Wednesday, March 21, 2012

week 3: 3 readings of Organizational Communication


In week 3 tutorial, we were divided into three group to discuss the 3 readings given to compare and to give a bigger picture on the research of organisational communication that had been done in the past. The three readings are (1) Organizational Communication: Prelude and Prospects by Thompkins and Thibault, (2) Employee/Organisational Communications by Berger and (3) Research on Organiszational Communication: the Case of Sweden by Johansson.

(1)    Organizational Communication: Prelude and Prospects by Thompkins and Thibault

This journal is reviewing on ‘The New Handbook of Organisational Communication: Advances in theory, research and methods’ book that assessed on the researches that had been done in US. It provided a brief history of the rubrics, categories and ideologies that have shaped the identity of the field. It also note on some trends in the study of organizational communication that is believed to demonstrate a certain maturation of the field in the each moves the field in ways that question and deconstruct categories of the past while integrating domains and methods thought to be permanently at adds with each other. Old terministic screens give way to more inclusive ones and division yields to merger and mergers are subdivided allowing the field of organisational communication to be enriched.

The review suggested that our future research will continue to extend past research by developing new perspectives on old issues and problems associated with communication and organisation. The traditional focus was on leader-follower communication, communication networks and structures, the creation, sensing and routing of information, information flow and participation in making decision, filtering and distortion of messages, communication channels, feedback processing. These will remain as significant areas of study. The research question may vary; much of the research will be expanding on topics that have a long history of study in organisational communication. Besides that, they have also stated of the rising of research traditions founded on the metaphors of “voice”, “discourse” and “performance” as part of maturation of the field. Finally, the analysis suggest that the field is now focusing more on communicational theorizing about organizing than in the recent past. Taylor’s (1993) argues that conversations are the stuff of organizations, conversations lead to narratives or text meaningful to the conversationalists and organization is a communication system. Redding (1972) on the other hand facilitate a view of organizations as communicational in nature, a perspective that we expect will be central to understanding the more fluid, fragmented and chaotic forms of organizations and organizing that are expected in the future.

In conclusion, communication and organization are equivalent, addressing organizing: it is the paint and the canvas, the figure and ground.

Referencing
Redding. W. C 1972, Communication within the organization: an interpretive review of theory and research, Industrial Communication Council, New York.

Taylor. J 1993, Rethinking the theory of organizational communication: how to read an organization, Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.

Tompkins. P and Thibault. M 2001, Organizational communication: prelude and prospects, Sage Publication, USA.

(2)    Employee/Organisational Communications by Berger
Berger article describes the importance of organizational communication and basic internal communication processes, network and channels. It states the important issues in current practices and is concluded with 15 principles of effective communication.
Internal communication matters because the functioning and survival of organizations is based on effective relationships (it grown out of communication) among individuals and groups. Communication helps to achieve goals, solve problems, motivate, build trust and creates a shared identity within a company. S-M-C-R model is a classic example by Shannon-Weaver (1949) for internal communication in being introduce where [S] information source encodes message [M] and send through a selected channel [C] to a receiver [R] who decodes them. As time passes it becomes more complex due to new media and high speed multi directional communication.
Communication level: Face-to-face & Group
Communication network: flow in an organisation that can be formal/informal, vertical/horizontal, diagonal or omnidirectional.
Communication channels: medium use to send and receive the message. Print (Memo, report), electronic (email, blog, voice mail, IMs) or F-T-F (interpersonal meetings, lunch, events)   
Internal communication has much evolved from the classical approaches to human relation approaches to human resources approaches to system approaches, and cultural approaches. All 5 live on in organizations-work rule, hierarchies, policies, training programs, work teams, job descriptions, socialization rituals, human resource department, job descriptions, customer focus and etc.
There are 4 contemporary issues in organizational communication and they are organizational identity, employee engagement, measurement and social media. The 15 principles of successful internal communications revolves around timeliness and content, channels, leadership roles, professional communicator roles, Participation and recognition, measurement, and culture.

      Referencing

      Shannon. C. E & Weaver. W 1949, A mathematical theory of communication, University of Illinois
      Press, Urbana.

      Berger. B. K 2008, Employee/organizational communications, institute for Public Relations
      viewed on 20 March 2012, from 

(3)    Research on Organizational Communication: the Case of Sweden by Johansson

Johansson article talks about the Swedish research on organization communication and it states that they are dominantly done through empirical, qualitative research. A wide definition of organizational communication is employed including research focusing on both internal and external communication. Majority of the studies are about public information that is spilt to health communication and crisis communication. Research on internal communication focused on leader-employee communication, organizational learning, sensemaking, communication strategies and communication efficiency.   

Mullern and Stein (1999) explain that the leader-employee communication is found still to be very leader-centered and one-way communication rather than dialogue. The authors wish to see communication between both is not fulfilled. Heide (2002) considers intranet have advantages as learning tools because it can enhance availability of information and acquire more active role of information seeking. Though, disadvantages would be that managers wouldn’t know if the co-workers understood the message the way they originally wanted and might cause problems in this sense. Alyesson (2002) resulting interpretations on meeting in private company disclose how communication both function as manifestation and source of common meaning and understandings of reality, power relations and communicative disorders.

There’s a drastic increase in the PR industry where they focused on publicity and advertising. ICT have brought radical changes that affect working conditions for most public relations practitioners. There are four types of agenda-setting work: Type 1 consists of open activities like press releases, press conferences and lobbying. Type 2 consists of creating events, research and basic data for ”facts and figures”-reports as well as recurrent news production. Type 3 consists of more covert methods, like bill writing for political parties, which suits a particular campaign or agenda. Type 4 is the special area of consultants, with issues management, opinion polls, alliance creation, engagement of debate writers and different types of intelligence activities. PR also covers on risk communication and crisis communication.
A conclusion was drawn by Johansson stating that more Swedish research in Organizational Communication is needed that will encompass both quantitative and qualitative methods. Though, the strength in Swedish research is that it has a close link between research and practice which can help strengthen individual’s communication competence in organizations. However, the weakness is lies in the difficulty of generalizing results as conditions differ widely in different organizations. 


Referencing

Heide. M 2002, Intranet: a new arena for communication and learning, Lund University.

Mullern. T & Stein. J 1999, Persuasive Leadership on rhetoric in strategic change, Student litteratur, Lund University.

Alyesson. M 2002, Communication, power and organization, critical interpretations of a business meeting, Norsted Juridik, 2nd ed, Stockholm.

Johansson. C 2007, Research on organizational communication: the case of Sweden, Nordicom Review. Vol 28, no 1, pg 93-110. 


Watch a video on an interview done with an CEO. 


Rob Friedman, director of executive communication at Eli Lilly, discusses the role his CEO plays in communication at their company. www.ragan.com



The organisational communication seems to be perfect.

"We don't want to UNDER Communicate, 
we want to OVER Communicate"

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