Fundamentals_of_Organizational_Communica.ppt

Fundamentals of Organizational
Communication

The Scientific Management School
• Scientific Management perspective
• theoretical approach to organizations that
emphasizes organizational design,worker
training for efficiency, chains of
command, and division of labor. The
perspective rests on the assumption that
work and organizations can be rationally
or “scientifically” designed and
developed.

Major Scientific Management Theories
• Principles of Scientific Management:
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915)
• Four Essential Elements
• Careful selection of workers
• Inducing and training the worker by the
scientific method
• Equal division of work between management
and workers
• Discovering the scientific method for tasks
and jobs

• Principles of Scientific Management:
Frederick Taylor (1856-1915)
• Time and Motion Study
• a technique for determining the efficiency of
production through work observation and time
measurements; used to develop work
standards that can be measured for efficiency.

• Principles of Management: Henri Fayol
(1841-1925)
• Credited with the first known attempt to
describe broad principles of management
for the organization and conduct of
business.

Fourteen Principles of Management:
Henri Fayol
• Division of work
• Authority
• Discipline
• Unity of Command
• Unity of direction
• Subordination of
individual interests
to the general
interest
• Remuneration
 Centralization
 Scalar chain
 Order
 Equity
 Stability of tenure of
personnel
 Initiative
 Esprit de corps

Fourteen Principles of Management:
Henri Fayol
• His discussion of the scalar chain is
the only known treatment of horizontal
communication found in organizational
literature until the writings of Chester
Barnard in 1938.
• “the chain of superiors ranging from the
ultimate authority to the lowest ranks”

Principles of Bureaucracy: Max
Weber (1864-1920)
• The father of bureaucracy
• Three types of authority
• Charismatic
• Traditional
• Bureaucratic

Principles of Bureaucracy: Max
Weber
• Bureaucracy
• organizations based on formalized rules,
regulations, and procedures, which make
authority rational as opposed to
charismatic or traditional.
• Chain of command
• the formal authority and reporting
structure of an organization.

Communication Implications of
Scientific Management Theories
• Communication was to be a tool of
management designed to facilitate task
completion
• Train employees
• Give daily instructions
• Communication was to be formal
• Messages primarily from supervisors
to subordinates

• Communication was viewed as rational
and functioning to reduce uncertainty
about task expectations and
measurement

• The Functional approach to
organizational communication can be
used to describe communication
implications from the Scientific
Management viewpoint.
• Organizational communication functioned
to organize task performance and to
clarify rules and regulations.

• The Functional approach…
• Scientific Management theorists
described messages as flowing via
the chain of command primarily in a
downward direction.

• The Meaning-Centered approach…
• Communication was described as a
variable of the organization controlled by
management
• Culture was not a primary consideration
• Decision making was another
organizational variable controlled by
management

• The Emerging Perspectives…
• Scientific Management theorists did
not consider abuses of power, as
evidenced in the Emerging
Perspectives, and readily supported
a legitimate power within the control
of management.

Scientific Management Theories in
Contemporary Organizations
• A careful examination of most
contemporary organizations reveals
numerous Scientific Management
principles still in operation.
• Local, state, and national governments
are also organized with many of these
principles.

The Human Behavior School
• The Human Behavior school shifts the
emphasis from the structure of
organizations, work design, and
measurement to the interactions of
individuals, their motivations, and their
influence on organizational events.

The Human Behavior School
• The Human Behavior Perspective
assumes that work is accomplished
through people and emphasizes
cooperation, participation, satisfaction,
and interpersonal skills.

Major Human Behavior Theories
• Principles of Coordination: Mary
Parker Follett (1868-1933)
• Best known for her true principles of
organizations based on a stable
foundation for the steady, ordered
progress of human well-being.
• Characterized conflict as potentially
constructive and described collective
responsibility and integration as
supportive of business excellence.

• Principles of Coordination: Mary
Parker Follett (1868-1933)
• Four Active Principles:
1. Coordination by direct contact of the
responsible people concerned
2. Coordination in the early stages
3. Coordination as a reciprocal relation of all the
features in a situation
4. Coordination as a continuing process.

• The Hawthorne Effect: Elton Mayo
(1880-1949)
• When the famous Hawthorne studies
began, Mayo was experimenting with the
alteration of physical working conditions
to increase productivity.
• They became aware that other
unexpected factors were interacting with
physical factors to influence work output.

(1880-1949)
• Output increased not matter how the
physical variables were changed. Mayo
and his colleagues came to understand
that a powerful and previously
unrecognized influence in the
experimental setting was the attention the
researchers were paying to the workers.

(1880-1949)
• As a result of the Hawthorne
research, production could no
longer be viewed as solely
dependent on formal job and
organizational design.

(1880-1949)
• This effect, widely know as the
Hawthorne effect, was the first
documentation in industrial
psychological research of the
importance of human interaction and
morale for productivity

• Theory X and Theory Y: Douglas
McGregor (1906-1964)
• McGregor’s description of management
assumptions about workers. Theory X
characterizes assumptions underlying Scientific
Management theory, and Theory Y is associated
with assumptions common to Human Behavior
perspectives. Theory X managers assume
workers dislike work and will avoid responsible
labor. Theory Y managers believe that workers
can be self-directed and self-controlled.

• Theory X and Theory Y: Douglas
McGregor (1906-1964)
• McGregor has been criticized for what
some have called a polarized either/or
approach to human nature. McGregor has
responded that Theory X and Theory Y are
assumptions that may be better
understood as ranges of behaviors from X
to Y.

• Participative Management: Rensis
Likert (1903-1981)
• Likert’s theory of employee-centered
management based on effectively
functioning groups linked together
structurally throughout the
organization

Likert’s Linking Pin Concept

• Participative Management: Rensis Likert
(1903-1981)
• Taylor had interpreted variability in
performance as a need to establish
specific procedures and production
standards; Likert’s interpretation called
for an increase in participation by
organizational members at all levels.

Likert (1903-1981)
• Likert’s (1960) attitude toward
communication was clear when he
stated: “Communication is essential
to the functioning of an organization.
It is viewed widely as one of the
most important processes of
management.”

Likert (1903-1981)
• Likert’s research also revealed that
productivity was high in groups in
which the supervisor and subordinate
shared reasonable accurate
perceptions of each other. Likert
concluded from this finding that good
communication and high performance
go together.

Human Behavior Theories
• Effective communication was a
cornerstone of the Human
Behavior perspective.
• Interactions at all levels were
expected to be extensive and
friendly, with substantial
cooperation throughout the
organization.

• Functional Approach…
• The Human Behavior viewpoint saw a
more complex role for communication
than the Scientific Management theorists
envisioned.
• The relationship function of
organizational communication was
considered significant.
• The change function of communication
was everyone’s responsibility

• Meaning-Centered Approach…
• Communication was better
understood in the Human
Behavior perspective than in the
Scientific Management
approach.

• Meaning-Centered Approach…
• The Human Behavior
perspective exhibits more
concern with worker
participation and satisfaction
than do Scientific Management
theories.

• Emerging Perspectives…
• Despite this concern for participation,
Human Behavior theorists pay little
attention to the concerns of power and
how communication constitutes
organizing, decision making, and
influence.
• Women and other marginalized voices
are not included as concerns.

Human Behavior Theories in
• Most contemporary organizations
include not only Scientific
Management ideas but also much
of the thinking generated from the
Human Behavior theorists.

The Integrated Perspectives School
• Theories that attempt to explain
how people, technologies, and
environments integrate to
influence goal-directed behavior.

Major Integrated Perspectives Theories:
Process and Environmental Approaches
• Process and environmental
approaches to organizational
theory attempt to describe how
complex processes such as
decision making influence the
internal operation of organizations
and are influenced by external
environments

• Decision-Making Approach
• Sociotechnical Integration
• Contingency Theory
• The Systems Approach
• The New Systems Approaches – Flux,
Transformation, Quantum Physics,
Self-Organizing Systems, and Chaos
Theory
• Learning Organizations

• Decision-Making Approach: Herbert
Simon (1916- )
• Simon’s concept that organizational
behavior is a complex network of
decisions, with decision-making
processes influencing the behavior of the
entire organization.

Simon (1916- )
• Bounded rationality - assumption that
people intend to be rational, but with
limited information-processing capacity
human decision making is based on
selective perception and therefore
exhibits “limited” rationality.

Simon (1916- )
• He described decision making as the
fundamental organizational process.
Decision making, he said, occurs through
the communication behaviors of
individuals who intend rationality but can
only approach rationality because of
limited information-processing capacity.

• Sociotechnical Integration: Eric L. Trist
(1909-1993) and Kenneth W. Bamforth
• theoretical attempt to balance human
social-psychological needs with
organizational goals;

• Two Assumptions
• Assumed that organizational production is
optimized through optimizing social and
technical systems
• Assumed a constant interchange exists
between the work system and the broader
environment.

• Their experiments led them to conclude
that meaning in work could be
established through group assignments
that permit individuals to be included in
entire task cycles rather than working on
isolated parts of a job.

• Contingency Theory: Joan Woodward (1916)-
1971), Paul Lawrence (1922- ), and Jay Lorsch (1932- )
• Approach that rejects the “one best way”
to organize in favor of the view that no
specific set of prescriptions is
appropriate for all organizations. As such,
organizations must adapt to changing
circumstances, the needs of individuals,
and the environment in which the
organization operates.

• Contingency Theory: Joan Woodward (1916)-
1971), Paul Lawrence (1922- ), and Jay Lorsch (1932- )
• Contingency theory suggests that
considerable judgment is required to
understand effective organizational
operation because that operation “all
depends on the situation.”

• The Systems Approach: Daniel Katz (1903-
1998) and Robert Kahn (1918- )
• Describes organizations as made up of
subsystems, which take in materials and
human resources, process materials and
resources, and yield a finished product to
the larger environment.

• The New Systems Approach – Flux,
Theory: Gareth Morgan (1943- ) and Margaret Wheatley
(1944- )
• Autopoiesis - process describing each
element in a system simultaneously
combining the maintenance of itself with
the maintenance of the other elements of
the system.

Theory: Gareth Morgan (1943- ) and Margaret Wheatley
(1944- )
• Dissipative Structures - descriptions of
structures when a loss of energy and
form contribute to disequilibrium, which
in turn contributes to growth and new
structures and forms.

Transformation, Quantum Physics, Self-
Organizing Systems, and Chaos Theory:
Gareth Morgan (1943- ) and Margaret Wheatley (1944- )
• Self-organizing/Self-renewing Systems -
processes occurring when disturbances amplify
stimulating reconfigurations to deal with new
information.
• Chaos Theory - description of systems disturbed
from stable states of unpredictability.

• Learning Organizations: Peter Senge and
Gareth Morgan (1943- )
• Organizations gaining knowledge from
continuous processes of information
exchange between the organization and
its environment.
• Double-loop Learning – the process of
learning (single-loop) vs. the process of
learning to learn (double loop)

• Learning Organizations: Peter Senge and
• Senge’s Five Disciplines
• System Thinking
• Personal Mastery
• Mental Models
• Building Shared Vision
• Team Learning

• Learning Organizations: Peter Senge
and Gareth Morgan (1943- )
• Senge:
• “A learning organization is a place
where people are continually
discovering how they create their
reality. And how they can change it.”

Cultural Approaches
• Theories that describe how
organizational members collectively
interpret the organizational world
around them in order to define the
importance of organizational
happenings. Approaches to theory that
explain organizational behavior in
terms of the influence of cultures that
exist both internally and externally to
the organization.

Cultural Approaches
• Elements of Culture: Terrance Deal (1939- ) and
Allen Kennedy (1943- )
• Five Basic Elements of
Organizational Culture
• Business environment
• Values
• Heroes
• Rites
• Rituals

Cultural Approaches
• Theory Z: William Ouchi (1943- )
• Ouchi’s theory derived from comparisons
between Japanese and American
organizations. Theory Z organizations
retain individual achievement and
advancement as a model but provide a
continuing sense of organizational
community not typical of many American
organizations.

Cultural Approaches – Theory Z
• Type A Organization
1. Short-term employment
2. Individual decision
making
3. Individual
responsibility
4. Rapid promotion
5. Formal control
6. Specialized career
paths
7. Segmented concerns
 Type J Organization
1. Lifetime employment
2. Consensual decision
making
3. Group or collective
responsibility
4. Slow advancement
5. Informal control
6. Generalized career
paths
7. Holistic concerns

Cultural Approaches – Theory Z
• Type A Organization
-reflects cultural
values of individuality
over group
membership and
assume that broad
social needs are
supported by other
institutions rather
than formal
employment groups
 Type J Organization
-reflects a culture in
which loyalty to
groups is more
important than
individual
achievement and in
which individuals gain
identity from long-
term affiliations with
the companies for
which they work

Cultural Approaches
• In Search of Excellence: Thomas Peters (1942- )
and Robert Waterman (1936- )
• Eight Themes
• A bias for action
• Close to the customer
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship
• Productivity through people
• Hands-on value-driven
• Stick to the knitting
• Simple form, lean staff
• Simultaneous loose-tight properties

Cultural Approaches
• Organizational Culture Formation: Edgar
Schein
• Model of Culture: 3 Levels
1. Artifacts and creations
• The most visible level of culture consisting of the
physical and social environment
2. Values
• Individual and group preferences for the way it
should be in the organization
3. Basic assumptions
• The core of what individuals believe to be true
about the world and how it works

Cultural Approaches
• Sensemaking Model: Karl Weick (1936- )
“The outcome comes before the decision”
• Weick is arguing that we make decisions
and then render them sensible by
explaining the meaning of our decisions.

Cultural Approaches
• Sensemaking Model: Karl Weick (1936- )
• Seven Characteristics
1. Grounded in identity construction
2. Retrospective
3. Enactive of sensible environments
4. Social
5. Ongoing
6. Focused on and by extracted cues
7. Driven by plausibility rather than accuracy

Integrated Perspectives Theories
• Systems theorists – the effectiveness
of communication is related not only
to what happens within the
organization, but also to how the
organization communicates with its
environment, its customers, and
community.

• Cultural approaches – more specific
about the importance of
communication in carrying messages
about the culture and influencing
behavior through cultural
expectations.

• The Functional framework…
• The rejection of the “one best way”
concept and the emphasis on the
external environment require a
communication system in continual
adaptation to changing
circumstances.

• The Meaning-Centered
approach…
• Both decision-making and cultural
concepts are based on how
organizational members generate
shared meanings and how these
meanings influence behavior and
organizational effectiveness.

approach…
• The major premises underlying the
prescriptive and popularized
cultural approaches are that
organizations are more effective
with strong cultures and that strong
cultures require effective
communication.

approach…
• The cultural theorists also
underscore the importance of
values for excellent organizations
and the need for values to become
part of the shared realities of
organizational members.

Integrated Perspectives Theories in
• The contribution of Integrated
Perspectives theorists in describing
the need to acknowledge the influence
of the external environment has
improved our ability to think
comprehensively about organizations
and how people and technology relate
to larger environments.

Integrated Perspectives Theories in
• Concern for organizational
culture is readily apparent in
contemporary organizations
• Vision and mission statements
• Training programs in organizational
values
• Annual events and rituals

Postmodern, Critical, and Feminist
Perspectives
• Theories that focus on power,
domination, and challenges to
hierarchy, bureaucracy, and
management control.

Perspectives
• Postmodern Perspectives: Steward
Clegg (1947- )
• The postmodern condition is highly
ordered, technologically
specialized, mass-mediated, and
demanding of precision, speed,
flexibility, and adaptability in
individual performance

Perspectives
• Postmodern Perspectives: Steward Clegg
(1947- )
• Clegg contends that postmodernism rejects
the concepts of scientific management when
he characterizes postmodern organizations
a flexible structures needing workers with
multiple skills who are capable of continual
learning.
• Market niches replace mass consumption,
and smaller is better if organizations are
doing what they do best.

Perspectives
• Postmodern Perspectives: Steward Clegg
(1947- )
• Five Principles of the Postmodern
Organization (Eisenberg and Goodall)
• Decentralization of power
• Changes in markets and commodity values
• Flattening of hierarchies
• Cultures based on trust and respect for
difference
• The use of groups

Perspectives
• Critical Theory: Jurgen Habermas (1929- )
• Critical theory is what the name
implies: a criticism, a critique of
society, organizations, and social
constructions. Tracing its roots to
the work of Karl Marx and other,
Critical theory today takes as a
central theme the issues of power
and power abuse in organizations
and society as a whole.

Perspectives
• Habermas calls for the use of Critical
theory to reconstitute reason and
rationality as processes for positive
social change. According to Habermas,
communicative process is the basis for
change and carries a notion of
constitutive process, literally
foundational to all organizing, influence,
and decision making.

Perspectives
• Critical theorists call for a third
paradigm in contrast to scientific
and interpretative approaches to
management and organization.
Specifically, Critical theorists seek
understanding of organizational life
nested in the broader context of
society through understanding of
power and political relationships.

Perspectives
• Commentaries on Critical Theory and
Postmodernism: Mats Alvesson (1956- ) and Stanley
Deetz (1948- ), Martin Kilduff (1949- ) and Ajay Mehra (1968- ), and
• Alvesson and Deetz – Critical theory calls
into question the illusion that
organizations and their processes are
natural and self-evident, the
universalization of managerial interest,
the primacy of instrumental reasoning,
and hegemonic practices.

Perspectives
• Kilduff and Mehra
• Challenging underlying assumptions of how
we view organizations and organizational life.
• Postmodernism sees “truth” as problematic
and focuses on how individuals construct
their social worlds.
• Views the objective as subjective and
challenges notions that we truly can
generalize from one experience to another.

Perspectives
• Commentaries on Critical Theory
and Postmodernism: Mats Alvesson (1956- )
and Stanley Deetz (1948- ), Martin Kilduff (1949- ) and Ajay
Mehra (1968- ), and Gareth Morgan (1943- )
• Morgan
• Identifies examples of how
organizations establish class
structures that provide forms of
control over work, behavior, and even
the continuation of employment.

Perspectives
• Critical theories contend that the world
economy is dominated more by
multinational organizations than by
governments or national alliances.
Critical theorists view these multinational
organizations as primary sites for
domination and abuses of power.

Perspectives
• Feminist Organization Theories:
Marta Calás (1942- ), and Linda Smircich
• Theories that critique the gendered
assumptions of modern organizations
and call for the recognition and valuing
of multiple voices and perspectives.

Perspectives
• Feminist Organization Theories: Marta
Calás (1942- ), and Linda Smircich
• Seven Approaches to Feminist Theory:
• Liberal feminist theory
• Radical-cultural feminism
• Psychoanalytic feminism
• Marxist feminist theory
• Social feminism/gendering or organizations and
organizing
• Poststructuralist feminism/postmodern
perspectives
• Third-world/postcolonial feminism

Perspectives
• The Functional approach…
• Hierarchy with its control of networks,
exclusion of voices other than the
dominant power structure, and deliberate
distortions through mediated channels
should be exposed so as to support
more participative and democratic
practices in organizations.

Perspectives
approach…
• Critical perspectives discount
interpretative notions of the
Meaning-Centered approach that
focus on shared realities.

Perspectives
• The Emerging Perspectives
approach…
• Most closely associated with Postmodern
and Critical Perspective theory.
• Both the Emerging Perspectives approach
and Postmodern and Critical Perspectives
theories propose a value of increased
participation and democracy among workers
with an emphasis on the value of all
organizational voices.

Perspectives in Contemporary
Organizations
• The delayering of organizations is
evident in numerous organizations,
with self-managing and high-
performance teams replacing
traditional notions of supervision.
• Adaptation, flexibility, and change are
more common than unusual, and
organizations regularly examine new
approaches requiring increased and
changing skills from the work force.

Fundamentals_of_Organizational_Communica.ppt

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