COMMUNICATION AND ORGANZIATION TERMS
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION?
- Organizational control the dynamic communication process through which organizational
stakeholders struggle to maximize their stake an organization
- One of the defining features of an organization coordinates behavior of its members so they can
work collectively
- Control as a dialectical process controls never a linear, causa-and-effect phenomenon but it is
complex and ambiguous
- Division of labor which means members specialize in particular tasks and the organization as a
whole is divided into various departments
- Control central, defining feature of complex situations
o Direct control = Directing in explicit ways and then monitor their behavior to make sure they
are performing adequately
o Technological control = Control which is exercised on employees through various
organizational technologies (the kinds of work people do and the speed at which they work)
Technological forms of control often shift work from employees to customers as a
way to increase efficiency and profitability
Electronical surveillance
o Bureaucratic control = A system of rules, formal structures, and roles that both enable and
constrain the activities of organization members.
o Ideological control = the development of a system of values and beliefs with which
employees are expected to identify strongly
o Disciplinary control = bottom-up form of control that focuses on employees’ own
production of a particular sense of self and work identity
The individual is the subject of knowledge autonomously making his or her
own decisions and choice of goals
The individual is the object of knowledge target of both self-discipline and
corporate and other institutional efforts to shape identity
- Communication constitutes organization communication activities are the basic, defining stuff of
organizational life
- Meaning-centered perspective viewing communication as the basic, constitutive process through
which people come to experience and make sense of the world in which they live (reality)
- Communication process of creating and negotiating meaning through interactional symbolic
practices, including conversation, metaphors, rituals, stories, dress, space
- Organizational communication the process of creating and negotiating collective, coordinated
systems of meaning through symbolic practices oriented toward the achievement of organizational
goals
- Metatheoretical framework a theory about theories that allow us to examine the underlying
assumptions on which different theories are based
- Epistemological dimension the idea of representation refers to knowledge claims that researchers
in various disciplines make about the world
- Discourses idea that any worldview is made up of a community of scholars who communicate with
one another about their research and debate the strength and weaknesses of the theories they
develop
- Discourse
o Functionalism a discourse of representation
o Interpretivism a discourse of understanding
o Critical theory a discourse of suspicion
, o Postmodernism a discourse of vulnerability
o Feminism a discourse of empowerment
o Modernism a historical epoch and way of thinking in which science, rationality, and
progress are the dominant themes
- Postmodernity a specific period that comes after modernity
- Postmodernism term a particular historical period but to a particular way of thinking about the
world
- Deconstruction attempt to illustrate how organizations are not stable structures they appear to be
but are actually relatively precarious systems of meaning fixed more by the dominance of a particular
world view
CHAPTER 3: FORDISM AND ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION
- Scientific management (Taylor) Systematic attempt to develop a set of principles regarding the
management of workers
- Bureaucratic theory Weber
- Wage slavery working for an employer
- Emergence of an organizational society shift from a society consisting of workers to one consisting
of managers and employees
- Enclosure laws took away common rights, awarding areas to landowners who made vast fortunes
through the rents and sheep farming
- Steam power (time and space) motion was no longer dependent on the conditions of natural
space, but on mechanical power that created its own spatiality
- Double-edged sword
o Industry steam-powered transportations breaking of nature’s fetters on economic
development but regret at the loss of a close relationship between humans and nature
- Task time an organic sense of time in which work is shaped by the demands of the tasks to be
performed
- Time significant point of contention
- Clock time it isn’t the task that is dominant but the value of the time for which the employer is
paying the worker
- Harry Braverman – work within capitalism has three general features
1. Expropriation Workers are separated from the means by which to engage in production
of goods, they can produce goods only by selling their labor power to others. (means are
divided from the end) not having the big picture in mind, but only a certain picture of the
big picture
2. Workers are freed from any legal constraints (slavery)
3. The employing of the workers is an expansion of capital
- Manufacturing division of labor divides society into different occupations and has been a feature of
all societies for thousands of years
- Two features of division of labor:
o Social division of labor = divides society into different occupations
o Manufacturing division of labor = Not only are the operations in making a particular product
separated from one another; they are also assigned to different workers
- Taylor’s principles: the best way
o Systematic soldiering efforts by employees to intensify the work process and
corresponding attempts by workers to restrict their output
o Natural soldiering the natural instinct and inherent tendency of men to make it easy
o He wanted to replace old system with ordinary management
A system perceived as arbitrary and based on rules of thumb
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION?
- Organizational control the dynamic communication process through which organizational
stakeholders struggle to maximize their stake an organization
- One of the defining features of an organization coordinates behavior of its members so they can
work collectively
- Control as a dialectical process controls never a linear, causa-and-effect phenomenon but it is
complex and ambiguous
- Division of labor which means members specialize in particular tasks and the organization as a
whole is divided into various departments
- Control central, defining feature of complex situations
o Direct control = Directing in explicit ways and then monitor their behavior to make sure they
are performing adequately
o Technological control = Control which is exercised on employees through various
organizational technologies (the kinds of work people do and the speed at which they work)
Technological forms of control often shift work from employees to customers as a
way to increase efficiency and profitability
Electronical surveillance
o Bureaucratic control = A system of rules, formal structures, and roles that both enable and
constrain the activities of organization members.
o Ideological control = the development of a system of values and beliefs with which
employees are expected to identify strongly
o Disciplinary control = bottom-up form of control that focuses on employees’ own
production of a particular sense of self and work identity
The individual is the subject of knowledge autonomously making his or her
own decisions and choice of goals
The individual is the object of knowledge target of both self-discipline and
corporate and other institutional efforts to shape identity
- Communication constitutes organization communication activities are the basic, defining stuff of
organizational life
- Meaning-centered perspective viewing communication as the basic, constitutive process through
which people come to experience and make sense of the world in which they live (reality)
- Communication process of creating and negotiating meaning through interactional symbolic
practices, including conversation, metaphors, rituals, stories, dress, space
- Organizational communication the process of creating and negotiating collective, coordinated
systems of meaning through symbolic practices oriented toward the achievement of organizational
goals
- Metatheoretical framework a theory about theories that allow us to examine the underlying
assumptions on which different theories are based
- Epistemological dimension the idea of representation refers to knowledge claims that researchers
in various disciplines make about the world
- Discourses idea that any worldview is made up of a community of scholars who communicate with
one another about their research and debate the strength and weaknesses of the theories they
develop
- Discourse
o Functionalism a discourse of representation
o Interpretivism a discourse of understanding
o Critical theory a discourse of suspicion
, o Postmodernism a discourse of vulnerability
o Feminism a discourse of empowerment
o Modernism a historical epoch and way of thinking in which science, rationality, and
progress are the dominant themes
- Postmodernity a specific period that comes after modernity
- Postmodernism term a particular historical period but to a particular way of thinking about the
world
- Deconstruction attempt to illustrate how organizations are not stable structures they appear to be
but are actually relatively precarious systems of meaning fixed more by the dominance of a particular
world view
CHAPTER 3: FORDISM AND ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION
- Scientific management (Taylor) Systematic attempt to develop a set of principles regarding the
management of workers
- Bureaucratic theory Weber
- Wage slavery working for an employer
- Emergence of an organizational society shift from a society consisting of workers to one consisting
of managers and employees
- Enclosure laws took away common rights, awarding areas to landowners who made vast fortunes
through the rents and sheep farming
- Steam power (time and space) motion was no longer dependent on the conditions of natural
space, but on mechanical power that created its own spatiality
- Double-edged sword
o Industry steam-powered transportations breaking of nature’s fetters on economic
development but regret at the loss of a close relationship between humans and nature
- Task time an organic sense of time in which work is shaped by the demands of the tasks to be
performed
- Time significant point of contention
- Clock time it isn’t the task that is dominant but the value of the time for which the employer is
paying the worker
- Harry Braverman – work within capitalism has three general features
1. Expropriation Workers are separated from the means by which to engage in production
of goods, they can produce goods only by selling their labor power to others. (means are
divided from the end) not having the big picture in mind, but only a certain picture of the
big picture
2. Workers are freed from any legal constraints (slavery)
3. The employing of the workers is an expansion of capital
- Manufacturing division of labor divides society into different occupations and has been a feature of
all societies for thousands of years
- Two features of division of labor:
o Social division of labor = divides society into different occupations
o Manufacturing division of labor = Not only are the operations in making a particular product
separated from one another; they are also assigned to different workers
- Taylor’s principles: the best way
o Systematic soldiering efforts by employees to intensify the work process and
corresponding attempts by workers to restrict their output
o Natural soldiering the natural instinct and inherent tendency of men to make it easy
o He wanted to replace old system with ordinary management
A system perceived as arbitrary and based on rules of thumb
