CMS 313 Midterm
How are managing acceptance and independence goals useful for managing conflict?
• Helps maintain the identity goal • You want people to like you and you want to do things on your own
. What are the research-based recommendations for managing conflict?
1. Clarifying goals and highlighting interdependencies 2. Help others manage their identity 3. Remember your feedback skills- start positive, focus on the behavior not the person, offer to help 4. Use empathic listening- show respect and that you care 5. Monitor your own nonverbal expressions 6. Remember the positive 7. Know when you should calm down 8. Overlearn skills you think will help 9. Involve a facilitator 10. Remember the lessons to approaches in organizing
Explain goals, interdependence, interactive, multilevel in relation to conflict in organizations.
Goals: Task, Identify, Relationship o Task: • What needs to get done • What is it that the conflict is about, what are people trying to resolve. What we most often lock in on, what we go to first because it is the most obvious o Identity: • Independence and acceptance (we want to be likeable) • Who am I in this situation, who are you, there is a power struggle o Relationship: • We have goals in how we relate to one another • How we relate to each other • Aim to strengthen relationship • Interdependent: o Parties are linked o For me to do my job, you have to do your job • Interactive: o Expressed verbally or nonverbally. Expressed through communication, resolved through communication o Conflict is the literal interaction to express disagreement • Multilevel: Comes from many levels in the org o Interpersonal: Members in your group or workgroup are not getting along o Interorganizational: Can be conflicts between the entire organization with a whole other organization o Intergroup: Departments inside are in odds
) What are the components of Deal and Kennedy's "strong cultures?"
• "Business success can be enhanced through development of a "strong" culture" • Components of a strong culture will improve working conditions for individuals and organizational performance • Values: o The beliefs and visions that members hold for an organization o Ex: Insurance company represents a value of stability • Heroes: o The Individuals who come to exemplify an organizations values o These heroes become known through the stories and myths of an organization o Ex: Bill gates exemplifies entrepreneurship and philanthropy through his work and foundation • Rites and Rituals: o Ceremonies through which an organization celebrates its values o An organization that values innovation may develop a ritualistic way of rewarding the new ideas of employees o In other organizations rights and rituals might include a company picnic or an award banquet or outstanding employees • • The Cultural Network: o The communication system through which cultural values are instituted and reinforced o The cultural network could consist of both formal organized channels, such as newsletter, and the informal interactions of employees
What is the core principle we highlighted in our definition of conflict?
• "The interaction of the interdependent people who perceive opposition goals, aims, and values, and who see the other party as potentially inferring with the realization of these goals" • It centers on perceived incongruities between goals
What are Peters and Waterman's characteristics of an "excellent culture?"
• A bias for action: o Excellent organizations react quickly and do not spend excess time planning and analyzing • Close relations to the customer: o Excellent organizations gear decisions and actions to the needs of customers • Autonomy and entrepreneurship: o Excellent organizations encourage employees to take risks in the development of new ideas • Productivity through people: o Encourage positive and respectful relationships among management and employees • Hands-on/Value driven: o Have employees and managers who share the same core value of productivity and performance • Stick to the Knitting: o Stay focused on what they do best and avoid radical diversification • Simultaneous Loose: o Tight Properties: Exhibit both unity of purpose and the diversity for innovation
Define acceptance and independence identity goals and provide examples.
• Acceptance: o In an argument, you want to be liked • Independence: o You don't want to be imposed upon, doing your own work, making your own decisions o You want to be able to function on your own and be seen as such We want to be likeable
Explain each of the "framing devices" used from sexual harassment narratives?
• Accepting Dominant Interests: o sexual harassment accepted or justified as a less important problem than other managerial concerns • Simple Misunderstanding: o sexual harassment accepted or justified as 'mere flirting' • Reification: o sexual harassment accepted or justified as 'the way things are' • Trivialization: o sexual harassment accepted or justified as 'a harmless joke' • Denotative hesitancy: o sexual harassing encounter not defined by the term sexual harassment • Public/ private expression(domain): o sexual harassment described as part of private - rather than public-life or described using private forms of expression (embarrassment, fear)
Which is consistent with prescriptive approaches to culture?
• Has • Seeing culture as something an organization has is the prescriptive approach to culture
How have these frames been used in our review the approaches to organizational communication so far?
• All of the frames we have considered so far have used the unitary or pluralist frames of reference • Classical approaches adopt a unitary frame of reference • System and cultural approaches tend to take pluralist approaches by considering the management of divergent subgroup interests
Why is managing conflict in organizations important?
• Because you need to know how to manage conflict, great skill to have • You are more likely to be viewed better (promotions)
When can goal shifting occur?
• Before, during, or after (prospective, transactive, and retrospective)
2. How would each of the approaches to organizing (e.g., classical, human relations, human resources, systems, culture, and critical) frame and/or intervene in conflict?
• Classical: o Conflict is viewed as a breakdown of communication and managed to the extent that the existence of conflict detracts from organizational efficiency • Human Relations: o Conflict is viewed as evidence of fault relationships among organizational members o Parties are encouraged to avoid conflict or compromise in order to return harmonious work relations • Cultural: o Conflict is seen as stemming from the differential value systems of individuals and groups o Factors such as national origin, age, and ethnicity can potentially heighten conflict situations • Critical: o Superficial organizational conflicts reflect deeper imbalances of power based on issues such as class, culture and economic factors o These imbalances are revealed and sustained through organizational discourse • Feminist: o Conflict is seen as an opportunity to reframe organizational practices away from patriarchal and rational forms and toward patterns that support transformative and collaborative behaviors
What was the "cultural cover-up" article about?
• College athletes • College athletic departments espoused values are that academics come before athletics for students, but what actually happens is that the football coaches and everyone make the culture so that it's the opposite and the students only have time for athletics instead of academics
Explain Schein's model of culture.
• Communication is a group, pattern of basic assumptions • Culture is emergent and always developing • Socializing aspects of culture (we learn what is acceptable or not) • You absorb information when you enter a culture, you learn new cultures for example when you go to college • Schein says these various markers can be seen as the outer layer of an organizational culture "onion". He sees these markers as artifacts and behaviors. • Members of an organization might hold an underlying assumption that change is good. This underlying assumption might generate values for innovation and outward behaviors and artifacts such as a relaxed and creative atmosphere, bonuses for new ideas, and suggestion boxes throughout the office.
What are the conflict management styles?
• Competition: Win/Lose o Satisfy your own needs at the expense of someone else's • Avoidance: Lose/Lose o Little concern for your own needs or other needs • Collaboration: Win/Win o Beneficial to both person's needs • Accommodation: Lose/Win o Voluntarily meeting another's persons needs • Compromise: Win-Lose/Win-Lose o Each person giving up some of their own needs to make things work
How does each of the styles balance a concern for others and a concern for self?
• Competition: Win/Lose • Avoidance: Lose/Lose • Collaboration: Win/Win • Accommodation: Lose/Win • Compromise: Win-Lose/Win-Lose
Explain the spiral of negativity in conflict (hint: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, withdrawing).
• Criticism →Complain Without Blame • Defensiveness → Take Responsibility • Contempt →Build Culture of Appreciation • Stonewalling/withdrawal → Do Physiological Self-Soothing It begins with poorly given/poorly received criticism, then people get contempt, then they become defensive, and then they stonewall
) Read and be familiar with case 1. b) What are the names of the key players in each case?
• Dennis: Worker trying to get fundraiser together for his co-worker Marsha • Mark: Head of facilities management who wanted to move the location for the fundraiser
What is dialogue?
• Dia-through; logos-words • "a stream of meaning flowing through us and between us.. It's something creative this shared meaning is the "glue" or "cement" that holds people and societies together • Form of interaction that seeks shared understanding through inquiry and divergence in ideas • Fosters trust
What is the dialectic of control?
• Dialect of Control: o When org. values become internalized and the ideology can come to power because people allow it to be o Power is a two-way street, power for the powerless, didn't let Watson into secure area she's upholding managements interest
) according to Gottman, which nonverbal is the worst?
• Disgust
Explain Clair's study of the framing of sexual harassment.
• Examined narratives of women talking about their experiences in the work place • Frames women use when talking about sexual harassment reinforce dominant ideology, it normalizes and supports patriarchy
What are the sources of power for those without formal organizational power?
• Expertise - knowing something your boss doesn't know • Effort and interest - can lead to expertise • Attractiveness - more likeable • Location and Position - personal assistant, who you're close to and who you work with, using your position to our advantage • Coalitions - more likely to listen to collective efforts • Rules • Culture - Disney
What is flooding?
• Flooding: Adrenaline rush, lasts 20 minutes, need to physically remove yourself from the situation • The flight or fight response in an argument, when you are overcome with emotions
Why is such a conception of power incomplete?
• Focusing too much on the micro level • Disregarding larger un-talked about things such as ideology • Treating power as something that individuals possess and exercise amount/between each other
What type of goals do most people focus on in conflict first?
• Go to first: TASK GOALS
What is goal-shifting?
• Goal Shifting: Changes goals during conflict. • When a conflict starts by addressing one goal and then shifts to another
) How is it that concertive control operates through identification and discipline?
• Identification: Perception of oneness or belonging to the organization and is maintained by... • Discipline: Power is EMBEDED in the system. • Power shifts from managers to teams through values and structures selected by the organization. • Identification - with in concertive control system an individual identifies with the values of the organization or work group and hence will act in accordance with those values in absence of simple, technological, or bureaucratic control; it refers to the perception f oneness with or belongingness to where the individual defines him or herself in terms of the collective in which he or she is a member • Discipline - work groups develop techniques to reward and punish behavior that conforms with or deviates from the values identified as important by the work group; although the values may emanate from management the discipline is carried out by work groups. A concertive control system is established in which workers identify with organizational values and then discipline behavior in accordance with those norms
What alternative view of power do critical scholars suggest?
• Ideology
What is ideology?
• Ideology: Shapes out understanding about what exists, what is good, and what is possible. • More than a set of attitudes or beliefs, it structures our thoughts • Interests of the few represented as interests of all • Denies system contradictions (hides it), a contradiction because if Watson were really subject to the rules this story wouldn't exist • Naturalizes current states as fixed (story makes it seem natural, like everyone is treated the same) • Control through hegemony (When one group rises up and it leads another group to..), we see it from the bottom not from the top Ideology: Thought that justifies action, why do people do the certain things they do, determine your gut reaction to something so it is harder to uncover, Refers to the "taken for granted assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events"
Are organizational members equally aware of all three levels in the model? Explain.
• If you are new in an organization you might not know what the core assumptions are, but after being there for a while you will • No, they are not all equally aware of all three levels in the model
) Why does it matter than incompatibility between goals is perceived incompatibility?
• Incompatibility between goals is complicated and subjective-people differ highly in their perceptions • The notion of incompatible goals is central to the most definitions of conflict and involve a plethora or issues in the organizational setting. Many organizational conflicts stem from contradictory ideas about the distribution of organizational resource. • Incompatibility can also disrupt organizational procedures • In short, the basis of organizational conflict lies in the perception of incompatibility regarding a variety of organizational issues
) Explain the four functions of ideology?
• Interests of the Few Represented as Interests of All: o following the rules and maintaining principles are the norm • Denies System Contradictions (hides those things): o If Watson were relaly subject to rules this story wouldn't exist • Naturalizes Current State as Fixed (it's just how it is): o Not everyone is treated the same • Control Through Hegemony (one group rises up and tends to have more power): o Rules and interests maintained at the bottom and the top, one group in society rises up and tends to have more power
How do the "intraprenuership," IBM, and flair (Office Space) stories illustrate the concepts of ideology and power?
• Intraprenuership: Builds internal startups with in established organizations, teams working to pitch an idea to the company, management shifts power struggle to team • Intrapreneur: Someone within a company that takes risks in an effort to solve a given problem
What does it mean to say that it's possible to see culture as something an organization has versus something an organization is?
• It "has" prescriptive, "is" more descriptive • To see culture as something an organization has is consistent with prescriptive approaches to culture o Easier to change something that an organization has, rather than what a culture is
What does it mean to say that an organization is a power struggle?
• It highlights that there are many different people in an organization and they all have different footing • There is an imbalance in power, people have different levels of powers in organizations, certain groups in society have less power they can exercise • They are usually centered around people
Why does the model use the term "espoused" values and beliefs?
• It is how the organization relates to the world; espoused to the world and relating to it truths • To adopt or support, used because beliefs and values are adopted over time
What are the principal criticisms of thinking of organizational culture as something an organization has?
• It treats culture as concrete and designed, suggests that culture is easy to change, obscures ideas about culture • Prescriptive Approach
Are such expressions of power about relationships between individuals?
• Its focusing too much on more micro its looking at power as possessed individuals • It is focusing too much on micro level it is looking at power between and exercise between individuals, this is ignoring larger structures in society, it is treating power as something individuals possesses, this list is usually focused on people
What are the different approaches to studying feminist activism we discussed in class?
• Liberal Feminists o Work within the system o Have goals of gaining fair share of positions and control • Radical Feminists o Protest and organize new system outside the system o Aiming for emancipation or total separation, and aim to completely deconstruct male dominated orgs. • Standpoint Feminists o Seek to recognize, understand and include marginalized groups o Purely communicational o Take a stand against power imbalances
What does the cultural emphasis focus our attention on in the study of organizations?
• Looking for the qualities that make an organization what it is • A system meaning that guides the construction of reality in a social community
List and explain the differences between feminine and masculine styles of work?
• Masculine: o Competitive effort o Cause-Effect analysis o Autonomy o Strict boundaries between personal and work life o Leadership as a hierarchy of control • Feminine: o Cooperative effort o Integrative, holistic analysis o Group work o Fluid boundaries between personal and work life o Leadership as a web of connections • Key: they are a little bit faulty, really just looking at the generalities
What is microresistance? Provide examples.
• Microresistance: o A subtle form of expression, wearing a shirt when only the manager was around o Managers don't always know about what is going on, small minor level of control over their work, flight attendant's shoes, decorating cubicles with cartoons, Disneyland submarine ride
Explain the three levels of culture in Schein's model? Provide examples.
• Middle Level: Consists of individual and group values • Core Level: Basic assumptions: Paradigmatic ideas that might serve to either unite or divide an organizational culture • Level 1: Behaviors and Artifacts: o Visible evidence of the culture o Create a relaxed and creative atmosphere o how people behave and communicate o How one would conclude a place person or thing • Level 2: Values: o Espoused to world, what people say they are, ways things out to be done o What is prideful, accepted, cherished by looking at how something is concluded • Level 3 (core): Assumptions: o Shared among members, unspoken beliefs (don't come to work naked) o Unstated, basic assumptions, education is a positive thing o The overall view of culture based on the equation between what is prideful and what we conclude
) What types of identity goals are common in most conflict?
• Most common in conflict: Independence and Acceptance
What are the implications of treating culture as constituted symbolically (e.g., culture as complicated, fragmented, and emergent)?
• Moves us away from treating culture as something we can change easily • We are able to go deeper • Complicated: Orgs. Are complex, not plain, not easy to define • Emergent: Orgs. Have no design, it develops over time • Fragmented: Not just one culture, they're ambiguous and there is no such thing as a uniform culture • These emphasize the complexity
In what sense are organizational communication and culture intertwined? Provide examples.
• Organizations are culture (rituals, values, artifacts, stories, heroes) • Apples in every room • Vienna sausage examples • What we know and understand as culture, was created through communication • Metaphors happen through communication • The apples on the table
. a) What is organizational culture?
• Pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved problems, worked well enough to be considered valid and is taught to new members • Both academics and practitioners-it simply made sense to see organizations as complex arenas of stories and values rather than as entirely rational institutions • A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptions and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems
How does the theory of concertive control further illustrate the concepts of ideology and hegemony?
• People are conforming to the norms of management and it is being carried out by a group • We are more likely to accept discipline bc we believe it's the way its supposed to be
How could clarifying goals while highlighting interdependence assist in managing conflict?
• People need to clarify that you both share the same needs and goals • By clarifying/highlighting: you are more likely to find a solution because it keeps emotions at bay to focus on situation at hand
What is the overarching organization wide problem from each case?
• Power being centralized in one person's job • One person (Mark) had the power to stop events from happening despite everyone else's approval
Are such expressions of power seen as possessed by individuals?
• Power is seen as being within a person
How are these work styles problematic?
• Problematic because of conflict in work styles • If somebody assumes that a person works a certain way because of their gender • Presents things as a binary, look at the generalities of people tend to work
What is resistance? What is emancipation?
• Resistance: o How workers can exert counter pressure on the exercise of power and control, knowing and understanding of it o Considers how workers can exert counter pressure on this exercise of power and control, can been seen in unionization, strikes, boycotts, and large scale social movements, flight attendants changing their shoes is an individual resistance • Emancipation: o Actual liberation from these power embalances o The liberation of people from unnecessarily restrictive traditions, ideologies, assumptions, power relations, identity formations, and so forth that inhibit or distort opportunities for autonomy, clarification of genuine needs and wants and thus greater and lasting satisfaction o the goal is to achieve freedom, equality, and autonomy
Define classical ways of thinking of power (i.e., reward, coercive, referent, expert, legitimate).
• Reward Power: they can give you something, a better office o Person A has power over person B, because they can give them some reward (pay, status, award) for B's compliance • Coercive Power: they can cut your hours, relocate, work assignments that no one wants o Person A has power over Person B, because they can punish them in some way (e.g., poor work assignments, relocation, and demotion) • Referent Power: o Person A has power over Person B, because person B wants to be like (wants to emulate) Person A (e.g., mentors, charismatic leaders). • Expert Power: you need them for their expertise o Person A has power over person B, because person A has some expertise that the other person needs but doesn't have (e.g., tech support, technical professionals) • Legitimate Power: They have that power because the title of vice president says that o Person A has power over person B, because of an organizational structure like a hierarchy
b) Explain the indicators of organizational culture that we discussed.
• Rituals/Ceremonies: o What events the org puts on o Larger culture, united airlines people calling in sick to work so they increase their incentives • Metaphors: o How the organization compare and explain things o Rally the troops, sports metaphor, time is money, liking selves to military, rally the troops could link to more power and stricter hierarchy of control • Stories: o Important themes and ideologies in orgs. o Vienna sausage company o Marriott, REI founders • Heroes: o Who the org. values/looks up to o Founder, someone who exemplifies culture/values o Walk Disney, Steve Jobs • Values: o What personality traits or morals are important to the org o Sometimes written, what's important to the organization o Employee handbook • Artifacts: o What items have significance to the org. o Easy to see hard to decipher, material things that indicate different things • Communication Rules: o How people in the org. talk to each other o General guidelines for interaction, formality, different for subcultures
) How have these forms developed over time?
• Simple, technological, and bureaucratic control have long exemplified typical forms of power in organizations • However, some theorists propose concertive control has emerged
) Explain the four forms of control?
• Simple: o Direct Oversight; Authoritarian exertion on control; boss can look out the window and see if you are working at all times (traditional power but its not always simply watching, at Disney land people can but tourist clothes on and sneak through to evaluate employees) o question 8 on practice quiz, asking specifically about Jennifer watching over her employee's shoulder • Technical: o Machinery/Technology; Productivity tracking devices; Bring in different technology or machines-you have to make x amount of calls in a certain number of hours o Companies providing things o Assembly lines or computer programs • Bureaucratic: o Control based on the power of hierarchical structure and rational legal rules o Rules; Follow required steps in process submit paperwork, etc.; specific set of keywords to be switched over to a manager o Controlling how someone does their work o Customer calling/on hold, followed required steps in process • Concertive: o Occurs through identification and self-discipline o Team; Reinforcing values of the team... But are they really team's values?; Values of the management becomes values of the team o Control at team level
How does the Apple case in the film, In Search of Excellence, illustrate these principles?
• Steve Jobs helped to facility and environment with free/open communication • A bias for Action: They invested $20 million before things took off • Customer: Younger audience like themselves • Autonomy/Entrepreneurship: They can manage themselves • Value: Built to change the world, "underdog"
. What is the underlying assumption in feminist approaches to organizational communication?
• That society (organizations) are built upon patriarchal institutions • Challenge Patriarchal assumptions of organizational life, it assumes that women and men see and experience the world/communicate differently • Society are built upon patriarchal institutions
How are these frames related to the concept ideology?
• These frames turn sexual harassing encounter into a situation that fits the ideology of the orgs • Ideology - involves assumptions that are rarely scrutinized, many assumptions related to the frames are rarely scrutinized, ideology like the frames can influence our behaviors • "the taken for granted assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events" • Viewing sexual harassment as "a harmless joke" or "mere flirting" or "the way things are" are ways of normalizing and even supporting the patriarchal underpinnings of the work place
How is the work of Deal and Kennedy similar to Peters and Waterman's work?
• They both are attempting to identify the formal for developing a secure organizational structure • They were both attempting to identify aspects of organizational culture that were prevalent in high performing companies • Peters and Waterman identified excellent culture through different themes o These themes emphasize people and downplay bureaucratic structure and values o Both emphasize the importance of organizational intangibles, such as values and heroes, and signal a move away from strictly rational models of organizing
What makes the critical approach distinct from the other approaches to studying organizations?
• They focus on power • The critical approach adopts a radical frame of reference, we have never seen this before
How does the Disneyland case illustrate the dialectic of control and sources of power for the powerless?
• They used the culture as a form of power • Power is a two-way street, we are a family Walt as a form of power to be cheery and happy, when push came to shove the people lower turned things around and said if we are a family why are treating us so poorly, the dialect of control assumes people can uproot and rebel without any punishment or backlash
What are the primary emphases of critical approaches?
• To make people aware of how they are being pressed so that they can facilitate change • All organizations have hidden power structures, the goal is to emancipate power group
Explain the unitary, pluralist, and radical frames for organizational communication?
• Unitary: o Conflict is rare and negative o Everyone has the same common organization goals o Classical and HR approach • Pluralist: o Conflict is inherent and positive o Groups have divergent interests o Systems and culture approach • Radical: o Conflict and power are reflections of societal struggles o Organizations are sites of domination o Battleground where rival forces strive for incompatible ends o Critical and feminist approach
What is hegemony?
• When a dominant group leads another group to accept subordination as the norm, "manufactured consent", employees willing to adopt and reinforce hierarchal power structures
How does the dialect of control suggest the potential for resistance?
• When somebody recognizes they have dialect of control, they realize they have the ability to change the system Power is a two way street, the fact that she didn't let Watson into the secure area, she is doing her job properly but also holding the companies interest • Disney example employees can use what management "values" to turn against them when they're not demonstrating what they claim they are about • Employees can resist what they're being told to do that goes against the culture
What is deconstruction?
• When you are able to break down different ideologies in order to see how they are at work in an org. • Looking for alternative meanings in a story, look at power implications
Explain the order of the four forms of group discussion (i.e., debate, polite discussion, skillful discussion, and dialogue) using the three continua we articulated (i.e., divergent vs. convergent thinking, advocacy vs. inquiry, individual vs. shared meaning).
• Where would dialogue fall? Everything on the right of the dialogue side o Convergent Thinking: You are correct, not creative o Advocacy: Advocating for your goals o Individual Meaning Focus: You only care about yourself o Divergent Thinking: Creatively thinking, not focused on what's right o Inquiry: Act of asking for info o Shared Meaning Focus: You both want to get the end goal o Debate: Most like divergent thinking, advocacy, and individual meaning focus o Polite: individual meaning focus still there, but without anger of a debate o Skillful: Not completely convergent thinking, inquiry, and shared meaning focus o Dialogue: Made up of convergent thinking, inquiry, and shared meaning focus
What does it mean to say that artifacts are hard to decipher?
• While an artifact is symbolic of something we don't always know what the symbols mean • The difficulty lies in finding out what it means to the org, do not always mean the same thing to everyone, up for interpretation
What was the "disciplined bodies" article about?
• Women's appearance in the workplace • Women are expected to dress in a sexual way, but not too sexual, in the professional environment, maintain a fit body and keep their emotions suppressed while at work
Does microresistance benefit the oppressed? Why or why not?
• Yes, it does because it provides an emotional release internal psychological thing, not usually on managements radar • It does benefit the oppressed
