Week Seven - Critical Approaches

An important underlying thread which connects all of the approaches we have looked at is the political frame of reference.  This can be broken down into three parts:

·    Unitary frame of reference

There are common organizational goals, conflict is seen as negative, and power is given to management (seen in classical approaches).

·    Pluralist frame of reference

There are many groups with power and varying interests, and conflict is seen as a positive (seen in systems and cultural approaches).

·    Radical frame of reference

Power is very important but unequally distributed.  This is related to power in society such as in legal systems and education.

An important concept in each of these frames of reference is power.  There are many different ideas as to definitions of power and who holds it.  This can range from whoever has information, authority, control of resources, control over gender relationships, identification with the organization, control of modes and means of production, and control of organizational discourse (Miller 2009).  Haunschild, Nienhueser and Weiskopf (2009) state that “power appears as a functional medium, which is fluid, changing over time, changeable and moving from one person to the other”

There are four very important concepts which are influenced by power:

·    Ideology

The ideas people have pre-conceived which influence their perceptions (Miller 2009)

·    Hegemony

“class-based ‘organic’ worldviews and the production of ‘spontaneous’ consent to the ideas of the ruling classes” (Grijp 2011).

·    Emancipation

Freeing people’s minds from the specific ideas that have been placed there by the influence of others (Alvesson & Willmott 1992).

·    Resistance

Resistance of power

Critical approaches also take feminism into consideration including sexual harassment, women-owned businesses, women at the top of the hierarchical structure et cetera.  This is demonstrated through the video ‘September Issue’ watched in the lecture about Vogue.  Anna Wintour is the editor-in-chief and is a well-known and feared, powerful woman.  Her power is partly explained by Robert Greene’s 48 laws (also seen in the lecture).  She maintains her reputation, she keeps people dependent on her, she says less than necessary, she controls options et cetera.

The importance of power is critical to understanding communication in organizations today.

References

Alvesson, M & Willmott, H 1992, ‘On the idea of emancipation in management and organization studies’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 432-464

Grijp Pvd 2011, ‘Why accept submission? Rethinking asymmetrical ideology and power’, Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 13-31

Haunschild, A, Nienhueser, W & Weiskopf, R 2009, ‘Power in organizations – power of organizations’, Management Revue, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 320-325.

Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: approaches and processes, 6th ed, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.

Week Six - Cultural Approaches

At this point it has become obvious that metaphors are a favorite way of explaining organizations.  So here is another.  Culture.  But culture is hard to define.  It can be argued that what separates different cultures is a mixture of values, symbols and behaviors (Miller 2009).  The cultural approach therefore ties in greatly with some organizational communication challenges.  For example, with globalization and changing demographics (people of different gender and ethnicity et cetera in one organization), companies are becoming less distinctive (Eisenberg & Riley 2000).

Despite the complexity of organizational culture, there are four issues which are mostly agreed on by today’s scholars: organizational cultures are complicated, emergent, not unitary, and are ambiguous (Miller 2009). 

A relevant definition of culture provided by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2011, p. 1) is:

the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations

This definition is similar to Edgar Schein’s (1992) definition of the culture of a social group.  Schein then developed his ideas into a model of culture, the three levels of which can be seen pictured below.

Schein’s model shows us that organizational culture is determined by individuals’ values and assumptions, that cultures are constantly changing to adapt to environmental contingencies, that within organizations are subcultures in which relationships can vary greatly, and that it is communication between organizational members that produces and maintains a culture.

This model was demonstrated in the case study ‘The Cultural Tale of Two Shuttles’ (Miller 2009).  This compared the disasters of Challenger and Columbia, two space shuttles which ended in disastrous disintegrations, killing all crew members.  In both cases, a small technical fault (which had been brought up by those lower in the hierarchical structure) caused the disasters.  However, the poor NASA culture (the assumption that the opinion of those higher in hierarchical structure is more important than others, the value of launching on time and gaining good publicity, and the artifact of closed communication channels) led to the behaviors which resulted in such disaster.

References

Eisenberg, E & Riley, P 2000, ‘Organizational culture’, in Jablin, F & Putnam, L (eds), The new handbook of organizational communication: advances in theory, research, and methods, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Merriam-Webster 2011, Culture, viewed 5 September 2011,

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: approaches and processes, 6th ed, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.

Schein, EH 1992, Organizational culture and leadership, 2^nd ed. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Week Five - Systems Approaches

The systems metaphor has replaced the machine metaphor for organizations.  Instead of seeing organizations as machines which are predictable, the systems metaphor relates organizations to organisms which emphasizes the complexity and unpredictability of organizations, and how interaction with the environment is necessary for its survival.

This interaction is that of an open system.  As Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1950, p. 23) states “a system is closed if no material enters or leaves it; it is open if there is import and export and, therefore, change of the components”.

Unlike classical approaches, systems approaches (as shown in Miller 2009) focus on how an organization must rely on its subsystems and supersystems to function well (hierarchical ordering and interdependence).  To ensure an organization’s survival, there must be a constant exchange of information and material in and out of an organization (permeability), as well as constant feedback.  Also, the complexity of the inner workings of an organization must match the complexity of the organization itself (requisite variety), or it cannot deal with external problems.

The systems theories (Cybernetic Systems Theory, Karl Weick’s Theory of Organizing, and New Science Systems Theory) together stress the importance of feedback and interdependence to reach system goals, making sense of equivocal information (information which can be interpreted in different ways) (Wagner & Gooding 1997), and the importance of complexity and chaos in organizations.

The case study (explored in the tutorial) ‘Sensemaking after the Acquisition’ (Miller 2009) is a great example of Weick’s Theory of Organizing.  An independent contractor is not being provided information about what changes to expect in her role because of the change of ownership at her firm, despite reassurances that she would soon be contacted.  Therefore, she cannot make sense of the equivocal information she is receiving from others and consequently panics.

Understanding the move from classical to systems approaches, the difference between open and closed systems, and the important features in each of the three systems theories are vital to understanding communication today.

References

Bertalanffy Lv 1950, ‘The theory of open systems in physics and biology’, Science, vol. 111, no. 2872, pp. 23-29.

Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: approaches and processes, 6th ed, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.

Wagner, JA & Gooding RZ 1997, 'Equivocal information and attribution: An investigation of patterns of managerial sensemaking', Strategic Management Journal, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 275-286.