Chapter 12

1. Theories of Organizational Communication Chapter 12

2. Metaphors for Studying Organizational Communication • machine: highlights rational decision making, concerned with functionality and goals of the organization as a whole • system: highlights interconnection and interdependence within and among subsystems and supersystems and environment • culture: highlights meaning and values, stories, rituals (grounded in local interactions, interpretive) • instruments of domination (critical)

3. Weick’s Theory of Organizing • Weick’s work considers the intersection of organizing and communicating through a consideration of sense-making in the organization context • Difference between social psychology of organizationsand social psychology of organizing (not a container in which comm. happens but mutual influence between communicating and organizing).

4. Weick:The Process of Organizing • Enactment processes: • Members constitute social environment through a process of “bracketing” • They notice and respond to elements in the environment (other person’s behaviors or events) that subsequently influence behaviors and then fold back into (constitute) the environment

5. Weick, cont. • Selection processes: Sense-making through selecting, organizing, and framing events to construct meaning • Equivocality: multiple interpretations of same event • Not too little information coming in, but too much • Sense-making occurs through the use of • recipes (for unequivocal information environments) or through • communication negotiation (for equivocal information environments)

6. Weick, cont. • Retention processes: interpretive schemes (recipes) are stored for future use • Interpretive schemesare stored in the form of causal maps (if I do X, Y will follow) • Causal maps provide a link back to earlier phases of Weick’s model • Stored maps and recipes are the source of culture and strategy for organizations and identities and continuities of individuals within organizations.

7. Structuration Theory: Giddens • Duality of structure– • actionsproduce and reproduce social structures, • and then are enabled and constrained by those structures Action Structure

8. Structuration Theory, cont. • Agency: We are active agents who produce and reproduce the social world • We make rule-guided and creative choices about how to act. • These choices are constrained by our circumstances

9. Structuration Theory, cont. • Reflexivity: As agents in the social world, we can observe what we are doing, give accounts of situations, and act creatively • Dialectic of Control: As reflexive agents, we always have the capacity to make a difference in the social world • we operate within structures, but are able to change those structures.

10. Structuration Theory, cont. • Structures: Rules and resources that constrain and enable action in the social world. • Rules: Typically unstated and routinized procedures for how to get things done (more or less durable). • Resources: The capabilities social actors draw on to get things done: allocative (material) or authoritative(status/position) • highly routinized practices = social systems • highly routinized rules and resources = institutions • (p. 216 bottom)

11. Structuration Theory in Organizational Communication • Structurational studies • Organizational form • structure = rules and resources that org. members use to coordinate their interactions • Organizational climate • “intersubjective” and “created through discourse” (e.g., friendly, competitive)

12. Structuration Theory in Organizational Communication • Studies of organizational communication genres such as memos (email? State Farm) • Genre structures influence, but do not dictate practice • Studies of organizational (or professional) identification and ideology • Transitions during organizational mergers • AA group meetings (alcoholic self is both agent and outcome as it evolves through recursive group practices and individual actions)

13. The Text and Conversation of Organizing (Taylor) • Organizations and communication produce each other in reciprocal process (in contrast to “container” metaphor or causal view) • Text-- the content of interaction (can be made available through face-to-face interaction or alternative media). • Conversation is the communicative interaction itself—what is happening behaviorally between two or more people.

14. Translation Process:From Text to Conversation • Text is meaning; conversation is activity. • Conversation is a string of texts collaboratively produced • Conversation and Text work together in two “translations” which are: • Recursive (reciprocal) • Simultaneous

15. Translation Process: (Simultaneous and Recursive) • Translations: • One: From text (meaning) to conversation • Borrows from speech act theory –illocutionary force or intended “action” of speaker • Intent, context, relationship • Two: From conversation to text (reduce the conversation to a text or summary) • Like “episodes” from CMM, or “bracketing” of events

16. From Text and Conversation to Organizational Communication • So—how does this apply to organizations? • Organizational communication is formalized through processes of distanciation: • Distance between intended meaning of speaker and what is created and retained from the interaction

17. From Text and Conversation to Organizational Communication • Degrees of separation: • Distance of a particular communication act from original intent of speaker • Cycles of movement between text and conversation • “Layered objectification” of meaning and interaction in increasingly abstract, formalized and procedural forms

18. From Text and Conversation to Organizational Communication • The Degrees of Separation • 1st degree—speaker intent into conversation • 2nd degree—conversation translated into narrative representation. • 3rd degree—text is transcribed (objectified) • e.g., minutes of a meeting • Table 12.2 (p. 222)

19. Unobtrusive and Concertive Control Theory (Barker, Cheney, Tompkins) • Traditional ways of looking at control: • simple control (direct and authoritarian exertion of power) • technological control (physical technology used in an org.—from assembly line to computer technology) • bureaucratic control (not an individual but of a system of rules that control rewards and punishments)

20. Unobtrusive & Concertive Control Theory • Barker et al. • Identification refers to a sense of connection that develops between an individual and a social group (e.g., organizations, work groups, and other social collectives) • Discipline refers to using the norms and values of the organization as a guide for behavior

21. Unobtrusive & Concertive Control Theory • Identification with an organization leads members to adopt (internalize) the organization’s standards • Unobtrusive control occurs when decisions of the individual are premised on organizational values (parallel to “control by consent,” self-censorship) • Concertive control occurs when members of work group reward and punish each other for conformity to group values (similar to peer pressure)

22. Closing Question • What examples of the following types of control do you see/experience in the graduate program? • simple control • technological control • bureaucratic control • concertive control • unobtrusive