Strategic Organizational Communication E-Book

Charles Conrad

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1420

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Surveying a wide variety of disciplines, this fully-revised 7th edition offers a sophisticated and engaging treatment of the rapidly expanding field of organizational communication

• Places organizations and organizational communication within a broader social, economic, and cultural context
• Applies a global perspective throughout, including thoughtful consideration of non-Western forms of leadership, as well as global economic contexts
• Offers a level of sophistication and integration of ideas from a variety of disciplines that makes this treatment definitive

Updated in the seventh edition:

• Coverage of recent events and their ethical dimensions, including the bank crisis and bailouts in the US and UK
  
• Offers a nuanced, in-depth discussion of technology, and a new chapter on organizational change
• Includes new and revised case studies for a fresh view on perennial topics, incorporating a global focus throughout
• Online Instructors' Manual, including sample syllabi, tips for using the case studies, test questions, and supplemental case studies

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

DEDICATION

PREFACE

RESPONDING TO READER SUGGESTIONS

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

THANKS

UNIT I: UNDERLYING CONCEPTS

CHAPTER 1 STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION AS STRATEGIC DISCOURSE

THE FUNDAMENTAL PARADOX

THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT ORGANIZING AND COMMUNICATING

CREATING SOCIO-ECONOMIC SPACES

MAKING ORGANIZATIONS LOOK ALIKE

STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION FOR INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF ORGANIZATIONS

SUMMARY: THE COMPLEXITIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER 2 KEYS TO STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

SEEING CONNECTIONS: THE IMPORTANCE OF SYSTEMS THINKING

UNCOVERING ASSUMPTIONS: THE IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING

VALUING DIFFERENCES: THE ADVANTAGES OF DIVERSITY6

THINKING GLOBALLY: THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION

UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY: A RADICAL FORCE FOR CHANGE

SUMMARY

UNIT II: STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CHAPTER 3 TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF MOTIVATION, CONTROL, AND SURVEILLANCE

TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF LEADERSHIP

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT) IN TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CONCLUSION: COMMUNICATION AND TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CHAPTER 4 RELATIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

RELATIONAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

RELATIONAL STRATEGIES OF MOTIVATION, CONTROL, AND SURVEILLANCE

RELATIONAL STRATEGIES OF LEADERSHIP

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE RELATIONAL STRATEGY

ASSESSING RELATIONAL STRATEGIES

THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT RELATIONAL STRATEGIES

CHAPTER 5 CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

DEFINING KEY TERMS: CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES

CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF MOTIVATION, CONTROL, AND SURVEILLANCE

ORGANIZATIONAL SYMBOLISM AND CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF MOTIVATION AND CONTROL

Summary: Unobtrusive Control and Self-Surveillance

CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF LEADERSHIP

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURAL STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT CULTURAL STRATEGIES

CHAPTER 6 NETWORK STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

NETWORK STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

NETWORK STRATEGIES OF MOTIVATION, CONTROL, AND SURVEILLANCE

CHALLENGES FOR CONTROL SYSTEMS IN NETWORK ORGANIZATIONS

LEADERSHIP IN NETWORK ORGANIZATIONS

CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS FOR NETWORK ORGANIZATIONS

BEYOND NETWORKS: ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES OF ORGANIZING

CONCLUSION

POSTSCRIPT TO UNIT II: CONTINGENCY PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZING STRATEGIES

CENTRAL THEME

KEY TERMS

TASK

INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE CONTINGENCY VARIABLES

CONCLUSION AND TRANSITION

UNIT III: CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

CHAPTER 7 COMMUNICATION, POWER, AND POLITICS IN ORGANIZATIONS

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

A PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZATIONAL POWER

SOCIETAL ASSUMPTIONS AND THE BASES OF ORGANIZATIONAL POWER

ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS: OVERT POWER IN THE COMMUNICATIVE PROCESS

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 8 COMMUNICATION, DECISION MAKING, AND CONFLICT IN ORGANIZATIONS

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION MAKING

COMMUNICATION AND THE MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 9 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

INNOVATION

ADOPTION

IMPLEMENTATION

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 10 COMMUNICATION AND DIVERSE WORKPLACES

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

RESISTING “OTHERS”

CONFRONTING THE DOMINANT PERSPECTIVE

TAKING A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER 11 COMMUNICATION, ORGANIZATIONS, AND GLOBALIZATION

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

CULTURE, DIFFERENCE, AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

INCREASING CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

ECONOMICS, GLOBALIZATION, AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER 12 COMMUNICATION, ETHICS, AND ORGANIZATIONAL RHETORIC

CENTRAL THEMES

KEY TERMS

ETHICS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND SOCIAL CONTROL

SOCIETAL ASSUMPTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL RHETORIC

RHETORIC AND ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS AND IMAGE MANAGEMENT

PUBLIC POLICY MAKING AND ORGANIZATIONAL RHETORIC

SYSTEMS, ACTIONS, AND ETHICS

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ETHICS

POSTSCRIPT TO UNIT III: EPILOGUE

Index

This seventh edition first published 2012

© 2012 Charles Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

Edition History: Wadsworth (6e, 2005)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Conrad, Charles R.

 Strategic organizational communication : in a global economy / Charles R. Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole. – 7th ed.

p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4443-3863-8 (pbk.)

 ISBN 978-1-1181-7969-7 (epub)

 ISBN 978-1-1181-7970-3 (mobi)

 1. Communication in organizations. 2. Communication in management. 3. Communication–Social aspects. I. Poole, Marshall Scott, 1951- II. Title.

 HD30.3.C655 2012

 658.4′5–dc23

2011042672

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

To:

Helen and Cecil,

who gave me a love of knowledge,

BJ,

who has given me knowledge of love,

and

Travis and Hannah,

our gifts of love.

To:

Ed, Helen, and Kim,

who are the foundation,

Lisa,

who built the home,

and

Sam,

who keeps it warm

with all my love.

PREFACE

From its beginning more than 20 years ago, the goal of Strategic Organizational Communication has been to provide a unified description of the incredibly diverse array of ideas that make up our rapidly expanding field. Responses to the first six editions have been especially gratifying. Readers have been particularly complimentary about the level of sophistication of the book and its ability to integrate research from a number of academic disciplines. Responses to the later editions also have praised our efforts to place organizations and organizational communication within a broader social, economic, and cultural context and have appreciated our relaxed, engaging writing style. Of course, we have retained or expanded each of these characteristics.

We also have tried to maintain and strengthen the theoretical framework that has been central to the book since its inception. Each edition has focused on the two-level concept of strategic choice making. We believe that people make choices about the overall strategies that they will use to operate in the societies and organizations they will live within. Ironically, people tend to normalize and naturalize these choices, treating them as inviolable truths that need not be justified rather than as choices that are under their control. Eventually they institutionalize these taken-for-granted assumptions in social systems and organizational structures and practices that make some options seem to be the only “rational” choice and make others seem to be impossible. These overall choices, in turn, create the specific situations that people encounter every day – the challenges they face, the resources they have available to manage those challenges, and the guidelines and constraints that limit the options that are available to them. People adapt strategically to the situations that they create, but in adapting, they tend to reproduce those situations, creating a complicated cycle of acting, creating situations, and adapting.

Understanding this action–situation–adaptation cycle requires people to realize these things:

Organizations are embedded in societies and cannot be understood outside of a society’s beliefs, values, structures, practices, tensions, and ways of managing those tensions. For example, US society is defined in part by a tension between community and individuality. This tension is due to many of the challenges faced by contemporary US organizations – challenges as diverse as the attitudes of “Generations X and Y” (Chapter 1), the blending of traditional (Chapter 3) and cultural (Chapter 5) strategies of motivation and control, the implementation of feminist and other so-called alternative forms of organizing (Chapter 6), and understanding non-Western forms of leadership (considered throughout the book).Each overall strategy of organizing includes a characteristic organizational design, a system of motivation and control, a particular form of leadership, and a particular relationship to communication technologies. Each strategy of organizing is a choice, however; for example, bureaucracies are bureaucracies because people in them choose to act like bureaucrats. Each strategy also includes opportunities to resist the organization’s strategy of organizing.Members of organizations can manage organizational situations strategically. They can exploit fissures and contradictions in social and organizational power relationships. Even in the turbulent world created by the new, global economy, members of organizations can manage organizational situations in ways that achieve their personal goals and the goals of other members of their organizations.

RESPONDING TO READER SUGGESTIONS

Readers also have been very open about changes that they would like to see us make. As a result, each new edition really has been a new edition. This one is no exception.

The New and Improved

The most obvious change involves our efforts to locate organizational communication within the new, global economy. We started to focus on globalization in the fifth edition, and have increased that focus as the world economy has become progressively more interconnected. The same progression has been true of our treatment of communication technologies, and for the same reason – their importance continues to grow. Both concepts are woven through this edition because they are woven into the fabric of contemporary organizations. We also have added a chapter on “Organizational Change,” since change is both the impetus and the outcome of strategic adaptation. We also have expanded the analysis of “Ethics and Organizational Rhetoric” (Chapter 12) that we introduced in the sixth edition, and have updated it to encompass the collapse of the world financial industry in 2007–2008, as well as subsequent taxpayer bailouts and the continuing Great Recession. We both have long been interested in ethical issues facing contemporary organizations, as evidenced in Charley’s The Ethical Nexus (1993) and a special issue of Communication Research on “Communication in the Era of the Disposable Worker” that we coedited in 1997.

Other changes are more subtle, and each one reflects recent advances in organizational communication theory and research. Chapter 7 deals with dissent and employee resistance in more detail, and now includes an extended case study on bullying in organizations. Chapter 8 revises and reorganizes the discussion of decision making to reflect important new research related to bounded rationality as the “default mode” of decision making, and links it to processes of human evolution. Chapter 12 includes new case studies involving organizational ethics, and many of the cases that we have carried over from the sixth edition have been substantially revised. Eleven of the 24 case studies in this edition are new, and six of the ones we retained from the sixth edition have been revised. Copies of the cases we deleted from all previous editions will be available on the book’s website (www.wiley.com/go/conradpoole).

Oldies but Goodies

There are two aspects of Strategic Organizational Communication that we never want to change. One is the extensive research base for the book. The bibliography for this edition is abbreviated in comparison to earlier editions, but as in earlier editions it identifies readings that are especially appropriate for graduate students. In general, we have focused on works published after 1990, and have cited earlier sources only if they are classics in organizational communication research and theory. As a result, the endnotes for each chapter provide a number of additional readings and web citations on virtually every facet of contemporary organizational communication research and theory.

The second aspect that we hope always to retain is the conceptual coherence of the analysis. Two beliefs underlie all that we say in this book. The first is that organizations (and societies) are sites in which various tensions and contradictions are negotiated through communication (this idea is explained at length in Chapter 1). The second belief is that understanding organizations and organizational communication requires an analysis of both symbolic and structural processes.

We realize that this both-and perspective is an anomalous position in a discipline that relishes either-or distinctions between functionalism and interpretivism, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and so on. We also realize that advocates of each of these polar terms often will feel that we are too sympathetic with the opposite pole and spend too little space examining their favored position. But we have consistently tried both to balance various perspectives and to indicate how each can be enriched by the key concepts of the others. Life is simply too complex for either-or thinking to capture its nuances; organizations are far too fluid and complicated for bimodal or trimodal paradigms to reveal much of importance.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

Like the earliest editions, this book is divided into three units. Unit I introduces the theoretical framework that unifies the book, develops the concept of strategies of organizing, and introduces the frame of reference for thinking about and analyzing organizations that will be utilized repeatedly in the remainder of the book. Unit II examines those strategies of organizing in more detail, discusses the communicative strategies that members of organizations might use to strategically manage the situations created by applications of those strategies of organizing, and offers a critical analysis of each. Unit II concludes with a discussion of contingency theories of organizing, and of the process of choosing among available strategies. Unit III examines key issues facing organizations during the early twenty-first century – organizational power and politics, organizational decision making and conflict, organizational change, issues related to workforce diversity, globalization, and ethics and organizational rhetoric.

THANKS

If they are to be effective, all communicative acts must be interactive. This dictum includes the writing of books. Consequently, our greatest vote of thanks goes to the many readers of the earlier editions who made thoughtful and valuable suggestions for improvement. Of the advice that we received on the different drafts of this edition, the comments of many colleagues were exceptionally helpful: Linda Putnam, George Cheney, Kathy Miller, Kevin Barge, Ted Zorn, Steve Corman, Bob McPhee, John Lammers, Peter Monge, Janet Fulk, Joe Folger, Michelle Shumate, and Trina Wright are constant sources of exciting new ideas. Our students are a constant source of insightful questions and valuable suggestions, and one, Elizabeth Odom, wrote much of the “On Death and Dying” case study in Chapter 7. A number of anonymous reviewers made many helpful comments for this new edition. The editorial staff at Wiley-Blackwell provided superb support at all stages of this project. We would like to express our deep appreciation to Elizabeth Swayze, Julia Kirk, Allison Kostka, and Margot Morse, and also to freelances Matthew Brown, Cheryl Adam, and Alta Bridges, for project management, copy-editing, and proofreading respectively. Private encouragement was provided by Betty Webber Conrad and Lisa O’Dell, and Travis, Hannah, and Sam helped us keep our priorities straight.

Charles Conrad

College Station, Texas

Marshall Scott Poole

Urbana, Illinois

June 2011

UNIT I: UNDERLYING CONCEPTS

CHAPTER 1

STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Don’t ask me. I just work here.

Anonymous

We must hold a man [sic] amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deed that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[H]istory matters. … What comes first (even if it was in some sense “accidental”) conditions what comes later. Individuals [policy makers] may “choose these institutions, but they do not choose them under circumstances of their own making, and their choices in turn influence the rules within which their successors choose.

Carolyn Tuohy

CENTRAL THEMES

Organizational communication is strategic in two senses. Organizations emerge from strategic choices about how they will be designed and operated. These choices create the situations that employees encounter at work. Employees must then make their own strategic choices about how to manage those situations.Societies and organizations face a fundamental paradox. They must control and coordinate the activities of their members. But doing so frustrates their members’ needs for autonomy, creativity, and sociability.Organizations are designed through conscious choices among a number of strategies of organizing. Employees make their own choices about how to communicate within the guidelines and constraints created by those strategies of organizing. By doing so, they reproduce the strategies, the guidelines, and the constraints.

KEY TERMS

blended relationships

reification

autonomy needs

creativity needs

sociability needs

stability/predictability needs

specialization

deconstruct

legitimize

unintended consequences

coercive influence

social institution

normative influence

mimetic influence

At one time or another, almost everyone has responded to the question “How did this (disaster) happen?” with a statement like “Don’t ask me. I just work here.” In some cases the excuse is legitimate. The person giving the answer is not allowed by his or her organization to make even simple decisions or take any initiative. “I just work here” means that the person knows the answer or is aware of a solution to the problem but has too little power to make the necessary changes. In other cases, someone else failed to inform the person of the policy, problem, or procedure that is in question. “I just work here” means that the speaker simply does not have the information needed to answer the question. But sometimes the person did act in ways that caused the problem, and the response is merely an excuse. Although viable excuses are often available in organizations, in the final analysis it is an employee’s own choices that create the situations she or he faces.1

This book is about the choices and choice-making behaviors of members of formal organizations. It concentrates on communication because it is through communication that employees obtain information, make sense of the situations they encounter, and decide how to act. And, it is by communicating that employees translate their choices into action. Organizations must maintain at least an adequate level of communication effectiveness to survive and prosper. People who have developed an understanding about how communication functions in an organization, who have developed a wide repertory of written and oral communication skills, and who have learned when and how to use those skills seem to have more successful careers and contribute more fully to their organizations than people who have not done so.

As a result, the number of college courses and professional training programs concerned with organizational communication has mushroomed. Of course, employees cannot function effectively unless they possess the technical skills that their positions require. But more and more it appears that being able to recognize, diagnose, and solve communication-related problems is vital to the success of people in even the most technical occupations. Accountants must be able to gain complete, accurate, and sometimes sensitive information from their clients. Supervisors of production lines must be able to obtain adequate and timely information on which to base their decisions. Managers of all divisions must be able to give their subordinates clear instructions, make sure those instructions are understood, create conditions in which their commands will be carried out, and obtain reliable feedback about the completion of the tasks that they have assigned.2

Understanding organizational communication has advantages above and beyond career advancement. At many times during their careers, people feel powerless because they simply do not understand the events taking place around them and/or do not know how to deal with those events. In the worst cases they are victimized by those events and do not understand how they became victims. As the title of a popular book says, bad things do happen to good people (and vice versa), both in our lives as a whole and in our organizations. People need to be able to take a critical perspective on organizational events, that is, they need to be able to examine the situations they find themselves in and understand the many pressures and constraints that make up those situations. People can learn from their experiences only if they understand the situations they face and the communicative strategies that they could have used to manage them more effectively. In short, understanding organizational communicative processes is itself empowering – it allows people to determine which events are their responsibility and which events are outside of their control and to discover new strategies that they could have used successfully.