Research Project: Initial Thoughts

There are three areas of organizational communication that
I am interested in for a research topic. The first area is how organizational communication contributes to lean organizations, that is, organizations that strive to eliminate waste in many forms (including physical waste, process waste, & financial waste). Another area is how technology and organizational communication can be incorporated to benefit companies with sites across the globe. Finally, I am also considering effective organizational communication in K-12 educational facilities. There is still a wide range of topics for me to choose from and I still need to narrow it down to one...

When We Hope for A but Reward B

In Ch 3 the authors asked, what are some examples where an organization rewards something other that what it really seeks? I will explain an example.

Some companies reward employees that seek continuing education or training by paying for related fees and tuition. The idea is that the company will eventually benefit from the new skills acquired by employees. It is not always an explicit agreement between employee and employer that these newly acquired skills will be used towards the organization, but more so, a psychological contract may be established. In other words, the organization rewards the employee for educational enrichment, but what they are really looking for is application of the newly learned skills toward the work environment.

Emotional Labor

In Ch. 3 the authors discuss emotional labor and how "many kinds of jobs demand that we control our emotions." This reminded me of an organization that I worked with (in the tech research field), which provided counseling at the job site for personal issues that may or may not be related to work. For example, a psychologist was available as a resource for employees to talk about stress management, outside issues effecting work such as alcohol or drug abuse, or even issues related to transitioning out of the organization (lay-offs, retirement). The organization has a relatively high employee retention rate employee satisfaction ratings.

I do believe that it is important to keep some emotions "off the job" if they are a distraction from the organization's goals. At the same time, it is difficult to turn off being human, because even at work we are still human. I find that the organizational practice described above (to provide support for employees on issues outside of work) can play a big role in creating a harmonious environment for employees to work in. The organization acknowledges that employees are people.

I Intend to Write a Letter to the President: Taylorsim & Bureaucracy at Work

In Ch 3, the authors talk about Taylorism and efficiency. An aspect of Taylorism that I recall is how a complete job can be broken down into task segments, by which each task is performed by a separate worker. This way, each worker specializes in a segment of the entire job only, and contributes their specialized task to the completed job (i.e. assembly line). I see how this approach may contribute to efficiency, as it may minimize workload on a single worker by minimizing potential stress and fatigue from juggling many tasks. In addition, it may be easier to pinpoint a specific segment of the entire job process that needs improvement, and adjustments to that particular task, or training for the specific worker, can be focused on.

My experience of Taylorism in modern day can be depicted when I call my credit card or loan company-- there is always someone different to talk to about a specific problem. There are separate departments and employees that supposedly specialize in one thing or another. But all too often, a problem I find in these bureaucratic organizational structures (particular to my credit/loan companies) is that the responsibility of customer service (or getting a customer problem solved), is often deferred to another department, then another department, and then another department… and the problem never gets solved. This way, the process of getting rid of what the company may consider as “problem customers,” is surely an efficient process. But from my end (the customer), efficiency is far from served. In this case, Taylorism and bureaucracy may deter the problem from showing up in the organization’s numbers since it never gets reported, but it doesn't help the customer. Of course this is not due to the bureaucratic process, nor Taylorism, entirely, but also training within the organization and so forth. I usually end these calls with the statement “I intend to write a letter to the president,” but of course that never happens.

Loose Coupling: A Disadvantage

In Ch 2, the authors asked, “What are the advantages and disadvantages for organizational sub-units being tightly versus loosely coupled?” This question immediately made me think of the ongoing mortgage crisis we are experiencing today, which can portray a disadvantage of sub-units of an organization (metaphorically) being loosely coupled. Looking at in from a systems theory view, in the big picture the government and lending institutions formed a loosely coupled organization. The loose coupling comes from the minimal regulation by the gov’t on various lending institutions, or even by regulation of lending institutions on themselves. Somewhere in between, underneath, or above (depending how you look at it), the common American homeowner exists somewhere within that organization. For our society (or organization, if you will), this loose coupling served as a disadvantage, so we are now experiencing a randomness and disorder (entropy) as we try to find our way to equilibrium. I’m not an economist or mortgage expert, but from watching the news and hearing tid bits here and there, with respect to Chapter 2 of our studies, we are experiencing a change in lending and borrowing processes. Not only is this effecting our society as a whole (organization), but also the many sub-organizations within (take for example the gov’t stepping in to save Fannie and Freddie, or the recent collapse of Lehman Bros).

Continual Change in Solid Organizational Structures

I recently received the text and the Ch. 2 reading was my first impression of our course material. In describing Organizational Structure and Process, the authors take somewhat of a fluid approach by explaining the ‘yin and yang’ of various concepts. Take for example, Giddens duality of structure on pg 20, or the authors’ explanation that a solid organizational structure partakes in continual change on pg 24, or even the idea that order and disorder are interdependent as compliment parts of chaos theory on pg 38. This approach portrays the general nature of organizational structure and process, as described by the authors, in that it is constantly ever-changing on one level or another.