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Strategic Communications in Organizations Exam Prep ALL NOTES
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Tutorial 1: Approaches to Organizational CommunicationTutorial 2: Organizational Policies & Workplace Flexibility
Tutorial 3: Communication Technology & New Media
Tutorial 5: Knowledge Sharing
Tutorial 6: Organizational Culture & Climate
Tutorial 7: Organizational Change Communication & Resistance to Change
Tutorial 8: Visibility
Tutorial 9: Leadership
Tutorial 1: Approaches to Organizational Communication
Mumby (2013, chapter 5) Situating the Systems Perspective
● Shift from mechanical to biological/organic metaphor for viewing
● organizations
● Determinism and reductionism characterized knowledge prior to
● systems perspective
● Systems thinking shifts science away from studying objects to
● studying processes and transformations
● Shift to indeterminacy and perspectivism, not certainty and
● Absolutism
● Principles of Systems Perspective
○ Interrelationship and Interdependence
■ Change in a system not linear; but affects entire system
■ “Butterfly effect”
○ Holism
■ “The whole is different from the sum of the parts”: principle of
nonsummativity
○ Input, Transformation and Output of Energy
■ All open systems exchange information and energy with their environments
■ Inputs to an open system are transformed through various processes intos
something different
○ Negative Entropy
, ■ An open system is “anything that is not chaos”
■ Entropy is a measure of disorder in a system; an open system counters
disorder (negative entropy)
■ Closed systems are entropic; cannot counter disintegration (e.g., cults)
■ “Open” and “closed” are relative terms; no human system is completely
open or closed.
○ Equilibrium, Homeostasis and Feedback
■ Open systems maintain equilibrium through homeostasis (“steady state”)
■ Permeability of system boundaries allows information sharing with
environment, allowing corrections in system performance.
■ Systems receive both negative (deviation counteracting) and positive
(deviatiiion amplifying) feedback; the latter produces system growth.
○ Hierarchy
■ Systems process information on multiple levels
■ All hierarchically ordered levels are interrelated
■ Subsystems, systems and suprasystems work in an interdependent manner;
each level influencing and being influenced by the other
○ Goal Orientation
■ All open systems are goal-oriented
■ Feedback (positive and negative) enables adjustment to goals
■ In large organisations, goals can conflict (e.g., R&D vs. Marketing)
○ Equifinality and Multifinality
■ Equifinality: an open system can reach the same final state from multiple
initial conditions and paths
■ Multifinality: an open system can reach multiple goals and states from the
same initial conditions.
■ Both principles capture the complexity and dynamism of open systems.
Systems Theory:
What are the implications of systems theory for the way we think about communication?
“While earlier theories of organisational communication are dominated by information transfer
conceptions of the communication process(...), the systems perspective provides us with a more
complex communication models that, for the first time in the study of organisations, focuses on
social actors’ meaning and sensemaking processes, examining communication as something that is
meaningful only within - and, indeed, creates a larger social context (Mumby, 2013, p. 117).
Organisations as Communication Systems
Features of a system approach to communication:
1. All behaviour is communicative
2. Intent is not necessary for communication to occur
3. Communication is relational and contextual
4. Punctuation of communication is key to the sense-making process
, ● Organisations function s communication systems by selectively coding and interpreting
inputs
● Organisations as collections of people trying to make sense of what’s happening around
them
● Shift from conduit, information transfer model to view of communication focusing on
meaning and sense-making.
Putnam & Boys (2006) Metaphors of Organizational Communication
● Paradigm shift in organizational communication research:
○ “This shift moves the study of communication from linear transmission within
organizations to the way that social interaction, discursive processes and symbolic
meanings constitute organisations” (Putnam & Bots, 2006, p.541).
● Communication as transmission metaphors:
○ Conduit, information processing, linkage
● Communication as social interaction, meaning and discourse metaphors:
○ Performance, discourse, symbol, voice, contradiction
Tutorial 2: Organizational Policies & Workplace Flexibility
Why are work/life policies important?
● Workplace flexibility became more important because:
○ Global work and 24/7 economies
○ More women on the labor market
○ More dual earners
● Work/life policies are (allegedly) good for:
○ Organisational reputation
○ Organisational performance
○ Employee-well-being
We have seen various benefits of workplace policies. Employers are found to be more attractive if
they have these kinds of policies. As a tool for employer branding, this is one of the perks. They
have also occasionally been found to be an improvement for organisational performance and for
employee well-being.
Nurmi & Hinds (2020)
Nurmi and Hinds investigate how global connectivity demands are enacted by global professionals
and how this affects both psychological and behavioural outcomes. Their basic argument is that
work has changed and it’s now time to try to reconcile research on job designs/work designs and
, research on connectivity to better understand global work itself, the implications of this type of
work for the connectivity demands of these workers.
Their focus is mainly on conceptualising these global connectivity demands as an important work
characteristic that triggers connectivity behavior from employees. They argue that job design
research has come a long way but tends to overlook how contemporary work environments also
induce these global connectivity demands and these global connectivity dewmands can be viewed
as one of the characteristics of contemporary work.
Ultimately, these demands require employees to engage in certain connectivity behaviours, as one
of the aims here is that looking at this job design literature, there is this trend that emphasises not
necessarily the structural or task oriented aspects of the job, but especially the social aspects of
the job, not only in global work but also in remote work, employees often get isolated and
experience professional isolation/social isolation which is detrimental for their interpersonal
relationships at work. We know from social psychological literature that the quality of these
interpersonal relations at work are important in the factors of job satisfaction, turnover and
tensions,etc.
The question becomes, in a work environment where there is this dispersion of workers, how can
we maintain this level of interpersonal relationships?
● Frequent communication
● After-hour connectivity
● Site visits
Ultimately, that would lead to better interpersonal relationships, which would then lead to better
psychological outcomes and behavioural outcomes, including job satisfaction, less work-life
conflict and more balance.
● How are global connectivity demands enacted by global professionals and how does this
affect outcomes?
● Global Connectivity Demands. Pressures to stay connected to distant workers, especially
those across time zones and national boundaries.
Connectivity beyond global work
● Especially, frequency of communication and site visits ( as opposed to after-hour
connectivity) are important antecedents of interpersonal relationships.
● We were surprised that whereas communication frequency and site visits were positively
associated with higher-quality interpersonal relationships, after-hours connectivity was
not. This is in contrast to extensive research and folk wisdom implying that after-hours
connectivity is essential in building and maintaining high-quality relationships at a
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