. Every group is essential for people to accomplish their tasks and seek social support.
John Baird defined groupTwo or more people that think they are a group, have a common goals, structure, and interactions to achieve their desired goals. as “a collection of more than two persons who perceive themselves as a group, possess a common fate, have organizational structire, and communicate over time to achieve personal and group goals.”Baird, J. E., Jr. (1977). The dynamics of organizational communication. New York: Harper and Row, pg. 9. In essence, a group is two or more individuals who communicate with each other to attain their goal. Because this is a book on organizational communication, a group in this context will have specific goals, influence, and interactions. These specific goals might be to have an advertising campaign completed, financial portfolios on all the organization’s clientes completed, and/or updating new technology programs on all the computers in the organization. Influences that groups might have may be to help management understand the importance of having a day care facility onsite or assist managers in acquiring potential resources for employees. Interactions might include co-workers being informed about specific changes in the organization and/or warnings that employees should be aware of. Notice that the key importance in these definitions is the word communication. For instance, five people waiting for the bus is not a group. They all have the same goal: to get on the bus. However, each person is not influencing the other and they do not have to communicate with each other. Group members need to be able to communicate with each other. Often times, organizations will use groups to accomplish organizational gorals. Work groups are created to perform tasks in an efficient and effective manner. Problem solving groups are used to discuss organizational dilemmas. These groups will convene to examine, analyze, and dissimenate information.
Group vs. Team
You have probably heard the old saying that there is no “I” in “TEAM”. And it’s true! However, do you know what the differences are between a group and a team? Most people might say that a team has a common goal or purpose. In addition, they might say that each person on a team is interdependent. In other words, each person on the team recognizes that every person is valuable and knows what needs to be done to accomplish their goal.Lee, G. V. (2009). From group to team: Skilled facilitation moves a group from a collection of individuals to an effective team. Journal of Staff Development, 30(5), 48–49.
On the other hand, groups might include people that have similar roles or tasks, such as all medical nurses. Groups can eventually become teams. The main difference is that teams need to support each team member. It takes a lot of characteristics for a group to become a team. The main difference is that in a team each individual is not only responsible for their efforts and contributions to the group, but also for the collective outcome of the group. Moreover, the emphasis is not on the individual but the team. Hence, the communication is different, because in teams, people want to discuss and come to a conclusion about how to solve the problem. In groups, the main reason why people communicate is to share information without much discussion. These differences are displayed in Table \(1\).
Table \(1\): Differences between Groups and Teams
Groups Teams
Every person is accountable. Everyone is accountable for their work to the group & others’ work.
The focus is to share information and opinions. The focus is to discuss, make decisions, solve problems, and strategize.
Emphasis on individual goals. Emphasis on team goals.
Outcome is on each individual’s contribution. Outcome is on the entire group’s contribution.
Identify every person’s roles & tasks. Indentify every person’s roles & tasks in regards to help the collective effort. Each person can often switch and/ allocate parts of their tasks to others.
The focus is each person’s outcome and struggles. The focus is on the team’s outcome and struggles.
The objectives and goals of the group are placed by a manager or leader. The objectives and goals of the group are placed by team leader with team members.
Tuckman’s Model of Groups
Bruce Tuckman’s model of groups is well known for explaining how teams develop. He noted that these stages are forming, storming, norming, and performing (Figure 9.1).Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequences in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399. Tuckman realizes that groups will have many differences in assumptions, values, and goals. This model addresses the groups’ need to examine and resolve certain questions before the group can work together effectively. This model is important for any team member to recognize that before the team can move forward from one stage to another they need to make sure that the core issues are being met before they can advance. If the team does not move forward, then it means that certain issues are not being satisfactorily met. This model also helps team leaders identify signs that issues need to be address appropriately before the team can actually perform their task effectively.
Stage 1: Forming
The group is in its beginning stages. Individuals are trying to figure out the climate and the types of communication that would be appropriate. Members heavily rely on the team leader for direction and information. Members are still trying to develop their relationships and associations with others. For instance, one of the authors of this book was involved on a job search committee. The organization picked the members and expected the group to pick a leader. It was pretty chaotic because everyone was still trying to figure out everyone else.
Stage 2: Storming
In this phase, conflict is present. Members communicate to obtain influence and acknowledgment. Members may become polarized or take stand on certain issues. Conflict can arise out of personal or task related issues. If the group can confront and solve the problems, then they can move towards the next stage. After the group leader was selected, conflict arose in who we thought we should hire and why. Everyone had their own opinion on the matter.
Stage 3: Norming
Unlike the previous group where conflict was present, the group moves toward more open and accepting styles of communication. The group wants to work in an effective and harmonious manner. More team members feel better due to the fact that the communication has changed from a confrontational style to a non-confrontational style. Members have shared values and attitudes. There is a difference between behaviors and feelings. In the previous example, after the members understood their roles and their agendas, then the group was more cohesive in terms of determining what to do next.
Stage 4: Performing
In this stage, members can concentrate on accomplishing the group’s task. Because they have been able to solve the groups’ problems, they can direct their energy towards the completion of the task. Group members feel a better sense of shared responsibility and a sense of personal accountability. After everyone was able to communicate and share their opinions, they were able to really produce quality results for finding the right candidate for the job.
We are sure that you can think back on group projects that you have worked on and recognize the storming and forming phases are real. If you are involved with groups where forming and storming are preventing you from accomplishing the task at hand, you need to address your group and their concerns before you can move forward.
Team Performance Model
Many times, team leaders will try to form groups using ice breakers, enforcing the idea of professionalism, assuming that norms will counteract the group’s differences, and relying solely on agendas, and activities to compensate for the group negativity or dissatisfaction.Lee, G. V. (2009). From group to team: Skilled facilitation moves a group from a collection of individuals to an effective team. Journal of Staff Development, 30(5), 48–49. One new model that illustrates a better way of developing teams is Allan Dexler, David Sibbet, and Russ Forrester (2009)’s Team Performance Model.Drexler, A., Sibbet, D., & Forrester, R. (2009). The team performance model. San Francisco: The Grove Consultants. The model consists of seven stages that illustrate how a team can be formed and then complete their task: orientation, trust building, goal clarification, commitment, implementation, high performance, and renewal (Figure 9.2).
Stage 1: Orientation
In this beginning phase, group members come together and ascertain the about the task or directive at hand. Most of the time, these individuals do not have a work history with the other people on the team. Hence, group members may question their purpose with the group. For that reason, team members must be informed about how the group was formed and the reason why each person was selected for that task. Drexler et al. noted that if a certain individual feels unsatisfied for being on this team, then they will experience puzzlement, indecision, and possibly fear. Moreover, if certain members feel a disconnect from the group, then they will focus on this disconnection and possible make the other group members feel uncomfortable. The disconnected group member may become more reserved and detached from the group. In some conditions, the disconnected group member might provide some uncalled-for comments and possibly never attain much value in the team’s mission. For instance, one of the writers of this book was asked to be on a group analyzing other graduate programs. It was very nerve-wrecking because none of the group members knew each other or why they were put together. The team leader explained that we were selected based on our experiences and we could provide the best input.
Once the orientation stage is settled, then group members are in the process of becoming a team. Everyone in the group has a new perception of the group as a team, they use terms like “us,” feel a connection with the group’s purpose, and think about the team’s possibilities for achievement.
Stage 2: Trust building
Most everyone will agree that trust is an essential element for team performance. A team is interdependent. Thus, group members have to be able to give up control and reliance on others so that they can execute their task. Think about all the people you trust and how over time this trust has allowed us to know the other person even more. In the previous example about the group analyzing graduate programs, each person in the group had a specific task and a deadline. Each member had to trust the other members to complete their task otherwise the group would fail and not be able to accomplish their goal. The same holds true in teams. The development of trust allows teams the ability to create more efficiency. If teams lack trust, then they will be more guarded of others, and not be willing to communicate the truth. Teams that lack trust will also lack integrity because group members are not expressing their true feelings and opinions. The result of these behaviors hinder the legitimacy and genuineness of the work. At the same time, lack of trust will prevent cooperation and collaboration among the group members.
Stage 3: Goal Clarification
In this stage, team members are trying to figure out the team’s ultimate goal(s) and their agenda. Team members create a shared vision with clear and concise goals. They have explicit assumptions with each other about the goal. In the previous example, it was at this stage that certain group members were wary about their comments and were worried that their comments would not be taken seriously. The team leader had to meet with the group again to reassure them that their comments were valuable for the success of the organization. At this stage, some members become apathetic or skeptical about the goal. In addition, there may be some extraneous competition among group members. The key factor in this stage is to make sure all group members know the goal or expected outcome for the group.
Stage 4: Commitment
After the group is clear in their goal, there needs to be some communication about certain roles. Group members need to collectively decide how resources, such as time and effort will be allocated and utilized for maximum efficiency. Each member realized that their comments were important so they worked harder to accomplish the goal.There will be group members who will become dependent on others to complete their task, which will delay the outcome. There will also be some resistance from group members who may have different perceptions in how their time and effort could be used best.
Stage 5: Implementation
Once the decision is made on how each person will contribute to the group’s goal, then there will be a better sense of the execution of that goal. Teams are informed with all the basic information of who, what, when, where, and why. Teams can move forward and implement the task. They can put all their resources, comments, input together and finalize their task. In any event, there may be conflicts at this stage. There may be team members that will miss deadlines and may feel non-allied in the team’s main object. If group members can figure out what works best, then work can be completed.
Stage 6: High Performance
When all group members know when and who is doing what towards their team’s goals, a group reaches a state of high performance. They may realize that the methods have been performed well, then they can be more flexible. They are more likely to say “Wow!” at their progress and possibly surpass expectations. In this stage, there is more interaction and synergy. Disgruntled team members may feel disharmony or overburdened, so it is important that the team be able to adapt and accommodate all group members to be able to perform effectively. After the group gets into a groove, and is completed to finishing the task, the group will be amazed at the ending results.
Stage 7: Renewal
After the team has completed their task, they may ask whether it is worth it to continue or add new members. The team needs time to reflect on whether they should continue, stop, or form a new team. Often team members will feel burnout or boredom after the task has been completed. The team needs to take time to celebrate the completion of their goals and recognize key team members. In the previous example, the team leader took everyone out to dinner to celebrate on a job well done!
The benefit of this model is that it allows us to understand the communication situations that can occur during each phase. The model illustrates the importance of having such conversations at each stage.
Key Takeaways
• Groups can be informal or formal.
• There are many differences between groups and teams. Group stresses individual outcomes, whereas team stresses individual and collective outcomes. The individual is a key element in the group. Teams share responsibility. Moreover, the communication is very different.
• Team development takes place in phase: forming, storming, norming, and performing.
• The team developmental model showcases seven stages that groups go through before they can work efficiently and effectively as a team.
Exercises
1. Think about a group you are currently working in at work, home, church, etc. Fill out the survey on: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/teamsuv.html. After completing the measure, what did you learn about your group? What can you do to improved your group communication?
2. Looking at the Team Performance Model, what do you think is the hardest stage? Why? What do you think is the easiest stage? Do you think this model is accurate? Why or why not?
3. Create a list of at least two groups and two teams that you belong to? What differences do you see between these two lists and the types of organizational accomplishments they’ve had? | textbooks/socialsci/Communication/Introduction_to_Communication/Organizational_Communication_-_Theory_Research_and_Practice/08%3A_Teams_in_the_Workplace/8.02%3A_Group.txt |
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