Untitled

• A basic understanding of many theoretical approaches is needed
• In general, know the metaphors, content, direction, channel, and style of communication for each approach
• In general, knowing the major figures/theorists of each theoretical approach is important
• McCroskey & McCroskey (2017) is important
• Understanding the models of communication and components of each is also helpful
• Knowing the definition of organizational communication is important
• Know what is considered as an organization
• Understand formal and informal networks
• Understand various flows of communication

Bureaucracy

• According to Max Webber, a German sociologist, rules and authority are important
• Promotes an “ideal” organization based on ideals of bureaucracy
• Organizations should be closed systems driven by a rational-legal authority, and power based on expertise
• This differs from charismatic or traditional authority
• Individuality is discouraged

Theory of Scientific Management

• Be able to define this theory
• Be able to understand the research that supports this theory
• This theory comes from Federick Tyalor, an American mechanical engineer, who used the term "enemy of the working man"
• This also emerged to combat uneven work and systematic soldiering
• Scientific methods should determine the best way to do each job
• Once the best way is determined, workers must be scientifically hired and trained
• This is determined by time and motion studies
• A strict distinction and division of labor between workers and managers is needed

Differences between human relations and human resources

• Know the difference between human relations and human resources

Able to explain each of the following:

• Hawthorne Studies
• There are 4 different studies with their findings
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory
• McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y

Explain each of the following

• Black and Mouton's Managerial Grid
• Likert's Management System

Linear Model of Communication

• This model emphasizes employee contribution
• Employees feel happier when they are intellectually challenged and values for their contributions

Human Resources (Sentence)

• Organizations should ensure to intellectually challenge employees and encourage contributions
• This is especially true from managers, who balance a proper concern for people and production

Human Relations Approach

• Individuals need attention, social interaction, and individual achievement

Human Relations (Sentence)

• Employees are actual people who need attention, achievement, and social interaction
• Employees are motivated by the desire to satisfy higher-order needs

The Hawthorne Studies

• Illumination studies
• Relay assembly test room study
• Smaller groups (5 female workers) asked to complete a relay to make a telephone
• Manipulated different factors beyond lighting; humidity, rest breaks, refreshments, temperature, hours
• In general, production and satisfaction increased regardless of the changes
• Interview program

Linear Model of Communication

• Focuses on how working conditions make people more or less productive and satisfied
• Workers seemed more interested in talking about their feelings than anything else
• Social and emotional needs of workers need to be the focus

Hawthorne Effect

• Individuals change their behavior when they know they're being watched

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• physiological needs (bottom) → safety needs → belongingness and love needs → esteem needs → self-actualization (top)
• Basic needs:
  • Physiological: food, water, warmth, rest
  • Safety needs: security, safety
• Psychological needs:
  • Belongingness and love needs: intimate relationships, friends
  • Esteem needs: prestige and feeling of accomplishment
• Self-fulfillment needs:
• Self-actualization: achieving one's full potential, including creative activities

McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y

• Theory X
• Assumes that employees dislike work, are lazy, dislike responsibility, and must be coerced to perform
• Theory Y
• Assumes that employees like work, are creative, seek responsibility, and can exercise self-direction

Blake and Mouton's Managerial Grid

• Impoverished management
• Low concern for people and production
• Bare minimum leaders
• Country club management
• High concern for people but low concern for production
• Hyper focuses on pleasant workplace
• They forget they have a job to do
• Authority-compliance management
• Low concern for people, high concern for production
• Classical theorists
• Team management
• High concern for people and production
• Really hard to achieve
• Middle-of-the-road management
• Cares for both people and production without sacrificing one over the other

Likert's Management System

• Exploitative authoritative

Linear Model of Communication

• The leader imposes decisions on subordinates and uses fear to achieve employee motivation
• Benevolent-authoritative
• The leader uses rewards to encourage productivity, but management is responsible for all decisions, with no teamwork
• Consultative
• The leader listens to subordinates and incorporates some employee ideas
• Most subordinates do not feel responsible for the organization's goals
• Participative
• The leader engages subordinates, solves problems with teamwork
• Everyone feels responsible for achieving the organization's goals

System Approach

• Define and describe the systems approach
• Know the three components of systems
• Understand system processes
• Input-throughput-output model
• Deviation-reducing vs. deviation-amplifying
• Know the four properties of systems

Cultural Approach

• Be able to define and describe the cultural approach

Linear Model of Communication

• The four components of Deal and Kennedy's “Strong Cultures”
• Peter and Waterman's "Excellent Cultures"
• Prescriptive vs. descriptive approaches to culture
• Know the criticisms of prescriptive views
• Know the four characteristics of descriptive and explanatory approaches to culture

Systems Approach

• Organizations are complex organisms made up of various components, processes, and properties

Systems Approaches (Sentence)

• Organizations are complex systems made up of an assemblage of interdependent, hierarchical, and permeable subsystems and supersystems

System Theory Concepts

• Components
• What is the system made of?
• Processes
• How does the system work?

System Components

• Hierarchical ordering
• System components are arranged in highly complex ways
• Organizations are made up of subsystems and supersystems
  • Example: Pepperdine departments

Linear Model of Communication

• Interdependence
• No component within a system can function effectively without other parts of the system
• All components rely on each other to be successful
  • Example: hub for spiritual life
• Permeable boundaries
• Systems allow information and materials to flow in and out
• Organizations fall on a spectrum from open to closed, but all require permeability to survive

System Processes

• Input materials or information are received from the environment
• Throughput inputs go through a transformational process
• Output changed inputs are then returned to the environment

Two Input-throughput-output Processes

• Exchange
• The process of exchanging information between inputs/outputs and the environment outside the system
• Feedback
• What helps to facilitate and maintain the interdependent functioning of system components

Linear Model of Communication

• Deviation-Reducing
• Negative/corrective feedback meant to keep the organization on a steady course
• Deviation-Amplifying
• Positive feedback meant to promote change to transform an organization

Four Properties of Systems

• Holism
• Activities must be looked at holistically (vs. individual contributions)
• Human resources and IT collaborating on a training
• Equifinality
• A variety of means can be used to reach a system goal
• Three people getting fired in the same month for different reasons
• Negative Entropy
• The ability for systems to sustain themselves and grow through the flow of information
• Workplaces acknowledging increased happiness from WFH
• Requisite Variety
• Systems should be as diverse and complicated as their environment
• Reaching alumni at Pepperdine vs UCLA

Cultural Approach

• Seeks to understand the ways communication creates a unique sense of place in an organization

Cultural Approaches (Sentence)

• Seeks to understand how interaction cultivates a unique sense of place in an organization through a complex web of values, behaviors, stories, rules, and metaphors, which are all social performances of members

Culture

• Culture is complicated
• Various markers, like ceremonies, rites, metaphors, stories, and communication rules, can reveal layers of the organizational culture “onion"
• Culture is emergent
• Cultures are socially created through interactions
• Cultural "performances" include:

1. Interactional
2. Contextual
3. Episodic
4. Improvisational

• Culture is not unitary
• Organizations are characterized by a multitude of organizational subcultures that may coexist in harmony, conflict, or indifference
• Culture is ambiguous

Linear Model of Communication

• There may be multiple manifestations of culture (or various subcultures)
• Different members may be experiencing various realities and challenges

Prescriptive Approaches to Culture

• Culture is something organizations have
• Deal and Kennedy's “strong cultures"
• Organizations can develop a “strong” culture through four components which will improve individual performance and organizational success
• Peter and Waterman's “excellent cultures”
• By following eight themes, organizations will develop excellent cultures as long as they emphasize ...

Four Components of “Strong Cultures"

• Values
• The beliefs and visions members hold for an organization
• Heroes
• Individuals who exemplify an organization's values
• Rites and Rituals
• Ceremonies through which an organization celebrates its values
• Cultural network
• The communication system through which cultural values are instituted and reinforced

Criticisms of Prescriptive Views

Linear Model of Communication

• De-emphasizes the complexities of creating and sustaining culture
• Objectifies culture as a singular “thing” that should be managed
• Doesn't acknowledge cultures as emergent or ambiguous

Critical Approaches

• Describe what critical theorists believe and set out to achieve
• Know the three frames of reference & three approaches to power
• Define ideology, hegemony, emancipation, and resistance
• Know the definition and components of the theory of concertive control
• Know the three strategies for control besides concertive control

Feminist Approaches

• Describe what feminist scholars believe, study, and set out to achieve
• Define and give examples of each of the five types of feminism

Critical Approach Organizations are Sites of Domination

• Certain societal structures and processes lead to fundamental imbalances of power

Linear Model of Communication

• These imbalances lead to alienation and oppression for certain groups
• Critical theorists uncover these imbalances to alert oppressed groups
• The ultimate goal = emancipation

Frames of Reference

• Unitary
• Emphasizes common goals
• Conflict is rare and negative
• Power is natural and associated with resources and status
• Pluralist
• Emphasizes varied groups
• Conflict is inherent and positive
• Power emerges as a byproduct of divergent interests
• Radical
• Emphasizes power struggles
• Conflict is reflection of larger class struggles
• Organizations are “battlegrounds”

Approaches to Power

• Traditional
• Considers power to be relatively stable
• Power is possessed by people or groups
• Equated with resources or hierarchy
• Symbological

Linear Model of Communication

• Power is a product of interactions and relationships
• Communication constitutes understandings of power

Important Terminology

• Ideology
• Taken-for-granted assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events
• Hegemony
• When one group controls another with consent of the oppressed group
• Emancipation
• The liberation of people from unnecessarily restrictive power relations
• Resistance
• How workers exert counterpressure on exercises of power

Strategies for Control

• Simple
• Involves direct and authoritarian exertion of control
• Technological
• Involves control exerted through technological workplace processes
• Bureaucratic based on power
• Concertive Control

Linear Model of Communication

• When the locus of control in an organization shifts from managements to workers in a collaborative environment
• According to concertive control, power is embedded in a system of identification and discipline
• Identification occurs when organizational members feels belongingness or “oneness” with an organization
• Occurs when members define themselves as a member, and take on concerns as their own
• Discipline – through communication, work groups reward conformists and punish deviants

Feminist approach in a sentence

• We must deconstruct the patriarchal organization

Key Theoretical Assumptions

• Gender is a primary way in which identity and power relations are constructed
• Work is a key site where this happens
• Dominant systems of gender privilege men and masculinity
• Gender, power, and organizations are continuously created and changed in and through communication

Types of Feminism

• Feminism takes various forms, viewpoints, and strategies for activism

Linear Model of Communication

• Liberal Feminism
• "mainstream feminism"
• The system should provide solutions for female subordination
• Women need to work harder to gain their fair share of control in patriarchal organizations
• Radical Feminism
• "cutting-edge feminism”
• Calls for a radical re-ordering of society through the elimination of male supremacy in all contexts
• Advocates for the total separation of women from patriarchal institution Standpoint Feminists
• "inclusive feminism"
• Works to enhance the opportunity for a variety of marginalized voices to be heard in societal discourse...
• Postmodern Feminists
• "deconstructive feminism"
• Attempts to deconstruct male-dominated meaning systems with the goal of highlighting women's perspectives
• Sees gender stereotypes as socially constructed

Linear Model of Communication

• Pluralist Feminism
• “contingent feminism”
• Even in feminist organizations, there are organizational contingencies that constrain an idealistic view of feminism