MediaSpace Wiki

Organizational Spr2006 Sess12

Index Card Assignment Due for Wednesday

Each group member should select a specific stakeholder group associated with your group's company (e.g. Walmart, SPCA, Wegmans, American Red Cross). Every member of the group should select a different stakeholder. For the first short paper you will be exploring the different ways in which your groups organization communicates with the specific stakeholder you are investigating. How can you find information about this communication?

• Making sense of systems
  • Weick's Sense Making Model (http://www.utexas.edu/courses/speclass/courses/350/notes/syste350.html; http://chadwick.jlmc.iastate.edu/theory/weick.html; http://www.onepine.demon.co.uk/pweick.htm; http://psol.gmu.edu/psol/perspectives2.nsf/15076cc88dd39036852565380058de2e/9c69183929592b1f8525696f0012b5e8?OpenDocument)
    • Organization is process-oriented (not structure-oriented)
    • Organizations Process Information
    • Communication enables the sense-making process people use when they organize
      • Sensemaking = the way we adapt and adjust to an environment by working to change it
      • Sensemaking is often recognized retrospectively - we act and then explain what we did
      • All to frequently, we enact 'limitations' to avoid issues
      • Sensemaking works to reduce equivocality (e.g. multiple meanings) in information
    • Information is processed in three stages:
      1. Enactment - defining the situation and the scope of the information
      2. Selection - narrowing equivocality by deciding what to use and throw away
      3. Retention - deciding what information/meaning will be retained for future use

• Selection and retention involve double interacts
  • Act = statement ("Can I have a Popsicle?")
  • Interact = response ("No, it will spoil you dinner.")
  • Double interact = meta-response "Well, how about half a Popsicle?"). Note the adjustment.
  • Assembly rules are double interact based operating procedures
  • Behavior cycles are sets of double interacts used to facilitate the selection and retention process
• The organization as a system:
  1. Takes in equivocal information from its environment,
  2. Tries to make sense of that information,
  3. And uses what was learned in the future.
• Organizations evolve as they make sense out of themselves and their environment.
• Weick ties systems theory to social construction, an important innovation.
• Other important concepts:
  • Scanning
    • For the wrong stuff
    • At the wrong time (especially not scanning at the wrong time)
  • Loose coupling - a buffer against system stresses
  • Partial inclusion
    • Knowing what a person does outside an organization informs what they might do inside an organization

Cultural Theories and Research

• An Organization is a composite of organizations, each a culture within a culture
• Cultures are social constructions
  • They exist only because we imagine them to exist
    • A shared fantasy that becomes real when we as a community treat it as real
    • A symbolic reality
  • People create:
    • languages out of invented symbols
    • media out of invented mediators
    • culture out of languages and media
• The cultural approach focuses around ethnographic methods and the uncovering of:
  • language and metaphor
  • mythology
  • rituals
  • rules (formal and informal)
  • roles
• The cultural approach adds to such existing concepts as
  • performance
  • motivation and rewards
  • work units
  • hierarchy
  • group problem solving
  • leadership
  • decision making
• such terms as
  • values
  • rituals
  • socialization

• I would imagine that, up to here, things sound very different than system theory
  • As we review some cultural theories, notice how they parallel systems theories

• Organizational Cultures have six formal properties (Schein, 1991)
  1. shared basic assumptions
  2. that are informally invented, discovered, or developed
  3. in response to external and internal problems
  4. and that work will enough
  5. that they are worth teaching others
  6. as correct ways to perceive, think, and feel
  • ''How is this similar to Weick's enactment, selection, and retention
• Theory Z (Ouchi) - organizational success depends on ability to adapt to external culture
  • Is this another way of saying open system
• Eight characteristics of successful companies (Peters and Waterman):
  1. A bias for action
  2. Close relations to customers
  3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship
  4. Productivity through people
  5. Performance and Value Driven (A shared vision and performance orientation)
  6. Stick to the knitting
  7. Simple form, lean staff
  8. Simultaneous loose-tight management (leaders empower individuals)
• Cultural Views on Organizations
  • Comparative Management
    • Often across cultural boundaries
    • Cultures vary in their approaches to organizational goals
    • IBM adapts
  • Corporate Culture (e.g. Strong Corporate Culture: ?MacDonalds/Disney)
  • Organizational Cognition
    • A way of thinking that is shared by members of org
    • shared values, shared meaning, shared rules
  • Organizational Symbolism
    • Organization as a collection of stories - a mythos
  • Dialectical approaches
    • Integration, Differentiation, and Fragmentation (Martin, 1992)

Index Card Assignment due Friday

For your stakeholder, describe how you might find information about the ways in which your organization communicates with your stakeholder.