Week 13: Technological processes and changing communication environments

This week lecture involves heavily about technologies, something that most of us can relate. It started off by describing the timeline of the technological changes from before 20^th century until now. The new technologies allows faster transmission, allow communication among geographical dispersed participants, allow asynchronous communication, allows the choice of being anonymous, big memory storage and easy retrieval features and differ in terms of cues that are available in the communication process. However, technologies may have provided much advantages to communication but it does brings some disadvantages such as the lack of non-verbal cues that may cause confusion due to the inability of knowing the other person’s emotions and ‘data smog’ where too much of information are everywhere in your emails, spams, mobiles and etc. When an organisation inhabits technology that does not requires leaders to be physically present, it bring less sense of connection with the group and it changes the way group decision making as people are given time to respond which causes slower process but the respond produced are higher in quality. 

Globalisation brings time and space compression where this change communication patterns and perceptions. It also enhances sense of global consciousness and reflexivity that bring awareness of different culture. Globalisation causes disembodied organisations and people as behaviour and interactions lifted from local context and restructured across time and space. Globalisation has brought the possibility of outsourcing and having branches and manufacturing plants worldwide. With globalization, it is more important now for companies to have an identity as the company needs to provide certain distinctiveness that allows the organisation to create and legitimize itself. Due to global economy and increased technology, it weakened labour unions and competitive organisational environment thus leads to the age of disposable workforce where there is an increase of temporary workers or freelances, partiming and self-employment. However, this will cause lack of organisational identification but a constant supply of fresh new ideas.

This week tutorial, we are asked to reflect on changes in communication technology during our lifetime and interview our parents on their thoughts about technology. We separate the presentation into two parts where part one are based on our own opinions and experiences in technological changes. Though we have only been in the world for about 2 decades, we have gone through some radical changes in technology as we grew up during the years where technologies are drastically being introduces and evolving almost every day.  We remember on the times when floppy disk were the only way to save files from a computer but now usb drives are even smaller in size but have a bigger storage space as compared to floppy disk. Smartphones was once used to be for the rich but now it seemed affordable to anyone even kids in primary school. For the interview, we shoot a video to show in class. The video also include a section where we see how parents work with new technologies. Please watch the video below. 

Week 12: Organisational diversity

Something funny to start on diversity

This week lecture covers on diversity in gender, age, physical or mental ability and race, ethnicity and religion in the workplace. Due to the rapid demographic changes in the workforce, there are increasing numbers of women and wide range of different culture groups joining the organizations. However, these groups of people are considered the minorities and they have a greater difficulty in getting jobs and in climbing the corporate ladder to join the ranks of upper management due to the phenomenon of ‘Glass ceiling’. This concept is popularized in 1980s to describe a barrier to subtle that it is transparent, yet so strong that it prevents women and minorities from moving up the management position. It is a sign of discrimination and stereotyping in the workplace which causes bias treatment towards minorities. Prejudice refers to negative attitudes towards an organisation member based on their culture group identity and discrimination is an observable behaviour for same reason as prejudice. There are four issues of organisational relationships and systems leading to differences of experiences for minorities, one is the limited access to or exclusion from informal communication networks, two is the difficulty of establishing mentor-protégé relationships between white men and women and people of colour. Three, tokenism is where the minorities who are in the top management are constantly being ask to represent their people with questions such as ‘what do your type of people thinks of this idea?’, four are the types of work experiences by minorities hamper their ability to advance in organisations. 

Moving beyond prejudice and discrimination towards minorities, organizations are required to have a solution to this issue. The three phases of workplace development will produce a multicultural organisation where marks the absence of discrimination, low levels of intergroup conflict and high level of organisational identification for all gender and ethic group. First-generation affirmative action are to meet legal mandated requirements for diversity, second is to meet affirmative action goals of numbers and emphasis shifts to supporting female and minority employees and thirdly is a multicultural organisation where it moves beyond concept of support for minority members to institution of policies capitalize on cultural and gender diversity. Life in diverse organisation involves both attitude and action and challenge and opportunity must be dealt with. Organizations are to be knowledgeable about the needs and contributions of diverse members. Five steps to transform a traditional organisation into multicultural organisation are introduced and it involves leadership, training, research, analysis and change of culture and human resources management systems.

For this week tutorial, my group are required to share on the results of the research activities on diversity communication which was done for assignment two. Our group decided to present on my research partner’s and my report on Generational diversity. Our research emphasised on the communication issues between distinct generations arises in the workplace. The three generations (Baby boomers, Generation X and Y often colliding as thri paths cross while working together because of the different values, idea, ways to get things done and also the different ways of communicating with each other in the workplace. Thus, these differences might cause misunderstandings and affect the organisational communication within a company. We focused on the communication channel, style, content used and information flow among employees in the workplace of The Star Publication. We conclude that the three generations may have different historical background and possesses vast difference in values and work ethics but they do not disagree on everything when it comes to communication among colleagues in the workplace. We also recommended for the company to approach the older colleagues on the issue of interns feeling intimidated on their first week due to the unfriendly vibe portrayed by them. Making a new member felt welcome will make them feel the belonging in a company and less likely resultant in high turnover rate.  

Week 11: Emotion processes

Let's compare figure out what emotions each superstar are portraying 

Did you got it right? 

This lecture talks about the many emotions that needs to be handled by one person his or her workplace. Generation who are in the workforce these days are no longer just interested in work-related content while working. There is an increasing interest in emotional side of organisational life whether it is rationality, logical choice in decision making or emotionality, emotional rules and intelligence. However, there is a need to understand on the emotional rules and emotional intelligence as it is important to display a certain appropriate emotion on different situation to cope with the conditions. Organisations are attempting to transform emotion into a marketable product that will enhance organisational profit. 

Stress may results from workload, role conflict, role ambiguity or even stressful life events. Stress usually will lead to negative outcomes such as physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, lack of personal accomplishment and depersonalisation. For organisation, employees will experience loss of work satisfaction, lack of commitment and bring high turnover effects on the company. Coping with stress can be done in three ways, one is to deal directly with the problem of the stress, two, is to focus on changing the way one thinks about the stressful situation and three is to deal with the negative affective outcomes of stress. Organisation can help employees in coping with stress by providing assistance such as social support, emotional, information or even instrumental support. 

Week 10: Leadership processes and organisational change

This week’s lecture covers two parts of leadership and change. For leadership, it is important to understand the organisational context as leaders play a central role in the management of organisational symbolism. It is a process for guiding individuals and groups or even the entire organisations in establishing goals and sustaining action to support goals. Leadership communication provides vision of organisation that directs and redirects all organisational activities; it is a process of influence where leaders attempt to convince followers to attain specific goals or outcomes. Leaders are required to know how to say the right things and have a strong commitment to stakeholders. They are also needed to pay attention on the way message is being delivered as leaders should be able to frame their language during interaction; it is a way to manage meaning. These are the few things that are required in order to become an effective leader.

Organisation change is often natural whether it is planned or unplanned. Individual behaviour, organisational processes and strategic direction would be the few types of change. Typical problems identified in organisational change process would be lack of management support, top manages forcing change, inconsistent action by key managers, unrealistic expectations, lack of meaningful participation, poor communication, unclear purpose of the program and responsibility for change was not properly identified. There are some employees react negatively towards change in organisation such as resistance where behaviours intended to prevent the implementation or even ignorance of the change initiative and uncertainty where stress and heightened anxiety among employees. Some of the strategies to communicate change are spray and pray, tell and sell, underscore and explore, identify and reply and withhold and uphold. Unplanned changes usually happen upon crisis such as natural disasters, ethical violation and etc. It is something unpredictable with major threat that can have a negative effect on the organisation, industry or stakeholders if it is not handled properly. 

Week 9: Conflict management processes

Conflict is the interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims and values, and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realisation of these goals. There are positive and negative effects of conflicts, negative would be bringing disruption in organisation, destruction of relationships, may lead to anger, frustration and resentment, and also physical illness resulting from stress. While the positive effects are the increased stimulation amongst workers, better generation of ideas, recognition of flaws in a system, cohesiveness amongst conflict partners and adjustment of balance of power. The three ‘I’s of Incompatibility, interdependence and interaction describe the essential condition for conflict. Levels of conflict are segregated to interpersonal, inter-group and inter-organisational. Organisations have to be prepared to manage these conflicts and one ways is through the management grid approach by Thomas K.W (1976) where choices such as avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise and collaboration are ways to resolve conflict. Another way of managing conflict is through the 5A model by Borisoff and Victor (1989) assessment, acknowledgement, attitude, action and analysis are the 5A that needed to be understood. Bargaining is a unique form for negotiating mutually shared rules. Outsiders often represent parties in conflict and this strategy is used to settle inter-group and inter-organisational conflict. The main rule of this method of negotiation is to have mutual concession whether it is distributive or integrative bargaining. 

Week 8: Decision making processes

Decision making is a daily activity for any human being. There is no exception about that. When it comes to business organizations, decision making is a habit and a process as well. Effective and successful decisions make profit to the company and unsuccessful ones make losses. Therefore, corporate decision making process is the most critical process in any organization. In the decision making process, we choose one course of action from a few possible alternatives. In the process of decision making, we may use many tools, techniques, and perceptions. In addition, we may make our own private decision or may prefer a collective decision. Usually, decision-making is hard. Majority of corporate decisions involve some level of dissatisfaction or conflict with another party.

Who makes the decision? Below is a chart on the participatory rate of employees in decision making.

Participation in decision making (PDM) brings great attitudinal effects such as job satisfaction, job involvement and organisational commitment as well as brings positive effects to enhance the use of info and greater employee understanding of decision and organisation.

In lecture for this week, we had a fun time playing a game with marshmallows and spaghetti sticks. The goal was to build the tallest standing tower with those main material accompanied by few other materials such as tape, string and a scissors. This activity requires team work and leadership skills, thus, ultimately to test our decision making and leadership skills. For my team, I would say that we spent too much time in planning on the stability of the base and ended up with a strong base but short in tower. Our team leader lead by starting with an idea, then as the momentum keeps up, the leader listened to everyone’s ideas on enhancing the tower structure. The final decision was made by the team leader and agrees by the others. 

Week 7: Socialisation processes

Demand of Social engagement

This week we had a guest, Ms Madeline, a current staff of Taylor’s University to talks to us about her experience on Socialisation in the workplace. Socialisation or assimilation refers to the process of becoming part of a culture. There are 3 stages, one, anticipatory socialisation is socialisation that occurs before entering into the organisation, two, encounter is the sensemaking stage that occurs when a new employee enter the organisation, old values should be let go and adapt into the expectation of the new company, three, Metamorphosis is the state reached at the completion of the socialization process where the new employee is now accepted as an organisational insider. Next, we learnt about the communication processes that occur during socialisation which involves the employment interview during the anticipatory socialization phase. Then moving into information seeking during the encounter phase and the LMX (Leader-Member Exchange Theory) modal of role development. Finally, it is also important to consider on the organisational exit and disengagement.

During tutorial, we were ask to come up with a role play on a mock employment interviewing with the use of assimilation processes such as recruiting and screening, information-gathering tool and tool for socialization as well as an experience we had while working with a company that role plays the three stages of socialization. The company that my group chose to role play was Edelman where the interviewee is applying a job as a PR consultant.