COMM 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Organizational Culture, Sensemaking, Semiotics
27 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Communication, Culture, and Organizing
The cultural approach offered a radically different way to think abut the
relationship between communication and organization
-
For the first time, scholars began to take seriously the notion that organizations
are communication phenomena that only exist because their members engage
in complex patterns of communication behavior
-
Put another way, scholars viewed organizations as structures of meaning
created through the everyday symbolic acts of their members
-
By studying communication phenomena such as stories, metaphors, and rituals,
researchers developed rich understandings of the ways members both
constructed and made sense of their organizational realities
-
The Emergence of The Cultural Approach
Tradition reviews say organizations working only as large bureaucracies.
However, by the 1970s and 1980s, this view was becoming outdated. Large
Bureaucracies, like Ford and General Motors, began to fail. Workers in these
organizations reported feeling "dehumanized"
-
For example, in the wake of the oil crises, Japanese automobile companies were
quick to exploit US companies to produce fuel-efficient cars
-
In this sense, intrinsic rewards and meaningful work that produced "personal
growth" (a phrase that would have been alien to the 1950s white-collar worker)
became just as important as extrinsic rewards
-
In particular, some researchers were becoming critical of the dominant
paradigm and its focus only on effectiveness and productivity. Such an
approach, it was argued, reflected a managerial conception of what was
important to study in organizations
-
The cultural approach explained by Mike Pacanowsky and Nick O'Donnell-
Trujillo
-
"The jumping off point for this approach is the mundane observation that more
things are going on in organizations than getting the job done… People in
organizations also gossip, joke, knife one another, initiate romantic
involvements, cue new employees to ways of doing the least amount of work
that still avoids hassles from a supervisor, talk sports, arrange picnics"
-
Defining Culture
Culture is a collection of signs and meaning that doesn’t exist in people's heads
but in the shared (i.e. public) rites, rituals, artifacts, conversations, and so forth
in which people engage
Semiotics- Is the study in which sign systems, or systems of
representation, come to create social reality for people (ex: symbols on
men's and women's restrooms)
a.
1.
Culture- People actively participate in the creation of culture but at the same
time culture acts back on its members, shaping and constraining their
conception of the world. Just as a spider both creates and is limited by its web,
so people create and are simultaneously limited by their culture
2.
Culture- Emphasized the notion that culture is not a "thing", but rather it exists
in the moment-to-moment
3.
Culture- Should be seen as an interpretive rather than experimental science.
This is a shift away from the qualitative study of communication variables (and
the search for laws of human behavior) toward the qualitative study of
collective sense making in real-life settings
4.
The Pragmatist Approach: Organizational Culture as a Variable
The pragmatist, is seen as having specific functions within the organization.
These functions include the following:
Creating a shared identity amongst organization members. By developing
a strong culture, members are more likely to share a single vision of the
organization and its overall beliefs and values
1.
Generating employee commitment to the organization. A strong, shared
identity amongst employees also increases the possibility that those
employees will be highly committed to the organization
2.
Enhancing organizational stability. The creation of a strong culture, a
shared identity, and high employee commitment minimizes organization
turnover, reduces the chances of distrust and worker-management
conflict, and enhances the stability of the organization. Similarly, in
maintaining organizational stability, companies will look to hire
employees who "fit in" with the corporate culture
3.
Serving as a sense-making device. Employees develop a shared set of
taken-for-granted norms and principles that help the day-to-day
organizing processes. Indeed, an important part of being socialized into
any organization involves learning the culture of that organization (ex:
Miners in Chile need to wear helmets)
4.
-
In his study of an Internet startup company, sociologist David Stark (2009)
reports speaking to a new employee, recently recruited from IBM, who talked
excitedly about working for a company that had an informal, laid-back culture
(no more IBM suits!) However, he said, nobody had yet told him what his job
was. This new employee was fired by the end of the week; He hadn't figured out
that he was supposed to take the initiative and create a role for himself in the
company- a very different culture than the one he was used to at IBM
-
The Study of Organizational Symbols, Talk, and Artifacts
Culture researchers must try to answer the following two basic questions:
What are the key communication activities through which organizational
sense making occurs?
1.
In any particular organization, what are the features of this sense-making
process?
2.
-
Expressions of Culture and Sense Making
Relevant Constructs- All organizations and social collectives identify objects,
individuals, events, and processed that punctuate the daily life of the
organization and allow members to structure their experiences. For example,
the construct of "meeting" makes sense to most organization members as a
relatively structured event that can be differentiated from more loosely scripted
behaviors such as informal chats by the coffee machine or water cooler
1.
Facts- Every organizational culture has a body of "social knowledge" shared by
members, that enables those members to navigate the culture
2.
Practices- Organizational life is made up of a set of ongoing practices that
members must engage in to accomplish the process of organizing. From a
cultural perspective, a focus on such practice provides insight into the routine
features of everyday organizational life (Ex: Snow boarders)
3.
Vocabulary- Often one of the most distinctive features of a culture is members'
use of a specific vocabulary, or jargon, that described important aspects of the
culture. Such jargon frequently serves as a kind of "badge" signifying
membership of the culture
Ex: What jobs have you had that had unique or insider jargon?
-
4.
Metaphors- The study of organizational metaphors has become an important
way for culture researchers to interpret the sense-making process of
organizational members
Ex: Work place bully study- respondents described it variously as a game
or battle, a walking nightmare, water torture, and a noxious substance. In
metaphorically describing bullies, the interviewees used the metaphors of
dictator, two-faced actor, and evil demon
-
5.
Rites and Rituals- Emerge partly from a need for organization members to
experience order and predictability in their lives. Such rituals can be as informal
as a daily greeting between two colleagues or as formal as the pomp and
circumstance of a graduation ceremony
6.
Stories- Let's examine each of these "cultural indicators" separately, with a
special emphasis on storytelling (which we'll give a whole section of its own)
7.
Organizational Story Telling
Organizational culture researchers thus view storytelling as one of the most
important ways in which humans produce and reproduce social reality
-
Organizational stories is tat they have a distinct moral imperative. That is,
through the story structure, they move us toward a particular moral conclusion
about some aspect of organizational reality. Stories are not just random
descriptions of events but, rather, perform a sense-making function in teaching
us what is important to pay attention to
-
Communication, Culture, and Organizing
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
11:32 AM
Communication, Culture, and Organizing
The cultural approach offered a radically different way to think abut the
relationship between communication and organization
-
For the first time, scholars began to take seriously the notion that organizations
are communication phenomena that only exist because their members engage
in complex patterns of communication behavior
-
Put another way, scholars viewed organizations as structures of meaning
created through the everyday symbolic acts of their members
-
By studying communication phenomena such as stories, metaphors, and rituals,
researchers developed rich understandings of the ways members both
constructed and made sense of their organizational realities
-
The Emergence of The Cultural Approach
Tradition reviews say organizations working only as large bureaucracies.
However, by the 1970s and 1980s, this view was becoming outdated. Large
Bureaucracies, like Ford and General Motors, began to fail. Workers in these
organizations reported feeling "dehumanized"
-
For example, in the wake of the oil crises, Japanese automobile companies were
quick to exploit US companies to produce fuel-efficient cars
-
In this sense, intrinsic rewards and meaningful work that produced "personal
growth" (a phrase that would have been alien to the 1950s white-collar worker)
became just as important as extrinsic rewards
-
In particular, some researchers were becoming critical of the dominant
paradigm and its focus only on effectiveness and productivity. Such an
approach, it was argued, reflected a managerial conception of what was
important to study in organizations
-
The cultural approach explained by Mike Pacanowsky and Nick O'Donnell-
Trujillo
-
"The jumping off point for this approach is the mundane observation that more
things are going on in organizations than getting the job done… People in
organizations also gossip, joke, knife one another, initiate romantic
involvements, cue new employees to ways of doing the least amount of work
that still avoids hassles from a supervisor, talk sports, arrange picnics"
-
Defining Culture
Culture is a collection of signs and meaning that doesn’t exist in people's heads
but in the shared (i.e. public) rites, rituals, artifacts, conversations, and so forth
in which people engage
Semiotics- Is the study in which sign systems, or systems of
representation, come to create social reality for people (ex: symbols on
men's and women's restrooms)
a.
1.
Culture- People actively participate in the creation of culture but at the same
time culture acts back on its members, shaping and constraining their
conception of the world. Just as a spider both creates and is limited by its web,
so people create and are simultaneously limited by their culture
2.
Culture- Emphasized the notion that culture is not a "thing", but rather it exists
in the moment-to-moment
3.
Culture- Should be seen as an interpretive rather than experimental science.
This is a shift away from the qualitative study of communication variables (and
the search for laws of human behavior) toward the qualitative study of
collective sense making in real-life settings
4.
The Pragmatist Approach: Organizational Culture as a Variable
The pragmatist, is seen as having specific functions within the organization.
These functions include the following:
Creating a shared identity amongst organization members. By developing
a strong culture, members are more likely to share a single vision of the
organization and its overall beliefs and values
1.
Generating employee commitment to the organization. A strong, shared
identity amongst employees also increases the possibility that those
employees will be highly committed to the organization
2.
Enhancing organizational stability. The creation of a strong culture, a
shared identity, and high employee commitment minimizes organization
turnover, reduces the chances of distrust and worker-management
conflict, and enhances the stability of the organization. Similarly, in
maintaining organizational stability, companies will look to hire
employees who "fit in" with the corporate culture
3.
Serving as a sense-making device. Employees develop a shared set of
taken-for-granted norms and principles that help the day-to-day
organizing processes. Indeed, an important part of being socialized into
any organization involves learning the culture of that organization (ex:
Miners in Chile need to wear helmets)
4.
-
In his study of an Internet startup company, sociologist David Stark (2009)
reports speaking to a new employee, recently recruited from IBM, who talked
excitedly about working for a company that had an informal, laid-back culture
(no more IBM suits!) However, he said, nobody had yet told him what his job
was. This new employee was fired by the end of the week; He hadn't figured out
that he was supposed to take the initiative and create a role for himself in the
company- a very different culture than the one he was used to at IBM
-
The Study of Organizational Symbols, Talk, and Artifacts
Culture researchers must try to answer the following two basic questions:
What are the key communication activities through which organizational
sense making occurs?
1.
In any particular organization, what are the features of this sense-making
process?
2.
-
Expressions of Culture and Sense Making
Relevant Constructs- All organizations and social collectives identify objects,
individuals, events, and processed that punctuate the daily life of the
organization and allow members to structure their experiences. For example,
the construct of "meeting" makes sense to most organization members as a
relatively structured event that can be differentiated from more loosely scripted
behaviors such as informal chats by the coffee machine or water cooler
1.
Facts- Every organizational culture has a body of "social knowledge" shared by
members, that enables those members to navigate the culture
2.
Practices- Organizational life is made up of a set of ongoing practices that
members must engage in to accomplish the process of organizing. From a
cultural perspective, a focus on such practice provides insight into the routine
features of everyday organizational life (Ex: Snow boarders)
3.
Vocabulary- Often one of the most distinctive features of a culture is members'
use of a specific vocabulary, or jargon, that described important aspects of the
culture. Such jargon frequently serves as a kind of "badge" signifying
membership of the culture
Ex: What jobs have you had that had unique or insider jargon?
-
4.
Metaphors- The study of organizational metaphors has become an important
way for culture researchers to interpret the sense-making process of
organizational members
Ex: Work place bully study- respondents described it variously as a game
or battle, a walking nightmare, water torture, and a noxious substance. In
metaphorically describing bullies, the interviewees used the metaphors of
dictator, two-faced actor, and evil demon
-
5.
Rites and Rituals- Emerge partly from a need for organization members to
experience order and predictability in their lives. Such rituals can be as informal
as a daily greeting between two colleagues or as formal as the pomp and
circumstance of a graduation ceremony
6.
Stories- Let's examine each of these "cultural indicators" separately, with a
special emphasis on storytelling (which we'll give a whole section of its own)
7.
Organizational Story Telling
Organizational culture researchers thus view storytelling as one of the most
important ways in which humans produce and reproduce social reality
-
Organizational stories is tat they have a distinct moral imperative. That is,
through the story structure, they move us toward a particular moral conclusion
about some aspect of organizational reality. Stories are not just random
descriptions of events but, rather, perform a sense-making function in teaching
us what is important to pay attention to
-
Communication, Culture, and Organizing
Wednesday, March 7, 2018 11:32 AM
Document Summary
The cultural approach offered a radically different way to think abut the relationship between communication and organization. For the first time, scholars began to take seriously the notion that organizations are communication phenomena that only exist because their members engage in complex patterns of communication behavior. Put another way, scholars viewed organizations as structures of meaning created through the everyday symbolic acts of their members. By studying communication phenomena such as stories, metaphors, and rituals, researchers developed rich understandings of the ways members both constructed and made sense of their organizational realities. Tradition reviews say organizations working only as large bureaucracies. However, by the 1970s and 1980s, this view was becoming outdated. Bureaucracies, like ford and general motors, began to fail. For example, in the wake of the oil crises, japanese automobile companies were quick to exploit us companies to produce fuel-efficient cars.
