CMS 313M Exam 2

What is the core principle we highlighted in our definition of conflict?

Conflict is the perceived incongruities between multiple goals. Conflict: interaction of interdependent people who percieve oppression of goals, aims, and values, and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realization of these goals.

Resistance:

Considers how workers can exert counterpressure on this exercise of power and control. Resistance is knowing. Just having the understanding of power imbalance is a form of resistance.

In what sense are organizational communication and culture intertwined? Provide examples.

Culture enables and constrains organizational communication. Culture emerges through communication. ex: vienna sausage

How does the Disneyland case illustrate the dialect of control and sources of power for the powerless?

Disneyland is presented as "family" company where business meets personal life. Rift began to development as management began to be seen as emotionless and not caring of the average employee.

Unitary frame:

Emphasis is placed on common oganizational goals, conflict is seen as rare and negative, and power is in the natural perogative of management

Hands on&Value driven:

Employees and managers share the same core value of productivity and performance

Autonomy and entreupeneurship:

Encourage employees to take risks in the development of new ideas

Level 2:

Espoused values: how things about to be done in the organization. safety, innovation, hard work

How is it that concertive control operates through identification and discipline?

Identification: making the organizations values your own. Discipline: individuals are self disciplining

What is the dialect of control?

Ideology came to power because people allow it to be, organization values become internalized

How do entrepeneurship , IBM, and flair stories illustrate the concepts of ideology and power?

Ideology: how things are and how things should be Hegemony: a subordinate group that accepts the domination of the dominant group

communication rules

how do people in the organization talk to each other ex: idk fam, how do people talk

metaphors

how do they compare and explain things ex: time is money, we're family here

stories

important themes and ideologies in organizations ex: apple story at Leo Burnett, Vienne sausage co.

What is hegemony?

Process in which a dominant group leads another group to accept subordination as their norm. Manufactures consent in which employees willingly adopt and reinforce hierarchical power structures.

What makes the critical approach distinct from the other approaches to studying organizations?

Relates to frame of reference. All about an imbalance of power. Radical frame of reference. Role of critical theorists is to explore and uncover these imbalances and bring them to the attention of the oppressed group.

Four functions of ideology:

Representing the interests of a few as the interests of all, denies system contradictions, naturalizes the current state as fixed, controls as hegemony.

What are the components of Deal and Kennedy's strong cultures?

Values, heroes, rites and rituals, the cultural network

Standpoint feminist:

Work to enhance the opportunity for a variety of marginalizes voices to be heard with societal dialogue.

Are such expressions of power about relationships between individuals?

Yes because it is a question about who has the power, and individuals making choices.

Are such expressions of power seen as possessed by individuals?

Yes because management doesn't own ideolgies

Does micro-resistance benefit the oppressed?

Yes. Gives them a way to vent and create solidarity.

Liberal feminist:

believe that remedies for female subordination should come from within the system and women should work to gain their fair share of control in institutions currently run by men

What are Peters and Watermans characteristics of an "excellent culture"?

bias for action, close relations to the customer, autonomy and entrepeneurship, productivity through people, hands on and value driven, stick to the knitting, simple form and learn staff, simultaneous loose/tight policies

Productivity through people:

encourage positive and respectful relationships among management and employees

What are the principal criticisms of thinking of organization culture as something an organization HAS?

treats culture as concrete and designed, suggests that culture is easy to change, obscure useful ideas about culture, organizational climate. thee perscriptive approach assumes that there is a single cultural formula for achieving organizational success. treating culture as a THING an organization HAS objectifies culture bc it de emphasizes the complex process through which culture is created and sustained.

Explain each of the "framing devices" used in sexual harassment narratives?

1. Accepting dominant interests: sexual harassment accepted or justifies as less important than other managerial concerns. 2. simple misunderstanding: sexual harassment accepted or justified as "mere flirting" 3. Trivialization: sexual harassment accepted or justified as a "harmless joke" 4. Denotative hesitancy: sexually harassing encounter not defined by the term sexual harassment 5. Public/private expression- public/private domain: sexual harassment describes as part of private rather than public life or described using private forms of expression.

Pluralist feminist:

A hybrid form of feminism: suggests that even in feminist organizations there are pragmatic contingencies that constrain an idealistic view of feminism, developing pluralist feminism means becoming "responsive to the needs of organizations that seek social change yet cannot fully embrace antibureaaucratic countercapitalist ideals and practices"

What is organizational culture?

A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved it's problems of external adaptation that has worked well enough and is taught to new members are the correct way to think, perceive, and feel.

How have these forms developed over time?

As forms of control become more complex, so do power in them. As organizations become more complex, so do the forms of power.

Postmodern feminist:

Attempt to "deconstruct" male dominated meaning systems in order to highlight womens perspectives

Simple form&lean staff:

Avoid complex structures and divisions of labor

Bureaucratic control:

Based on the power of hierarchical structure and the rational-legal rules that emanate from the bureaucratic structure

Level 3:

Basic Assumptions. shared among members, unspoken beliefs. mistakes are okay, diversity=success, etc.

Level 1:

Behaviors and Artifacts. Visible evidence of culture. architecture, furniture, job titles, decision making style

Radical feminist:

Believe that emancipation for women can occur only through the destruction of male-dominated institutions or through the total separation of women from these institutions

How is the work of Deal and Kennedy similar to Peter and Waterman's work?

Both books propose that successful companies can be identifies in terms of their cultures, and emphasize the importance of organizational tangibles (such as values, heroes) and signal a move away from strictly rational models of organizing.

What is deconstruction?

Breaking down the ideologies that exist to understand how they work in an organization

Explain Clair's study of the framing of sexual harassment

Clair argues that the frames women use when talking about sexual harassment often serve to reinforce the dominant ideology. That is, viewing sexual harassment as a "misunderstanding" or "harmless flirting" normalizes and even supports the patriarchal underpinnings of the workplace.

Why does the model use the term "espoused" values?

Espoused: to adopt or support a cause, belief, or way of life. the beliefs/values over time as individuals observe how others interact within the organization. However, just because you believe something does not mean you will act according to those beliefs.

Concertive control:

Ex: Office Space wear more flair, express yourself, etc. Identification: coming to hold the organizations values as your own. Discipline: discipline is carried out by the individuals being controlled, individuals are self disciplining.

Technological control:

Exerted through technological workplace processes such as assembly lines or computer programs

Simultaneous loose/tight properties:

Exhibit both unity of purpose and the diversity necessary for innovation

What are the sources of power for those without formal organizational power?

Expertise, effort and interest, attractiveness, location and position, coalitions, rules, and culture.

Close relations to customer:

Gear decisions and actions to the needs of the customer

How are these emphases captured in Marx's quote "the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it"

He believed that critique of power imbalances would lead to revolution by revealing fundamental truths about the human condition. You want invention and changes.

Explain Schein's model of culture

He defines culture as: a group phenomenon, striving toward patterning and integration, pattern of basic assumptions, emergent and developmental process, socializing aspect.

What does it mean to say an organization is a power struggle?

Highlighting the aspect that not everyone in an organization is on the same footing.

What does it mean to say that it's possible to see culture as something an organization has vs. something an organization is?

If you try to objectify, simplify, and formalize culture, you might see it as something an organization HAS (perscriptive approach) Seeing culture as the emerging and sometimes fragmented values, practices, narratives, and artifacts that make a particular organization what it IS (descriptive/explanatory approach)

How does theory of concertive control further illustrate concepts of ideology and hegemony?

Illustrates hegemony because people accept discipline through hegemony because it's the overarching concept over an organization. Illustrates ideology bc ideology is the way an organization should be and act.

Explain how cultural performances are interactional, contextual, episodic, and improvisational.

Interactional: require the participation of multiple organizational members. Contextual: they are embedded in organizational situations and organizational history Episodic: They are distinct events in organizational life Improvisational: there are no scripts that guide organizational members

Simple control:

Involves the direct and authoritation exertion of control in the workplace

Why is such a conception of power incomplete?

It is incomplete because there are other forms of power within individuals that this conception doesn't address

What are the different approaches to studying feminist activism we discussed in class?

Liberal, radical, standpoint, postmodern, and pluralist

Emancipation:

Liberation of people from unnecessarily restrictive traditions, ideologies, assumptions, power relations, etc that inhibit or distort opportunities for autonomy. Leaving something.

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

List and explain the differences between feminine and masculine styles of work:

MASC: competitive, cause-effect analysis, autonomy, strict boundaries between personal and work life, leadership as a hierarchy of control. FEM: cooperative, integrative holistic analysis, group work, fluid boundaries between personal and work life, leadership as a web of connections

What are the primary emphases of critical approaches?

Making people aware of how they are being oppressed so that they can facilitate change

Are organizational members equally aware of all three levels in the model?

No, because cultures are symbolically constituted, complicated, emergent and fragmented, most of the awareness happens below the surface. people only become aware in moments of reflection. Not everyone is aware of it.

According to the critical approach, does and organization always just have one goal?

No. Always multiple goals when talking about a large group of people. Competing goals.

Three levels of Schein's model:

OUTSIDE TO INSIDE: Artifacts&Behaviors: relaxed creative atmosphers, suggestion boxes Values: value for innovation, adaptability Basic Assumptions: change is good

How does the dialect of control suggest the potential for resistance?

Once you recognize the part you play in the system and even though you are the one that is oppressed, you then have the ability to change it.

What is cultural performance?

Organizational culture should concentrate on the communication process through which culture is created. These processes can be conceptualized as "performances" that are interactional, contextual, episodic, and improvisational.

Pluralist frame:

Organizations consist of many groups with divergent interests, conflict is rarely seen positively as "an inherent and ineradicable characteristic of organizational affairs"

Which is consistent with perscriptive approaches to culture?

Perscriptive approaches: see culture as something organization HAS Explanatory/Descriptive approaches: see culture as something an organization IS

Expert power:

Person A has power over Person B because Person A has some expertise person B needs but doesn't have. (power imbalance)

Referent power:

Person A has power over Person B because Person B wants to be like Person A (Person A has power because others want to be like them, charisma)

Legitimate power:

Person A has power over Person B because of an organizational structure like a hierarchy

Reward power:

Person A has power over Person B because they can give them some reward (pay, status, award) for B's compliance. (professor can offer extra credit, salary)

Coercive power:

Person A has power over Person B because they can punish them in some way. (dock pay, relocation)

Classical ways of thinking of power:

Reward, coercive, referent, expert, legitimate

What are the implications of treating culture as constituted symbolically?

Seeing cultures this way takes into account the complexity of organizational culture, they are not planned, they are not unitary, and they are ambiguous. Not just that the organization is something we can examine.

Four forms of control:

Simple, technological, beaurocratic, concertive control

What is micro-resistance?

Small things that people do in organizations. Useful for employees to express frustrations without actually changing anything. Enforces control because it makes it easier to suffer. ex: only wearing uniform when manager is around

Stick to the knitting:

Stay focused on what they do best and avoid radical diversification

How does the Apple case illustrate these principles:

Steve Jobs helped facilitate an environment that prescribed to all of Peters themes. Encouraged innovation, no hierarchy, hands on work, etc.

How have these frames been used in our review to the approaches to organizational communication so far?

The approaches to organizational communication we have already seen used unitary or pluralist frames of reference. Systems approach and cultural approach tend to take the pluralist frame of reference by considering the management of divergent subgroup interests. Critical and feminist approaches turn to the radical frame by considering organizations as sites of domination.

Rites and rituals:

The ceremonies through which an organization celebrates its values

What does it mean to say that artifacts are hard to decipher?

The difficulty is figuring out what artifacts mean, how they interrelate, what deeper patterns they reflect. Artifacts will mean different things for different people. Open to interpretation.

Heroes:

The individuals who come to exemplify an organizations values. these become known through the stories and myths of an organization.

Radical frame:

The organization is viewed as a "battleground where rival forces strive for the achievement of largely incompatible ends", conflict and power are seen as reflections or larger class struggles in society

What is ideology?

The taken for granted assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events. Refers to more than a set of attitudes and beliefs rather it structures our thoughts and controls our interpretations of reality. Ideology shapes our understanding about what exists, what is good, and what is possible.

Fragmented:

There is not just one culture, individuals are in multiple cultures

How are these frames related to the concept of ideology?

These frames, when applies, turn the sexually harassing encounter into a situation that fits into the ideology of the organizations, one that flows with members' feelings and attitudes about how things out to be, be it refusing to label the encounter of sexual harassment of shrugging it off as flirting.

Emergent:

They are not designed

What is the underlying assumption in feminist approaches to organizational communication?

This approach begins with the idea that organizations in their traditional and bureaucractic forms are inherently patriarchal. Traditional views of organizational communication place important on individualism, cause and effect thinking and autonomy.

What alternative view of power do critical scholars suggest?

Traditional approach: considers power to be a relatively stable entity that people or groups possess Symbological approach: views power as a product of communicative interactions and relationships Radical-critical approach: considers "deep structures" that produce and reproduce relationships in organizational life.

Bias for action:

react quickly and do not spend excess time planning and analyzing

Indicators of organizational culture

rituals/ceremonies, metaphors, stories, heroes, values, artifacts, communication rules

Values:

the beliefs and visions that members hold for an organization

The cultural network:

the communication system through which cultural values are instituted and reinforced. The cultural network can consist of both formal organizational channels and the informal interaction of employees.

rituals/ceremonies

what events do they put on ex: pawnee harvest fest

artifacts

what items have significance to the organization ex: Leo Burnett apple

values

what personality traits or morals are important to the organization ex: employee handbook, talking about living our values

heroes

who the organization values/looks up to ex: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs