Organizational Communication

Front 1

Urgent Organizations

Back 1

Companies whose main challenge is to shorten the time in which they develop new products and respond to customer demands
ex. Fast food, fax, and overnight mail

Front 2

Boundary Spanners

Back 2

Company Employees who have direct contact with the public.
1. Can access opinions of people outside of an organization and use the info. to guide organizational decision making.
2. Their awareness of subtle trends in the environment can serve as a warning system for environmental jolts.
3. They serve as important representatives of the org. to its environment

Front 3

New Social Contract

Back 3

A different kind of employment relationship wherein "job security" is fleeting and tied expressly to whether one's skills fit the organization's needs at that time. Owners jump at the possibility of selling out for a tidy profit, and employees are always on the lookout ofr a better opportunity.

Front 4

Information Transfer approach

Back 4

Views communication as a metaphoric pipeline through which information flows from one person to another. the theory rests on these assumptions.
1. Language is capable of transferring thoughts and feelings from one to another.
2. Speakers and writers insert thoughts and feelings into words.
3. Words contain those thoughts and feelings
4. Listeners or readers extract those thoughts and feelings from the words.
- sees comm. as a tool that people use to accomplish their obj.
-Miscomm. only occurs when no message is received or when the message that is received is not what the sender intended
-Common problems-info. overload, distortion, and ambiguity.

Front 5

Transactional Process Model

Back 5

In actual comm. clear distinctions are not made between senders and receivers rather people play both roles simultaneously. It highlights the importnace of feedback or info. ab out houw a message is received, nonverbal feedback, which may accompany verbal feedback.
-Focuses on a person receiving the message and on how the receiver constructs the meaning of the message.

Front 6

Strategic Ambiuity

Back 6

Is an important concept that describes the ways in which people may communicate unclearly but still accomplish their goals.
-Promotes unified diversity
-Preservers priviliged positions
-Is deniable
-Facilitates organizational change.

Front 7

Dialogue

Back 7

Balanced commuication or communication in which each individual has a chance to both speak and be heard. There are three levels:
1. Equitable transaction
2. Empathic Conversation
3. Real Meeting

Front 8

Equitable Transaction

Back 8

From a communication perspecitve is on in which all participants have the ability to voice their opinons and perspectives. We call attention to the fact that not everyone in an organization has an equal say in meaning decisions of in interpreting events.

Front 9

Voice

Back 9

manifests itself in the ability of an individual or group to participate in the ongoing organizational dialogue. It is the preferred option b/c it raises important issues and encourages creativity and commitment.

Front 10

Dialogue as real meeting

Back 10

through communication a genuine communion can take place b/w people that transcends differences in role or perspective and that recognizes all parties common humanity.

Front 11

Empathic Conversation

Back 11

The ability to understand or imagine the world as another person understands or imagines it. In organizations promotes understanding among diff. departments, makes managing diversity possible.

Front 12

Partial Theory

Back 12

our account tells part of the story. However, the inability to articulate a complete account of the history of organizational communication is not unique to ur field nor is it disabling.

Front 13

Partisan Theory

Back 13

The story we tell is on that we favor. The history of org. comm. typically emphasizes the interpretations of dominant white males in western culture wiht little attention given to how members of oppressed marginalized or subjugated groups like women and minorities would tell the story. when we speak we tend to represent our views of situations in ways that favor our interests and goals and theories are no different.

Front 14

Problematic Theory

Back 14

Our account asks more ?'s then it can answer and the answers it does provide are based on what is currently known rather than on all that oculd be known. Encourages us to ask more ?'s.

Front 15

Classical Management

Back 15

Planning,Organizing, Commanding, Coordinating, and controlling
-Approaches are represented by a collection of theories that share the underlying metaphor of organizations modeled after efficient machines

Front 16

Resistance to Domination

Back 16

Helps us understand organizational dialogue. It is defined as any action on the part of oppressed individuals to lessen the constraints placed on them by those in power.

Front 17

Hidden Transcripts

Back 17

The other side of the story. They include themes and arguments that are well known by members of the oppressed group but kept out of the public eye for fear of reprival from those in power. Ex. slaves songs, ditties, and dirges.

Front 18

Division of labor

Back 18

refers to the seperation of tasks into discrete units

Front 19

Hierarchy

Back 19

refers to the vertical arrangement of power and authority that distinguishes managers from employees

Front 20

Scientific Management

Back 20

Based on the assumption that management is a true science resting on clearly defined laws, rules, and principles.

Front 21

Bureaucracy

Back 21

System that protected employees better than particularism. Has the following characteristics:
1. Fixed division of labor among participants.
2. Hierarchy of offices
3. Set of general rules that govern performances.
4. Rigid seperation of personel life form work.
5. Selection of personnel on the basis of technical qualifications and equal treatment of all employees.
6. Participants view of employment as a career, tenure protecting agains unfair arbitrary dismissal.
-can't be fully realized for several reasons-
1. not possible to rid organ. of all extraorganizational influences on memeber behavior.
2. not deal well wiht nonroutine tasks
3. PPl vary in terms of rationality.

Front 22

Particularism

Back 22

Workers wee hired and fired for reasons that had to do with their race, religion,sex, attitude, or relationship to the boss.

Front 23

Human Relations

Back 23

Emphasizes the interpersonal and social needs of individuals.

Front 24

Hawthorne Effect

Back 24

Increased attention given to the workers by management and researchers was the key to increase productivity.

Front 25

Human resources

Back 25

Approach is concerned with the total organizational climate as well as with how an organization can encourage employee participants and dialogue.

Front 26

Maslow's Hierarch of Needs

Back 26

PPl's basic needs for food, shelter, and belonging, must be satisfied before they can move toward achieving their full human potential, which Maslow calls "self actualization".
Physiological, Safety, Belonging, self-esteem, and self actualization.

Front 27

Theory X

Back 27

Control oriented bureacratic style of management.
1. The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and iwll avoid it if he/she can.
2. BC of their..dislike to work,most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment to get themt o put forth adequate effort toward the acievement of organziational obj.
3. The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoud responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and wants security above all.

Front 28

Theory Y

Back 28

1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
2. External control and threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward organizational obj. PPL will exercise self-direction and self control in the service of objectives to which they are committed.
3. Commitment to obj. is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.
4. the average human being learns under proper conditions not only to accept but to seek responsibility.
5. The Capacity to exercise..relatively high degrees of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely not narrowly distributed in the pop.
6. Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potential.. of the average person is only partially utilized.
- This manager has a more participative and facilitative management style that treats employees as valued HR.

Front 29

Principle of Supportive Relationships

Back 29

holds that all interactions with an organization should support individual self-worth and importance, with emphasis on the supportive relationship with in work groups and open communioncation among them
-Open comm. to be among the most important aspects of mangement.

Front 30

Systems approach

Back 30

which emphasizes the important difference between a disconnected set of parts versus a collection of parts that work togeher to create a functional whole. ex. family, team, or business

Front 31

General Systems Theory

Back 31

Applies the properties of living systems, such as input, output, boundaries, homeostasis, and equifinality, to a dazzling array of social phenomena.
-There is more then one way to accomplush the same goal-

Front 32

Distributed Intelligence

Back 32

We mean that all memebers of the systerm whethere they be people of cells play an important rol in the systems ongoing self-organization.

Front 33

open Systems

Back 33

Theory encourages individual memebers to be mindful of the importance of the overall health of their industry.