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Summary CM1014 COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATIONS
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COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATIONSTUTORIAL WEEK 1
Organization is not the government, but businesses, schools etc.
FUNCTIONS OF ORGANIZATIONS
- Organizations give meaning to our lives proud to work at a organization
- Some organizations have become more powerful than governments
- Organizations shape social reality through communication processes
communication is the key to organization
3 TYPES OF COMMUNICATION PROCESSES
Line Communication – the communication which often happens from the directors to the
subordinates e.g. managers give an order to the middle-class managers they give it
their employees
Parallel Information – internal magazines, intranet sites, message boards, video clips, etc.
they are a support for the line communication, because sometimes we cannot realizes face-
to-face communication, or if the task is too complex we need different types of
communication to realize the activity especially in multinationals other supporting tools
like these are used
Grapevine – people share their own understanding and personal feelings e.g. gossip in a
coffee corner that is being picked up e.g. how the manager is and if they like the
workplace
it is not easy to combine all three types;
- For managers it is not direct to see how the communication process happens at
different levels
- For employees they have to figure out which communication actually matters to
them and in order to understand that they can make sense of their associations with
the organization
There is no single definition for organization people try to understand organizations in
terms of metaphors different objects were used to understand and explain the certain
features of organizations e.g. organization is like a zoo/family/river (change, flow of
water)/machine (accuracy, gives no notion to communication)
Charles Redding (1988) – founder of organizational communication
4 KEY FEATURES OF AN ORGANIZATION
- Interdependence in a team you support each other, work on a project together
and everyones contribution will contribute to making this puzzle more complete
emphasizes the reliability of each member that the responsibility is shared, because
as an individual you can’t reach the goals which is set by the organization you also
need to rely on other members of the organization to work together
- Differentiations of tasks and functions division of labor, roles, and responsibilities
- Goal orientation for everyone to strive toward applies to any kind of
organization fundamental values
, - Control (to achieve coordinated, goal-oriented behavior) mechanisms of control
control will never disappear, as long as we are associated with an organization,
there will be certain types of control that we have to experience
Communication?? Redding missed this
PANDEMIC AND COMMUNICATION
- Digital communication became the new norm
- Internal communication claimed organizations’ attention instead of external,
organizations began to focus on the internal communication to motivate their
employees
- Businesses showed empathy with others look at shared values of the society
Complicating our thinking about organizations
Organizations are dynamic, not static alteration is possible
Many elements are still relevant but have been altered, for example:
- Structure hierarchy structure changed
- Organization types e.g. upcoming social enterprises
- Goal/s social responsibilities is important they need to follow morals and
norms
- Communication real life to digital
- Control
- Others?
TWO PERSPECTIVES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION
Communication in Organizations Organizations as Communication
(transmission model) (constitutive/meaning-centered approach)
- Organizations as containers for - Communication constitutes organization
communication processes - Communication is the primary purpose to
- Focus: efficiency and clarity create meanings creating and
- Communication occurs in negotiating meanings within organizations
organizations - Without communication, organizations
- Overlooking the complexity of the cease to exist because it is the purpose
communication process and the way it works
misunderstandings/different - Organizations as complex patterns of
interpretations critic communication habits the way in which
how can we achieve an efficiency? How people communicate within organizations
can we improve clarity of communication? already tells the type of organization it is
How can we pass the guidelines efficiently no respect causes problems
Critic: It makes sense to consider organizations
as very complex patterns of communication,
however if every meaning needs to be negotiated,
we cannot always take the efficiency as the
primary goal of the organization, because the
negotiating of meanings can take quite some time
Mumby’s preferred approach
,Organizations as Communication
CONS OF THE TRANSMISSION MODEL
S-M-C-R = Sender (who sends the information) – Message (information) – Channel (which
channel is the information being distributed) – Receiver (person who receives the info)
- Activity
- Reflections?
The book adopts a constitutive and/or meaning-centered perspective: “Communication
constitutes organization”
Communication – the dynamic, ongoing process of creating and negotiating meanings
through interactional symbolic (verbal and nonverbal) practices, including conversations,
metaphors, ritual, stories, dress, and space
Organizational Communication – the process of creating and negotiating collective
coordinated systems of meaning through symbolic practices oriented toward the
achievement of organizational goals meanings which need to be created and negotiated
within organizations verbal and non-verbal communication, coffee corner
Task Time Clock time
Biocractic
Living to work, no differentiation between life and work
Bed and breakfast
Organizations mixed with life itself how organizations make their people feel better
Direct control teacher have direct control over the students to give them instructions
Technological control find homework on Canvas
Bureaucratic control course guide, gives a structure
Ideological control victim of Erasmus, that they have imprentend internal
Biocractic control lifestyle related to a social role socializating of people
Biocratic control – all aspects of your life phd student has to do things outside schools too
LECTURE WEEK 2
PART 1: THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN ORGANIZATION
Henry Ford – founder of a Fordist organizational/modern organization form that prevails in
the 20th century
Henry wanted to give everyone the ability to own a car, therefore he wanted to offer his cars
for a lower price, so that people will be able to purchase them he was able to achieve this
goal by his way of working and innovating
Main problem: producing car was expensive and took 12 hours
, Ford: reduced this process to 2 hours by approaching the production process in a more
rational way his aim was to find a more efficient way to produce cars, so that you could
produce more cars in return
he broke the construction of a car into many small separate steps, he trained workers to
execute only one of those steps in addition he introduced the moving assembly line
partly constructed car was moved from one work station to another and in each station,
parts were added in a specific order up to a part where the car was constructed mass
production of cars
Historical context
Before the late nineteenth century in the US, there were workers, but the employee did not
exist – Roy Jacques
- Social norm: self-employed you were your own boss
- Wage slavery – term used in mid-1800s to describe working for someone else
people were afraid that they would lose their freedom/independence and they were
not eager to feel like being controlled by managers/organizations
The emergence of the modern organization
- Shift from agrarian to urban society to benefit from economic activity
- Emergence of mechanical power
allowed efficient movement of goods
shift in human experience of time and space
- Shift to industrial society required new kind of worker
- Shift from “task time” to “clock time”
Task time – organic sense of time shaped by tasks workers are paid for the task
they succeed
Clock time – time as form of currency workers paid for time they work better
way to exploit employees
The Fordist organization
- Highly bureaucratic structure strict protocols/rules that employees need to
conform to they were expected to respect the chain of command this is a way
for organizations to control their employees this form of control was
supplemented by direct control of supervisors and technological control by the
moving assembling line (the line had a certain speed, so you had to work on a certain
pace) workers were not really trusted, therefore there was a need for control
from the organization lack of trust explains why decision-making was centralized,
workers have very little influences on the decision-making processes
- Highly differentiated labor process production process was now conducted by
workers who repeated one step each workers didn’t need many skills
- Large economies of scale massive amount of products, products became cheaper,
industrialization provided stable jobs/incomes to many people more people were
able to purchase goods that were previously way out of their reach people could
purchase goods that were not needed to survive, but for hedonistic goals (pleasure,
happiness) people are starting to form an attachment to products consumption
patterns started to be tied to their own sense of identity
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