Chapter 7
Pages 200-201 talk about the history of “identity” in organizational communication. The authors define “identity” as how individuals position themselves in the world through language and action. The authors mention that historically, identity of individuals was largely fixed, unitary, and organizational bureaucracies tried to establish control over the work life of employees. Employees identified their “real” lives to be outside of work life. However the authors describe that in the recent years, there has been emergence of broad range of employee identities. These identities are fluid and multiple which tend to focus on ethics and consistency of one’s behavior. Individual seek to be authentic in both their work life and personal life.
So the question is “how are organizations handling the modern trend of fluid & multiple identities?”
From my personal experiences, I have seen that majority of the schools, colleges, and universities are providing proper platform for young generation to understand their true selves, including their behavior pattern, decision making pattern, likes, and dislikes. For example, SJSU’s Career Center offers various personality tests, coaching, and counseling to students to identify their core life values to prepare them for their multiple roles in their professional and personal life. Many companies also offer similar instruments to their employees to better orient their fluid and multiple identities and establish horizons of significance. This kind of support helps individuals to properly deal with the complexities and stress that may arise as they juggle their identities to live authentically.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Week 3, blog 4
Week 3, blog 4
The last section of the web lecture Metaphors & Culture talks about the "Fragmentation Perspective of Organizational Culture." Martin defined the fragmented perspective of culture as "a web of individuals, sporadically and loosely connected by their changing positions on a variety of issues. Their involvement, their subcultural identities, and their individual self-definitions fluctuate, depending on which issues are activated at a given moment."
I have seen the traces of fragmented culture in social context, especially families/households. A family/household is a type of social organization. I have discovered characteristics of fragmented culture in families with large number of young children, teenagers, and young adults versus families with large number of middle-aged adults and seniors adults. As the author mentions, this perspective is postmodern so obviously a key element of this perspective on culture is the age or the generation to which a person belongs to. Therefore, organizational communication and organizational culture students, researchers and scholars can really benefit by comparing companies that have high percentage of young employees with companies that do not, There will be a lot of critical information that would emerge from such study that can be further used to improve organizational communication practices.
The last section of the web lecture Metaphors & Culture talks about the "Fragmentation Perspective of Organizational Culture." Martin defined the fragmented perspective of culture as "a web of individuals, sporadically and loosely connected by their changing positions on a variety of issues. Their involvement, their subcultural identities, and their individual self-definitions fluctuate, depending on which issues are activated at a given moment."
I have seen the traces of fragmented culture in social context, especially families/households. A family/household is a type of social organization. I have discovered characteristics of fragmented culture in families with large number of young children, teenagers, and young adults versus families with large number of middle-aged adults and seniors adults. As the author mentions, this perspective is postmodern so obviously a key element of this perspective on culture is the age or the generation to which a person belongs to. Therefore, organizational communication and organizational culture students, researchers and scholars can really benefit by comparing companies that have high percentage of young employees with companies that do not, There will be a lot of critical information that would emerge from such study that can be further used to improve organizational communication practices.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Week 3, blog 3
Week 3, blog 3
For the blog entry on web lecture Metaphors & Culture, I will talk about “Hegemony.” Hegemony is deeply rooted in the critical approaches to organization that views organizations as instruments of domination that enhances the interest of elite members of the organization at the expense of all the other members. Hegemony refers to domination of one group over another and creation of power relationships in such a way that those who are oppressed accept and contribute to the further oppression.
From my personal experiences in the information technology field, I can see Hegemony happening more in high-tech industries where certain groups emit power through their technical know-how and know-what over those groups of employees who are not technically savvy. For examples, the group of programmers and developers who make the actual software products can create a dominating relationship with product managers and the marketing group. Due to their lack of technical knowledge and lack of posing technically challenging questions, the product managers and the marketing group is more likely to accept the explanations and demands of the programmers/developers which can continue to build on to the dominating relationship. As a result, product managers and marketing group contributes to their own oppression.
I have also seen Hegemony at SJSU, where the University Computing and Telecommunications (UCAT) department plays the dominating group over the group of department administrators, professors, and students who basically buy in to what ever is put on table for them to choose from without challenging the status quo because UCAT is in a better position to defend their technical infrastructure, products and decisions. With continual agreement to UCAT practices, the other university groups described above fuel their own oppression.
For the blog entry on web lecture Metaphors & Culture, I will talk about “Hegemony.” Hegemony is deeply rooted in the critical approaches to organization that views organizations as instruments of domination that enhances the interest of elite members of the organization at the expense of all the other members. Hegemony refers to domination of one group over another and creation of power relationships in such a way that those who are oppressed accept and contribute to the further oppression.
From my personal experiences in the information technology field, I can see Hegemony happening more in high-tech industries where certain groups emit power through their technical know-how and know-what over those groups of employees who are not technically savvy. For examples, the group of programmers and developers who make the actual software products can create a dominating relationship with product managers and the marketing group. Due to their lack of technical knowledge and lack of posing technically challenging questions, the product managers and the marketing group is more likely to accept the explanations and demands of the programmers/developers which can continue to build on to the dominating relationship. As a result, product managers and marketing group contributes to their own oppression.
I have also seen Hegemony at SJSU, where the University Computing and Telecommunications (UCAT) department plays the dominating group over the group of department administrators, professors, and students who basically buy in to what ever is put on table for them to choose from without challenging the status quo because UCAT is in a better position to defend their technical infrastructure, products and decisions. With continual agreement to UCAT practices, the other university groups described above fuel their own oppression.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Week 3, blog 2
Week 3, Blog 2
Chapter 6, pages 181-184, talks about “healthy organizations” and how there has been an increased attention and interest from critical scholars because they believe that workplace accidents, hazards, and occupational injuries are direct results of organizational practices that value productivity and profitability over employee safety and health. Immediately after reading this section, I started thinking about various multinational companies that have production facilities in third-world countries and the kind of working conditions they offer to their employees there. In developed countries like the United States, we have regulatory agencies like OSHA that monitors workplace health and safety, but the we still see high volume of occupational fatalities, illness, and injuries every year. It is just common sense and common guess that in third-world countries the rates of occupational fatalities, illness, injuries, and physical disabilities are much alarming because these countries probably lack the proper governmental regulatory infrastructure that advocates employee occupational safety and health.
In the absence of governmental occupational safety and health regulations, what do these multinational companies do to better organize their overseas workplaces and improve organizational communication to ensure the well-being and safety of their employees? This issue also overlaps with the social responsibility of an organization towards the country they are operating in, as well as their individual employee's well-being. Although I have read numerous news articles and seen many television programs that shows the hazardous working conditions in third-world countries, I have not come across any newspaper articles or television programs that highlight the good occupational health and safety practices that some multinational companies might be conducting in third-world countries. If this is a global age and global economy that we all are living under, it is important for multinational organizations to not overlook the global occupational health and safety concerns, especially in third-world countries.
Chapter 6, pages 181-184, talks about “healthy organizations” and how there has been an increased attention and interest from critical scholars because they believe that workplace accidents, hazards, and occupational injuries are direct results of organizational practices that value productivity and profitability over employee safety and health. Immediately after reading this section, I started thinking about various multinational companies that have production facilities in third-world countries and the kind of working conditions they offer to their employees there. In developed countries like the United States, we have regulatory agencies like OSHA that monitors workplace health and safety, but the we still see high volume of occupational fatalities, illness, and injuries every year. It is just common sense and common guess that in third-world countries the rates of occupational fatalities, illness, injuries, and physical disabilities are much alarming because these countries probably lack the proper governmental regulatory infrastructure that advocates employee occupational safety and health.
In the absence of governmental occupational safety and health regulations, what do these multinational companies do to better organize their overseas workplaces and improve organizational communication to ensure the well-being and safety of their employees? This issue also overlaps with the social responsibility of an organization towards the country they are operating in, as well as their individual employee's well-being. Although I have read numerous news articles and seen many television programs that shows the hazardous working conditions in third-world countries, I have not come across any newspaper articles or television programs that highlight the good occupational health and safety practices that some multinational companies might be conducting in third-world countries. If this is a global age and global economy that we all are living under, it is important for multinational organizations to not overlook the global occupational health and safety concerns, especially in third-world countries.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Week 3, blog 1
Week 3, blog 1
In Chapter 5, the most interesting section was about the eight common characteristics that Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. discovered during their study of organizational culture among the sixty-two financially successful companies they studied in the early 1980’s. Those characteristics are listed below:
1)A bias for Action: Active decision making without thinking for long time or relying on a lot of information to make decisions.
2)Close relations to the customer: Constant focus on customers and providing excellent customer service.
3)Autonomy and entrepreneurship: Empowering employees to take risk and responsibility of their actions.
4)Productivity through people: Quality workers equal quality products. Valuing everyone throughout the organization so no real division between management and line employees
5)Hands-on, value driven: Widely shared core values and common vision. Achievement is dependent on performance and performance is dependent on values.
6)Stick to the knitting: No diversification. Expansion & profits through focus on what they do best.
7)Simple form, lean staff: Leaner organizational structure.
8)Simultaneous loose-tight properties: Encourage individual and group decision making. Not centralized or decentralized. Adaptation to situation to get the job done.
What was most intriguing about this section was how Peter acknowledges that although the characteristics above are good reference point, they did not work for some of these companies because two decades later some of these companies could not sustain their success. If value-based systems are difficult to sustain over a long period of time, then can we say company culture, which is essentially value-based, is not a good predictor of financial success of a company? Peter has refined his thinking to also include two other characteristics, more emphasis on customers and need to manage amidst chaos, but I wish he had given few examples. I wish this was not an online class and we had the opportunity to discuss and elaborate more on organizational culture vs. prediction of financial success with the Professor and fellow classmates.
In Chapter 5, the most interesting section was about the eight common characteristics that Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. discovered during their study of organizational culture among the sixty-two financially successful companies they studied in the early 1980’s. Those characteristics are listed below:
1)A bias for Action: Active decision making without thinking for long time or relying on a lot of information to make decisions.
2)Close relations to the customer: Constant focus on customers and providing excellent customer service.
3)Autonomy and entrepreneurship: Empowering employees to take risk and responsibility of their actions.
4)Productivity through people: Quality workers equal quality products. Valuing everyone throughout the organization so no real division between management and line employees
5)Hands-on, value driven: Widely shared core values and common vision. Achievement is dependent on performance and performance is dependent on values.
6)Stick to the knitting: No diversification. Expansion & profits through focus on what they do best.
7)Simple form, lean staff: Leaner organizational structure.
8)Simultaneous loose-tight properties: Encourage individual and group decision making. Not centralized or decentralized. Adaptation to situation to get the job done.
What was most intriguing about this section was how Peter acknowledges that although the characteristics above are good reference point, they did not work for some of these companies because two decades later some of these companies could not sustain their success. If value-based systems are difficult to sustain over a long period of time, then can we say company culture, which is essentially value-based, is not a good predictor of financial success of a company? Peter has refined his thinking to also include two other characteristics, more emphasis on customers and need to manage amidst chaos, but I wish he had given few examples. I wish this was not an online class and we had the opportunity to discuss and elaborate more on organizational culture vs. prediction of financial success with the Professor and fellow classmates.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Goals
Chapter 4, page 108, discusses "goals" and how goals are viewed differently from a scientific management perspective and open-systems perspective. In the scientific management perspective, both the individuals and the organizations direct their activities towards a common goal attainment. In the open-systems perspective, goals are negotiated among the interdependent units of the organizations and they are highly influenced by environment.
In my career, I have mainly experienced differing goals among different departments. When I worked as a marketing executive for a computer education institute, our team often experienced conflict with the administrative team and the training team because our goals were different and there was little communication between these teams. My marketing team's goal was to increase awareness about our educational programs and increase enrollment. The administrative team's goal was to provide excellent infrastructure for the students and trainers. While, the training team's goal was to provide quality education. Every quarter, each team had to fight to get their budget requests approved from the management team. There was limited funding and resources, so if the teams would have communicated with eachother in advance about their upcoming quarterly needs, they could have made compromises or would have come up with tactical solutions to create a win-win situation for everyone by negotiating common goals. Each quarter all the teams would be left with unmet needs and the animosity among the different teams kept rising. From what I remember, this institute was full of young employees between the ages 18 to 30. I think we all lacked the knowledge and experience to create an open and more communicative environment!
In my career, I have mainly experienced differing goals among different departments. When I worked as a marketing executive for a computer education institute, our team often experienced conflict with the administrative team and the training team because our goals were different and there was little communication between these teams. My marketing team's goal was to increase awareness about our educational programs and increase enrollment. The administrative team's goal was to provide excellent infrastructure for the students and trainers. While, the training team's goal was to provide quality education. Every quarter, each team had to fight to get their budget requests approved from the management team. There was limited funding and resources, so if the teams would have communicated with eachother in advance about their upcoming quarterly needs, they could have made compromises or would have come up with tactical solutions to create a win-win situation for everyone by negotiating common goals. Each quarter all the teams would be left with unmet needs and the animosity among the different teams kept rising. From what I remember, this institute was full of young employees between the ages 18 to 30. I think we all lacked the knowledge and experience to create an open and more communicative environment!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Interdependence
In Chapter 4, page 107, the term "Interdependence" is defined as the wholeness of the system and its environment and to the interrelationships of individuals within the system. Immediately after reading the section on interdependency, I started thinking about the tragedy the California State University (CSU) system is going through. My next thought was "...wait its a tragedy that the whole California Education system is going through." California Education system is going to have the biggest and the long-term impact due to the State budget crisis, which is essentially going to impact the future of the next generation of California youths.
Each of the 23 CSU campuses is facing funding cuts in millions of dollars. As a result, the first step that all CSUs took is they started limiting enrollment. This means thousands of qualified students were denied admissions and were directed to community colleges. The community colleges are also facing similar budget cuts and lack of infrastructure to serve large volume of students. Thus, students graduating from high schools are devastated with the limited options they have for pursuing their higher education. High schools administrators are struggling to resolve the transition problems faced by their graduating students. There is this whole chain reaction of tragedy that is happening in California's Education system. It is amazing to see what a high level of interdependency there is between the housing market crash, the financial market crash, the State's budget deficits, and the universities, community colleges, high schools of California.
Each of the 23 CSU campuses is facing funding cuts in millions of dollars. As a result, the first step that all CSUs took is they started limiting enrollment. This means thousands of qualified students were denied admissions and were directed to community colleges. The community colleges are also facing similar budget cuts and lack of infrastructure to serve large volume of students. Thus, students graduating from high schools are devastated with the limited options they have for pursuing their higher education. High schools administrators are struggling to resolve the transition problems faced by their graduating students. There is this whole chain reaction of tragedy that is happening in California's Education system. It is amazing to see what a high level of interdependency there is between the housing market crash, the financial market crash, the State's budget deficits, and the universities, community colleges, high schools of California.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
