Week 5, Blog #4

In the web lecture, Democracy and Dialogue, professor discusses the concept of dialogic democracy. I agree that this type of democracy can be beneficial to an organization because of its emphasis on collaboration and true communication, which in my mind includes active listening. Giving those in a collaborative group a voice goes a long way to organizational effectiveness. I have also found that it is essential for collaborative groups to clearly state their goals and objectives. Once these are established, I believe that it is critical that the collaborative group be ably led and facilitated so that a “free-for-all” situation does not develop.

Week 5, Blog #3

The authors’ discussion of mindful and mindless approaches to organizational communication in Chapter 11 reminded of me of an experience I had at work a few years ago. It was early January, and I had just arrived at work. On my way into the office, I ran into a colleague that I worked with occasionally, but not very often. Just to make small talk, I asked her if she had had a good “holiday” (I purposely said “holiday” because our organization had been very specific about respecting others’ religious beliefs (i.e., being politically correct). I also thought that by using this word, it could be construed as New Year’s Day, since that was a holiday that had just past too). Her response was, “I don’t celebrate Christmas”. I realized it wasn’t worth my time to confront the ignorance of her response, so I wound up re-phrasing my question to something like did she have a good time off, just to get past it. I find it rather ironic that trying to be mindful in this mindless or phatic communication scenario didn’t really pay off for me.

Week 5, Blog #2

In theory, I agree with the Chapter 10 discussion of performance management being a system for tracking and giving feedback to employees about how well they are accomplishing objectives tied to each of their key job dimensions. If this can be implemented well within an organization, it can be successful. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen how this system can be executed improperly. For example, one performance measure my employer espoused for an organizational unit was to ensure that 75% of employees’ training plans were being achieved 80% of the time. Assuming one could even get past this hard-to-follow statistical criterion, he/she would realize that this was not meaningful. For instance, for a small organizational unit of two or three employees, the 75% performance measure essentially meant that all training plans for staff within that group had to be achieved 80% of the time. And regardless of the size of the group, it still left many wondering what 80% of the time meant. Fortunately, the organization realized the error of its ways and modified this particular performance measure soon after it was implemented. The point here is that performance management can be an effective tool for organizational communication, but should also be viewed as a dynamic system that allows for continual improvement.

Week 5, Blog #1

In Chapter 9, the concept of empowerment and its relationship to leadership is discussed. I agree with the authors that empowerment enables and motivates employees “by building feelings of self-efficacy” (Eisenberg et al., 2007, pp. 292-293). In a previous entry, I talked about how empowered I felt when a supervisor gave me pop quizzes to help my growth and development within the organization. Empowerment is the kind of leadership quality I try instilling among staff in my organizational unit, and I am hopeful that it has had as much of a positive effect on others as it has on me. I’ve also had the misfortune (this is a relative term, because I believe you can learn a lot from these experiences too) of being micro-managed by supervisors who second-guess much of my (and others’) work. While I can appreciate a leader who wants to be engaged with his/her staff, if one goes overboard with this, it can lead to an increasing sense of distrust among employees – never an effective result if one is trying to achieve successful organizational communication.

Week 4, Blog #4

One aspect of the pervasive communication environment discussed in the web lecture, Technology and Teams, struck a chord with me. As professor indicates, “a pervasive communication environment gives us the ability to access, create, and share information in multimedia from almost anywhere, at anytime, for any reason.” I agree with this. I believe these technological advances have vastly improved our society. But during emergencies or other times of crisis, some of this pervasive communication environment we all have become so reliant upon will likely be useless, and in some cases, this could be devastating. For instance, on the evening of October 30th last year, a magnitude 5.6-earthquake struck just northeast of San Jose. Thankfully, I don’t believe this tremor caused major damage or injuries, but it definitely got people’s attention. After the ‘quake, I immediately tried calling my wife who was out doing errands at the time. I got a busy signal. Why? Well, countless others were doing exactly the same thing at the same time, overloading this system we’ve all put our trust in. I was just calling to find out if she was o.k. But what if someone really needed help right away, what then? (Even at that time, I knew I shouldn’t have tried calling for this very reason (i.e., I should have left the lines open for people who really had emergencies), but I just couldn’t help making sure my wife was all right.) My point here is that even with this pseudo-emergency of an event, our society had communication problems. Not to be a downer, but I shudder to think about what communications would be like if we had a truly major emergency. I heed professor’s commentary that we need to “make technology work” for us under any circumstance, as the communication imperative suggests.

Week 4, Blog #3

A subtle, yet intriguing point about emergent communication networks is made in Chapter 8. The authors assert that “research has shown that informal communication through the grapevine is as a rule more efficient and accurate than the formal dissemination of information” (Eisenberg et al., 2007, p. 259). I find this to be profound. Based on my experiences, I’ve found it convenient to place a stigma on the “rumor mill”, associating it with gossip. From this (admittedly narrow-minded) perspective, one would think that it would be important to quell any rumors or other grapevine-type information in an organization. But I can also see how inhibiting this interaction can slowly damage an organization. I liken this “formal dissemination of information” to business where it is often said that “word of mouth” is more effective than any marketing campaign or catchy television ad.

Week 4, Blog #2

The discussion of the paradoxes of employee participation and workplace democracy in Chapter 8 resonates well with me in my experiences in the public sector. I completely agree with the authors’ contention that “while most of us believe that increased employee participation in decision making will lead to improved outcomes, the reality is not so clear-cut” (Eisenberg et al., 2007, pp. 230-231). I’ve been aware of project groups that have tried to embrace this team concept to decision-making. The problem, I’ve found, is that teams struggle to ultimately arrive at a decision, and keep “spinning their wheels” with no clear direction for moving forward. And in the cases where decisions are made, some team members object, believing their opinions or recommendations were ignored. It is apparent that in these situations, effective management and leadership need to be in place to ensure that the concept of employee participation and workplace democracy will succeed as part of effective organizational communication.