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Organizational Spr2006 Sess05

Index Card Assignment due today (deferred from Friday)

List three organizations you really admire; three organizations you really dislike; three organizations you would like to work for someday.

Agenda

• Collect questions
• Manager progress reports
• Address questions from last time
• Return index cards
• Group analysis of index card assignments
• Overview of chapter high points
• Address questions

Viewing the Organization as a Communication Ecology

• Some of this was probably difficult reading
  • It was for me
• Some may even wonder how it relates to class
  • This can be confusing reading. We follow a timeline of events which are themselves confusing.
    • But research in the real world is like that
    • Its our job not just to observe
    • But to pull those observations together.
    • These chapters don't do that work for you.
• We get a view of an organization in crisis
  • And how it reacted to that crisis
  • A problem occurred
  • The organization reacted to that problem
  • What we have is an outside view of that reaction
    • in a case where the organization was pretty open about what it was doing.
  • We see individuals, groups, and outside pressures from a variety of stakeholders
• So what do we observe?
  • A process of information processing and filtering
    • Inside NASA
    • Outside NASA
  • The diffusion of information process (Chapter 1)
    • Eyewitnesses and telephones
    • Television news
    • Internet postings
    • Newspaper reporting
    • Ancillary events
      • The President Speaks
      • NASA News conferences
      • Mourning
  • Internal and External Stakeholders
    • The Press (finding and reporting news)
    • Management (doing investigation and stakeholder management, including public relationships)
    • The public
    • Congress and the President
  • Transactive effects
    • Consensus and the possibility of false consensus
    • Inappropriate behavior based on linguistic misunderstanding (foam)
    • Denial of reality through mislabeling
    • Changing Stories
  • A conflict between the forces of constraint and the forces of creativity
    • Management versus the Press
    • Management versus the Congress (independent Safety Board)
    • Management versus the Public (Souvenir Hunters)
    • Management versus Engineering (Who knew; Who signed off)
    • Budgets and Simulations versus Real World Testing
    • Self-Attribution Versus Reality
    • Empiricists versus Idealists
    • Schedule versus safety
  • Adaptation, Negotiation, and Structuration
    • An Independent Investigative Board
    • Fault Tree Analysis
  • Some organizational "mortal sins"
    • Killing the Messenger
    • Not listening to dissent
      • Especially when it is supposedly encouraged.
      • A sin even when dissent isn't encouraged.

Index Card Assignment due Wednesday

What motivates you to get a job done. Think about three different things you have accomplished. List them. Think about the things that motivated you to do those things. List five things that motivate you to get work done.

Group Assignment for Wednesday

For your groups assigned BOINC project: (1) evaluate the instructions for joining a project and make specific recommendations for improvements; (2) put together a proposal for how your group might create value (e.g. publicize and attract contributors to) for your BOINC project. Managers are responsible for providing a progress report on your group's progress.