Organizational Communication Chapter 2 Test

Transformational Leadership

-Competitive in emerging global economy -Assumptions -Process of creating significant changes -Managing meaning through inspiring vision -Situational approach was too transnational

Contingency and Situational Approaches to Leadership

-Consider context -Substantial social change in 60's and 70's -Share assumption: Essential context -Contingency: relatively stable leadership straits -Situational - individuals do not possess the essence of a leader - leaders adapt

Sources of Power (Knowledge and Relationships)

-Historically: land -Production Control - the work people did, they felt a lot of connection to because part of beginning to end of production, once industrial revolution, they were disconnected to process -Now symbolic: money, intellectual, capital, expertise

Critical Theory Critique of Cultural Approach

-Largely descriptive in nature - wants to describe what's happening in orgs and try to understand what you see but doesn't help get at why -Stays on surface structure not deeper structure (what is motivation) -Deeper issues: POWER -Need to examine deep structure in order to understand what's actually happening

Constitutive Approach to Leadership

-Leadership is socially constructed -Importance of managing meaning -Develop social perception skills -Leader-Member Exchange Theory

5 Common Practices at the Heart of Transformational Leadership

1. Challenge the process 2. Inspire a shared vision 3. Enable others to act 4. Model the Way 5. Encourage the Heart

Cheney's Four Strategies to Encourage Organizational Identification

1. Common ground - use connections that you have in common 2. Identification by antithesis - public vs. parochial school, involves rallying members by blaming others 3. Assumed 'we' - 'we' is implied through language 4. Unifying symbols - Divine Mercy, logos, brands

Traits Approach to Leadership

1. Essentialist - An individual who is born a leader 2. Non-essentialist - Context 3. Emerged in the late 19th century 4. Reflect Western biases; highly individualistic Qualities associated with effective leadership: charisma, strong desire for responsibility and task completion, masculinity

Styles Approach to Leadership

1. Essentialist Individual 2.. Non-essentialist context -Emerged middle of the 20th century -Democratic (listen), autocratic (won't listen), laissez faire (no rule, hands off) -Task-oriented vs. socio-emotional leaders

Definitions of Leadership (6)

1. Individualistic Cultures: Power resides with the individual (come in and save the day) 2. Collectivist cultures: more likely to attribute it to the whole group and it is all shared 3. Radical Dissenters: power needs to be rescued from powerful leaders, need a more equal say 4. Balanced View: individuals can do these things, while being careful. Don't use power to suppress 5. People sometimes look at outcomes versus defining what good leadership IS 6. Dominant View: Leadership is fundamentally about creating change

Ironies and Paradoxes (4)

1. Integration without Voice: Make sure the organizational members identity with the org. Identity management tends to make multiple voices and rarely leaves room for more than one identity 2. External Involvement: although inquisitive stakeholders seem to be highly involved, this isn't necessarily an indication that consumers, interest groups, and other stakeholders are interested in the more detailed considerations of their corporations 3. Auto-Communication: Describes how the sender's relate to their own message. Orgs. auto-communicate whenever they project messages in their surroundings and received as messages to the org. itself 4. Corporate Self-Absorption: Org. is preoccupied with itself and has dysfunctional consequences because of the ability to respond to the environment

Goals of Critical Theory (3 - Deetz and Kersten)

1. Make people UNDERSTAND that reality is socially constructed and not handed down by God 2. CRITIQUE that social reality - doesn't have be that way 3. EDUCATE people so they can engage in self-formation. 4. Ultimate goal (Miller) EMANCIPATION; if critical theorists have their way, we are more free to make our own choices

Theoretical Roots of Critical Theory

1. Marxism: emancipatory goal (people will eventually rise up/revolt) Why? People in charge had control over meaning 2. Hermeneutics: (the science of interpretation; what does this mean at one time) centrality of language 3. Freudian theory: neurosis on a societal level (something that isn't good for us)

Historical Context of Identity

1. Preindustrial Societies (Social solidarity, Family, Community, Vocation) 2. Modern/Industrial Society (Less rooted in community, contemporary organizations try to fill the void) 3. Contemporary organizations often see themselves as providers of identity

French and Raven's 5 Main Bases of Power

1. Reward power - the ability to give an award of some part 2. Coercive Power - manipulation, berate them 3. Legitimate Power - recognized authority that is a position (title) 4. Referent Power - respect (people look up to you) 5. Expert Power - you have knowledge, info, skills

Systems or Patterns of Organizational Control

1. Simple (mom and pop shop) - centers on relations that are direct and personal, but also arbitrary - give and order and expect them to be obeyed 2. Technical (assembly line) relies on the technology of the organization to structure behavior of employees 3. Bureaucratic (large organization) built on a system of rules, regulations, norma, and habits 4. Concertive (high-tech firms) stress creativity and innovation. Self-supervision, team based, employee empowerment

Why are some people cynical about vision statements? What purposes can they serve and guidelines for their use

1. Some vision statements can seem like someone else's vision 2. They seem irrelevant to actual work processes 3. Leaders often don't walk the talk

Challenges to Organizational Identity

1. Struggling to be heard: the quantity of messages-bombarding consumers, it can be crowding 2. Blurred Boundaries- not sure where org. begins and ends - Identity can be difficult to pinpoint 3. Stakeholder Scrutiny - without powerful stakeholders granting legitimacy, organizations will have great difficulty sustaining their distinctive characters

Relationship Between Power and Critical Theory

1. Traditional concepts of power - people possess power 2. Symbolical approach - how power is created in relationships; seen as a product of communicative interactions; something you produce together 3. Critical Theory Approach - trying to understand how those meanings are constructed. Not just to describe but to understand. Who has the power to decide what something means?

Definition of Power

Ability or capacity to achieve a goal even against the interests, will, or resistance of others

What must be present to have a stable organizational identity

Change, Variation, Conflict

Marx's Conceptions of Class and Alienation

Class - understood as a reaction to the functionalist treatment of class, which regarded division between human beings as inevitable and necessary in order for society to function (Marx sees class differences as material, such as money and land) Alienation (borrowed from Hegel) - historical outcome of the increased division of labor in Capitalist organizations (product of labor instead of being an expression of creativity becomes a symbol of oppression) workers don't own it, instead it owns them

How Communication is a Source of Power

Communication leads to greater understanding (??)

Issues that Add to the Confusion about Leadership

Confuse process of leadership with people doing the leading Example: We assign a leadership role to someone who is responsible for managing others - be it a supervisor or CEO -Tension between and sometimes uncomfortable combination of scholarly research and commercialization of leadership

Role of Stakeholders in Organizational Identity

Employees are affected by issues like working conditions, salaries, and security of employment Without powerful stakeholders granting legitimacy, organizations will have great difficulty sustaining their distinctive characteristics

Political Functions of Ideology

Giddens 1. Represent sectional interests as universal 2. Denying or transmuting contradictions (ideology has a way of making you feel like contradictions don't exist) 3. Naturalizing the present through reification (that's just the way things are) 4. Mumby adds CONTROL: the ability of one group to control the other b/c they think that's the way its supposed to be

Dark Side to Employee Identification

High levels of identification among employees can produce a lack of organizational flexibility and creativity, or over-conformity to organizational dictates or tyrannical behavior by leaders, blind loyalty, burnout, loss of self

Blurred Boundaries

It isn't clear where an organization begins and ends. It can be hard to identify organizational identity. Boundaries are blurred because of technology, close relationships with stakeholders, and growth/change in organization

Relationship Between Leadership, Management, and Change

Leadership means that it's fundamentally about creating change. -Management produces stability (do things right - doesn't have to be a leader) -Leadership produces change (do the RIGHT thing)

Identity as something systems DO rather than HAVE

Needs to be thought of as something every living system is doing and in fact must do in order to maintain itself

Role of Conflicting Identities

People cannot identity with the organization (temp. workers are sometimes encouraged NOT to identity with organization, as it is temporary)

Resistance (Overt and Subtle Forms)

Resistance involves issues of power and language. It implies something being resisted - usually a stronger force, resource, person, or institution. Some counter-pressure to the locus of control power Overt forms: exiting (quitting), voice represents an attempt to speak out, loyalty involves swallowing the concerns while perhaps working quietly to change things, neglect doesn't have to be neglectful, it can be forgetting about or actively ignoring a problem Subtle: symbolic resistance - trying to take hold of key symbols and :move: ideas and people in a direction different from the predominant viewpoint

Organizations are shaped by the following resources:

Social, Political, Psychological, and Material

Organizational Identification

Suggests a feeling of oneness with the organization

Relationship between Hegemony, Ideology, and Systematically Distorted Communication

Systematically Distorted Communication - From Habermas' ideal speech situation (there is freedom, value, and lack of power differences) Ideology: Karl Marx, bad thinking -We all have ideologies - set of assumptions or beliefs about the way the world works -It shapes our understanding of what is good, what exists, what is possible - involves assumption that are rarely questioned or scrutinized - shapes our views, tens to support interests of dominant group Hegemony: "A process in which a dominant group leads another group to accept subordination as the norm" - Ability of one group to dominate the interests of another with its own interests -Participate in one's own oppression HEGEMONY COMES FROM IDEOLOGY WHICH IS SUSTAINED BY SYSTEMATICALLY DISTORTED COMMUNICATION

Organizational Identity Definition

The ways living systems make sense of themselves and their environments delineate boundaries

"Who" and "How" of Power

WHO - we like to have someone to blame, power is distributed, to the victor goes the power to name HOW- power can be used in extremely subtle ways, you may not know you are being dominated

How Organizations Manage Organizational Identity

When new people with different backgrounds enter the organization, they need to be socialized to the organization's culture. -Organizations need to manage and control their own identities, but this can be limited to internal and external factors - Org.s are very sensitive to their identities in times of growth and mergers. Org. needs to demonstrate existing and potential investors