ORGC - 2205 Chap 5 Constitutive Approaches

You have a sense of degrees of separation and scaling up.

If you understand the phrase, "I'm pretty sure that's what the boss meant when I spoke with her,"

Activity Coordination Flow:

The ongoing interaction that is necessary to get work done. This highlights the idea of inter dependence, various actors in an organization depend on each other to accomplish things and must communicate in order to coordinate activities.

organizational identity

a particular organization tries to establish itself as a viable partner or create and maintain an image that will help it successfully position itself with other organizations in the larger environment or with the public

The core of the Montreal School's CCO is

co-orientation or the process by which people coordinate activity through interaction.

The Montreal School - Co-orientation occurs based on

conversation and text

In short, CCO makes communication the focus of the organization. Communication

creates the organization and connects mircro- and macro- level systems by reciprocal (i.e., through feedback) and recursive (i.e., repetitive) relationships.

What is the difference between discourse versus Discourse

discourse: refers to the study of talk and text and social practices. Discourse: general and enduring systems of thought.

Giddens (1984) structuration theory

highlights agents, agency, and structures. It posits, that the social world is generated through the agency of active participants.

Membership Negotiation Flow: (McPhee and Iverson)

offers that humans create, enter, and exit organizations over time; thus, boundaries are important. In short, organizations are always changing because the people and messages always change.

How does the container metaphor approach differ from the CCO organizational communication approach?

organization as the container is seen largely as a thing that holds communication process and that influences the nature of those processes. The CCO consider the ways in which communication processes create and recreate systems of meaning and understanding

According to Giddens

organizations are a product of an organizational member's agency (i.e., ability to act). Employees—or agents—act based on rules and resources, also termed "structures"

Materiality

physical aspects of the organization including buildings, technology, and bodies.

Duality of Structure

producing and reproducing the structures that enable and constrain our behavior

Discourse (capital D)

refers to a general and enduring system of thought (e.g., a social worker should be compassionate when dealing with others).

discourse (little d)

refers to the study of talk, text, and social practices

Institutional Positioning Flow:

require establishing relationships with other entities in the environment and establishing ways information and other resources can move among relevant orgs. They involve ways that relationships are set up and maintained with other orgs and ongoing coms that follow within these relationships.

structures

rules and resources that individuals draw on while they interact in the social world that can also be changed during the course of interaction

Self Structuring Flow:

serves to design the org., provides guidance about resource allocation, institutes policies and procedures, and create rules about how work is accomplished. Provided rules standards, and norms for getting work done.

What is the constitutive view of organizational communication?

something that is not a container, the process through which interactions create, re-create, and change organizations.

The fact that you act in a way appropriate to a particular environment makes clear you understand its.....

structures

What is text?

substance or meaning and can take many forms.

Social Constructionism Theory

suggests reality is not an objective thing but is, instead, an intersubjective construction created through communication.

Summarize what took place at the Montreal School of theorizing (Taylor and Cooren)

testing on the ways in which communication constitutes organizing.

The Montreal School differs from the Four Flow school in a number of ways. As one example,

the Montreal School focuses on micro level interactions that are scaled up, while the Four Flows school focuses on communication's many functions or organizational uses.

Constraint

the ability of structures to limit our behavior by giving us specific directions about how to act

What is distanciation?

the notion that the meaning created in the relationship between text and conversation can be codified and thus make a difference in situations beyond the initial interactions.

What is conversation?

the on going interaction among individuals facilitated by language

The social constructionist position advances that

the organization is not an objective thing but an intersubjective construction—one created though symbols and behaviors.

Agency

the possibility that people can act otherwise in a situation

Degrees of Separation

the process through which the original intent of a speaker is embedded in conversation - scaled up - and then distanced from that conversation through its transformation into text

What is scaling up?

the way in which conversations become textualized and taken up into organizations and institutions, opening up the possibility that texts can have agency party from the humans who have created them through conversation.

The Four Flows (2nd influential CCO approach) McPhee and Iverson

theorists look specifically at functions of communication flows in constituting organizations. It encompass what are typically seen as internal and external matters that, taken together, preform the essential organizational functions. the focus is on the content of communication during the constitution process and what specific flows need to occur in order for organizing to take place.

Ventriloquism

this idea suggests that one agent in an organization can do the speaking for other agents

What are the two views of the constitutive view of organizational communication?

1. Communicative constitution of organization approach (CCO) 2. container approach.

What are the Four Flows

1. Member Negotiation Flow 2. Self-Structuring Flow 3. Activity Coordination Flow 4. Institutional Positioning Flow

What are the degrees of separation in the scaling up process?

1st degree: The intent of the speaker is embedded in convo 2nd degree: The convo is given a narrative representation 3rd: The text is transcribed into a more permanent form 4th: A specialized language is developed that is used in convo. 5th: The texts and convos are transformed into physical frames and material. 6th: The standardized form is disseminated into a broader public.