Rutgers Organizational
Communication Final Exam
Questions And Answers Latest
Update
traditional approach ANS✔✔ - an approach to power
- structural-functionalist
- Power is a relatively stable entity that people or groups have
- Power= control over resources, hierarchical status in the organization
- Researchers adopting this approach ask questions about the factors that lead
to organizational power and the impact of power on outcomes such as job
satisfaction and performance
symbological approach ANS✔✔ - an approach to power
- Symbolic-interpretive
- Power is a product of communicative interactions and relationships
- How communication constitutes understandings of power through socially
constructed organizational relationship
-
radical-critical approach ANS✔✔ - an approach to power
- Power is focal concept of social relations
- Power is in deep structures and ideologies
- Discourse is key to understanding power
,- theorist job is to explore the ways in which economic, social, and
communicative relationships produce and maintain organizational power
relationships.
critical appraoch ANS✔✔ - Founded in the work of Karl Marx
- Marx believed that "critique" would lead to revolution because it would reveal
fundamental truths about the human social condition
- Inherent imbalance between owners and workers
- Criticism of existing conditions -> Revolution
- thoughts have shaped ideas of other theorists
- Agreement among theorists
1) Certain societal structures and processes lead to fundamental imbalances of
power
2) Imbalances of power lead to alienation and oppression for certain social
classes and groups
3) Our role is to explore and uncover these imbalances and bring them to the
attention of the oppressed group
4) Possibility of emancipation - through direct political action, individual
resistance, or awareness of the oppressed individuals
Sources of Power ANS✔✔ - Formal authority
- Control of scarce resources
- Use of organizational structure, rules, and regulations
- Control of decision processes
- Control of knowledge and information
,- Control of boundaries
- Ability to cope with uncertainty
- Control of technology
- Interpersonal alliances, networks, and control of "informal organization"
- Control of counter organizations
- Symbolism and the management of meaning
- Gender and the management of gender relationships
- Structural factors that define the stage of action
- The power one already has
modes of production ANS✔✔ - associated most clearly with the Marxist
tradition of critical theory
- refers to the economic conditions that underlie the production process
-For example, Marx argues that the capitalist __________ is based on owners
expropriating surplus labor from workers and that this creates conflict between
workers and owners. However, owners and workers in a capitalist system are
not necessarily aware of this process.
means of production ANS✔✔ - associated most clearly with the Marxist
tradition of critical theory
- refers to actual work processes—how products are made and services
rendered
control of discourse ANS✔✔ - highlights concerns most typically associated
with critical theorists in the communication discipline
, - critical researchers go further by explicitly arguing that the reality created
through discourse is the site of domination
- For example, the use in our culture of particular phrases to describe work can
be seen as reinforcing dominant power structures. Clair (1996) examined the
ways in which the phrase "real job" (as in "when are you going to get a real
job?") serves a political function by implying that the kind of jobs held by
college students (e.g., waiting tables, retail clerking) are not as important as
other types of employment.
ideology ANS✔✔ - "The taken for granted assumptions about reality that
influence perceptions of situations and events" (Deetz & Kersten, 1983, p162)
- Structures our understanding about what exists, what is good, and what is
possible.
- Involves assumptions that are rarely questioned
• Ex. Ideological beliefs about organizational structure/hierarchy
- By shaping our view of the world, it can influence our behaviors
- related to the way in which they are used to justify and legitimize actions
hegemony ANS✔✔ - developed by Gramsci (1971)
- A process in which a dominant group leads another group to accept
subordination as the norm
- "Manufactured consent", in which employees willingly adopt and reinforce
hierarchical power structures
- __________ control can be accomplished by shaping ideology in such a way
that the controlled group accepts and actively participates in the control
process
• Ex. Organizational members accept the legitimacy of rules
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