COM 324 Exam Study Guide

With this type of authority, power rests not in the individual but rather in the expertise that has created a system of rules and norms.

Rational - Legal Authority

The concept of ______ considers how workers can exert counter pressure on the exercise of power and control.

Resistance

Weick proposes a ______ process in which rules and cycles are saved for future organizational use.

Retention

Dora is very appreciative that her employer provides gloves to protect her hands from the dangerous chemicals she uses in her work. According to Maslow, what need level is Dora concerned with?

Safety

The highest order in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are ______ needs.

Self actualization

Feminists who work to enhance the opportunity for a variety of marginalized voices to be heard within societal dialogue are called...

Standpoint feminists

A personnel director asking applicants to submit resumes in a particular format would be an example of an assembly rule that assists in sense making. True/False?

True

Systems theory is couched in the idea that organizations, like organisms, are influenced by their environment via things such as change, information, and feedback. True/False?

True

The Hawthorne research team was initially interested in how changes in the work environment would impact the productivity of factory workers. True/False?

True

The ultimate goal of the critical model is emancipation. True/False?

True

Theory X and Theory Y involve the assumptions that managers hold about workers. True/False?

True

Toxic organizational culture might include bullying and/or a culture of fear. True/False?

True

____ are the beliefs and visions that members hold for an organization.

Values

The most prevalent mode of communication in classical organizations is _________ communication.

Written

Organizational culture is defined as a shared set of ______ that guide behavior.

Assumptions & knowledge

Schein's organizational model (that we likened to the layers of an onion) includes three levels. What are they?

Basic assumptions, espoused values (what they tell people), artifacts

What might be cause for whistleblowing in an organization?

Corruption (D)

A researcher who uses a ______ approach to studying communication might confront the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace through programs designed to shift beliefs about gender and power.

Critical

______ are usually described as being interactional, contextual, episodic, and improvisational.

Cultural performance

Taylor advocated a strict _________ in which workers perform physical labor that is planned and directed by management

Division of labor

The themes identified by Peters and Waterman characterize excellent organizations as...

Do what you do best

Communication in classical organizations tends to flow horizontally through the hierarchy? True/False?

False

Critical theorists do not consider organizations to be sites of domination. True/False?

False

Scholars taking a systems approach to power believe that there are inherent contradictions between the "surface structure" of power and the "deep structure" of power. True/False?

False

If the classical approach is a machine metaphor, the human relations approach is more like a ______ metaphor.

Family

_____ refers to the taken-for-granted assumptions about reality that influence our perceptions about organizational life.

Ideology

Michael is a sales representative who spends a great deal of time out on the road and infrequently communicates with the rest of his sales team. He is what?

Isolate

_______ involves the organization embodying a cycle of knowledge creation, development, and application.

Knowledge management

The direction of communication in a human resources organization is...

Multi-directional

Having a checklist for medical personnel to follow when preparing a patient for surgery illustrates which tenant of Taylor's theory?

One best way to do every job

Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid assumes that effective leaders need to demonstrate concern for both ______ and ______.

Profit and people

Communication in classical organizations is highly formal and standardized. True/False

True

Communication within a human relations organization tends to be less formal than in an organization run with a classical approach. True/False?

True

Critical approaches to organizational communication have their philosophical roots in the work of Karl Marx. True/False?

True

Ethnographers create mini-theories about an organization's culture that are grounded in observations of a particular organization's culture. True/False?

True

Ethnographers immerse themselves in a culture to better understand it. True/False?

True

Organizational cultures can be described as...

emergent, ambiguous, unitary

Fayol's Theory of Classical Management is a prescriptive theory because it...

prescribes a certain model to achieve a certain outcome

The four key components of Deal and Kennedy's "strong cultures" are...

values, rights & rituals, cultural networks, and heroes