1. DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMUNICATION

2. • Sytems Perspective
• Cultural Studies
• Critical Approach
• Postmodern Perspective

3. The Systems Perspective on
Organizations and
Communication
Speaker: Sol Erwin G. Diaz

4. Historical and Cultural Background
• Although it has come to be applied to
social systems,the systems approach has
it roots in the sciences, notably physics,
information theory, and biology.

5. The Origin of Systems Theory in the
Sciences.
Principles drawn from Newtonian physics:
• Scientific management relied heavily on time and
motion studies to provide data to managers
about worker productivity.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity:
• Conceptualizing time and motion studies within
the limited framework of a specific task, the
interpretation of task is expanded to include how
it functions as part of a dynamic interdependent
system.

6. Example:
• A company can work hardto lower the cost of
its product through more efficient production,
but if it fails to closely monitor consumer
tastes, it may end up failing in any case.
 Systems theory encourages us to explore
how organizational effectiveness depends on
the coordination of the total enterprise.

7. Biology and General Systems Theory
• Specific Contributor to Systems theory – the
life sciences, especially Biology.
• A system is alive not because of any particular
component or component process, but
because of the relationships and interchanges
among processes.
• Holistic approach –to consider the properties
of systems that come out of the relationships
among their parts.

8. What is a SYSTEM?
- Defined as a complex set of relationships
among interdependent parts or components.
- In the study of organizational communication,
we are concerned with the nature of those
components in organizations and with the
relationships among them.

9. Environment and Open Systems
• Systems theory tells us that organizations do
not exist as entities isolated from the rest of
the world. Rather, organizations exist in
increasingly turbulent environments, which
provide inputs to the organization and receive
outputs in the form of products and services.

10. Interdependence
• Essential quality of a system
• Refers to the wholeness of the system and its
environment and to the interrelationships of
individuals within the system.

11. Goals
• From a scientific management perspective,
goals are central: Both individuals and
organizations direct their activities toward
goal attainment.
• From an institutional perspective,
organizations and their members espouse
goals, but rarely do their goals guide their
behavior.

12. • From the open-systems perspective, goals are
negotiated among interdependent factions in
the organization and are heavily influenced by
its environment.

13. Processes and Feedback
• A system is not simply and interdependent set
of components; it is also an interdependent
collection of processes that interact over time.
have to do in a timely fashion to
• Example: Submit orders to
Engineering or
avoid ineffeciency and other work-
flow related problem.
manufacturing
Engineering in turn, would need to
Selling of deliver accurate drawings to
Radio Feedback manufacturing on schedule.
Transmitter
Manufacturing would be required
Customer to meet the customer's quality
Dissatisfied standard and delivery date.

14. • Feedback – is define as a system of loops
Two types of Feedback in Systems Theory:
4.Negative Feedback – Deviation-counteracting
5.Positive Feedback – Deviation-amplifying

15. Margaret Wheatley’s New Science of
Leadership
• New Science – a combination of quantum
physics, self-organizing systems theory, and
chaos theory.
• The underlying currents are a movement
toward holism, toward understanding the
system as a system and giving primacy to the
relationships that exist among seemingly
discrete parts.

16. Wheatley argues the following:
1. There are no things in themselves; even particles of matter
are intermediate states in a network of interactions
2. Information, not matter, is the creative energy of the
universe
3. All living things are naturally engaged in self renewal, and
organizations do this by making creative use of their
environments
4. The search for machine-like control by management is
counterproductive
5. What we call “disorder” is part of the natural process of
order making
6. The desire to make meaning is the “strange attractor” that
keeps human being s in a constant tendency toward self-
organization.

17. Peter Senge’s Learning Organization
• He is concerned with holism and inclined to
use scientific terminology
• Senge focuses on the distinction between
what he calls “learning organizations” and
organizations that have a learning disability or
a lack of understanding about how they
function as systems.

18. Learning Organizations exhibit five
features:
1. System thinking
2. Personal Mastery
3. Flexible Mental Models
4. A shared Vision
5. Team Learning

19. Karl Weick’s Sense-Making Model
• His work has reinvigorated systems theory by
connecting it with issues of sense making,
meaning, and communication, while also
providing a bridge or the development of
cultural studies of organizations.
Weick’s model has three parts:
3.Inactment
4.Selection
5.Retention

20. • Enactment – organizational members create
environments through their actions and
patterns of attention, and these environments
can vary in terms of their perceived degree of
equivocality or uncertainty.
• Selection – collective sense making is
accomplished through communication.
• Retention – successful interpretation are
saved for future use.

21. Retrospective Sense Making
• An underlying assumption of Weick’s model is
that decision making is largely retrospective
• Although people in organization think they
plan first and then act according to plan,
Weick argues that people really act first and
later examine their actions in an attempt to
explain their meaning.

22. Seven properties of sense making:
1. Identity Construction
2. Retrospection
3. Enactment
4. Socialization
5. Continuation
6. Extracted Cues
7. Plausibility

23. Loose Coupling
• Weick stresses the importance of
communication at work, he points out that
unlike the connections among biological
systems, the communication connections
among people in organizations vary in
intensity and are often loose or weak.

24. Partial Inclusion
• In analysing the balance between work and
other activities, Weick uses his theory of
partial inclusion to explain why certain
strategies for motivating employees are
ineffective.
• He holds that employees are only partially
included in the workplace; that is at work we
see some but not all of their behaviors.

25. Explicit comparison of scientific management
and systems theories
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS THEORIES
Metaphor: Machines Metaphor: Biological Organisms
Theme: Efficiency – a machine is the sum Theme: Complexity – a system is greater
of its parts. that the sum of its parts.
Influences: Industrial Revolution, Influences: Einstein’s theory of relativity;
modernity,capitalism, and empire; McLuhan’s global information society;
assembly –line production and Miller’s biological system; von
management; division of labor, Bertalanffy’s general system; information
interchangeable parts, coordination of engineering model of communication.
many small, skilled jobs.
Focus of management principles: “The Focus of management principles: “
only things that count are the finished Everything counts”; studies of
product and the bottom line”; time and interdependent processes, information
motion studies. flows and feedback, environments and
contingencies.

26. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS THEORIES
Management of Individuals as Management of relationships among
interchangeable parts components; focus on groups and
networks
Planning the work, working the plan Planning the work, using feedback to
correct the plan
Motivation by fear and money Motivation by needs and contingencies
Theory of Communication: Theory of Communication:
Sender -Message -Channel - Receiver
Feedback
Sender- Message – Channel – Receiver
Noise

27. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS THEORIES
Theory of Leadership: Trait (Tall, white Theory of Leadership: Adaptive (rhetorical
males with blond hair and blue eyes, who contingency) – anyone can learn the skills
come from strong moral backgrounds) of leading by attending to the
requirements of behavioral flexibility.
Limitations: Limitations:
5.Forgets that humans are more complex 4.Forgets that humans are symbolic as as
than machines; biological;
6.Encourages individual boredom and 5.Encourages mathematical complexities
deep divisions between managers and that are difficult to put into everyday
employees practices
7.Discourages communication, individual 6.Equates communication with
needs, job initiative, task innovation, information.
personal responsibility, and
empowerment