Managers as Friends?

I believe title already sounds pretty weird but I would still like to provoke this idea. Have you ever become friends with your manager? Does it really work out or you feel that it can never happen. A manager will always remain a manager and even if he was one of your very close friends, after becoming your manager would totally change. The way he communicates with you would change significantly and the types of jokes he used to like being a friend would become very annoying to him now.
All this story said is to provide the fact that its practically possible to have a friendly manager but not to have a managerially friend. Because the role two are playing does not go with the friendship role. In friendship both the parties are at a negotiable position but as a manager subordinate its not like that. So after one getting the promotion leave other friends. Sad but true.

Silent Meetings

Have you ever heard of silent meetings? May be not, I just made this name up. But many times it happens that only one person is speaking and presenting in a meeting and not even single person is asking any questions or giving and comments. Why does this happen? I was discussing this with my manager after when he got done with one of such 'Silent Meeting'. He was like I guess silence is good, meaning not many people objected about anything we said and nobody had any question as well. So may be we are on top of everything. Or on the other hand, the people listening have no clue what we are talking about and they have too many even basic questions about the meeting that they fear presenting it to the speaker making him or her uncomfortable. So I say people, be interactive if you really want to get something out of a meeting or a conversation. Else there will be no use of such meetings

Gender Communication Differences

It is obvious to all that men and women tend to act and react in different ways. Also, their way of perceiving a situation greatly varies from each other. This difference is also found in the way both sexes choose to communicate. It is common observation that women tend to talk more than men, they can go on and on while men ten to jump from on topic to another. There are certain stereotypes regarding the communication styles of both sexes. It is a common belief that women are more responsive and expressive emotionally while men tend to control and hide their emotions. Women are said to be emotionally intense while men are more subdued and stoic.

"Stereotypes create expectations regarding emotional expression and emotional reaction. Many studies find that emotional stereotypes and the display of emotions "correspond to actual gender differences in experiencing emotion and expression."1

It is to be noted however that these stereotypes do not necessarily mean that men and women always behave like this .Their actions can vary according to the situation. Men are not always the ones who hide their emotions or are not as intense as women are supposed to be. Women can tend to be very possessive about their emotional life, It is just that the society has put these labels on men and women, the reality differs somehow.


1.source wikipedia

Foreign Accents

It’s very interesting to hear all sort of English accents at work. But how does it affect the communication process or should we ask, does it or does it not? Well my personal opinion is that it sure does. An incomprehensible accent is obviously not going to get you too far. People want to understand what they hear and sometimes too thick or too broken words aren’t the best thing you want to hear all day long. But again, some accents are very attractive and make one listen to what has been said. So I believe even though its sometime hard to take over your foreign accent but one certainly should try to blend with the local people so that speaking does not become a handicap for him.

Big Organizations/Small Organizations

I have been observing different companies with regards to their atmosphere and I have noticed a very clear difference how things work in there. The way people communicate differs, they way they dress up differs, the way they get their work done differs, and of course they way they get paid differs. Why so many difference? And if these bigger companies can do this then why not smaller companies? And if smaller companies cant afford it then how to come up with something that would give the employees of smaller companies at least the look and feel of working in a respectful company.

Degrees of Change: First Order & Second Order

Its normal for all the organization to have first order changes. We see people getting hired and fired every day. But my concern is that could this first order change with reference to the organization be a second order change for an individual? I would say yes of course. I have seen people going upside down because they lost their jobs or got laid off etc. But can companies avoid these first degree changes in the organizations to save employees from going through a second degree change? No, organizations are selfish when it comes to organizational interest. All what matter to the managers is the growth curve of the company or the dollars coming into the company's account. They don't care what goes in an employee's life but just to get more out of them, they are made feel like their existence counts for the company and if they would leave company wont remain the same etc. But once validated, they easily fire people and get rid of them. I just think its plain cruelty.

Change is Good?!?!?..

We have been hearing this phrase for a long time. But even in organizational terms most people support this claim. Bigger companies take huge decisions based on this fact and try to convince themselves and their customer to embrace this so that they can welcome upcoming product, changed services, or new styles to them. Has change always been good? Not really, few of us remember when Coca Cola came up with a sweeter version, resembling Pepsi. Did everyone like it? No. Most people wanted their own Coke back. There are many other examples of bringing change in the market. But then why really do organizations and everyone emphasize on change? Because without change we can never experience what we are already missing, and there are some good possibilities that if someone has already tested a changed product, service, or in that case anything new, and recommend that, then chances are that it might really be good. Hence at industry level, most of the time changes bring to us products or services that are new but are already being tested and most probably being favored by us. So in my opinion, yes, if brought after a certain consideration and research, Change is Good.

Conflict Styles: Compromise

Yes, I believe compromising has been the best options for me when it comes to conflict. I was working on this project where we had to migrate around one hundred reports from one version of software to another and we were having many issues in them. Some people were working towards coding, others worked on formatting and so on. Conflict came when we had to provide the final version of the reports and one team started to blame other that because of what they did reports were not coming out right. That was one tough situation. My approach was to just compromise with what this other team had said and agree to work together, showing them how I did what I did and make them changes in reports accordingly without messing the real outlook of the reports. I compromised with some of their approach and they did on some on mine, so that worked for both of us and problem got solved.

Stress, Burnout, and Support

I have been going through this a lot lately. Now a days when economy is going down, managers are announcing news of being laid off to people everyday. In this time of the year, when one is loaded with the work of three and still told that yes you are doing great and keep doing the good work; he does feel stressed. Why? Because in this situation people are showing him that they have expectations from him and he really needs to keep working this hard. This situation of working too hard to meet the expectations of higher people in the company is Burnout in my understanding. But if a worker is working real hard but still unable to make the managers happy, and when he hears that you can do better than this, then he really feels stressed. Carrying the huge load of tasks on his back, and still being unable to satisfy his managers.. This has been my case for past few weeks and when I got a little support from my peers that gave me some additional help, I felt kind of relaxed. Friends can always become a good holding hand..

Intergroup Conflict

Many times in the organizations conflicts occur among the people from the same group or team they work in. Why? Because as our textbook says that conflict occurs when many people try to reach a goal through different approaches. So now if my approach of attaining a given task is a bit different than my peer then we certainly are going to have a conflict. Usually in this case both of the parties feel that they are correct and their opinion should be given precedence and when one gets his or her opinion chosen, the other one feels not appreciated or in some situations degraded. This person might feel hurt and in other cases not even show interest in getting the job done to show others that the idea other person rose was not the best one and hence it failed in getting the job done. I have seen this many time in my life and a good lead usually try to keep his/her team members in sync without getting personal about any task and making everyone feel involved.

Resistance: Subtle Forms (Hidden Transcripts)

Many organizations when enforce rules against the will of employees face resistance. As mentioned in the book, resistance could be of many types, like strikes, walking out o meeting etc but what I find most interesting is the hidden resistance. One thing I have seen at many places is that people start stealing from the property of company, saying that company doesn't pay what they deserve and make them work a lot more than normal hours. I believe company owners should pay much importance to the matters when it comes to employee satisfaction. Of course, not to an extend that tilts the balance but to a level that is just enough for both employee and employer.

Organizational Control: Technical

As we all know that technology has provided us several new ways of organizational control and most of the job is done by high technology devices. But are the employees feeling comfortable in this environment? In my personal opinion, no. We all know that its natural not to be working every single second of your work. We all sometimes chat with colleagues, check our emails and even make a personal phone call to check on few things. But how would one feel knowing that his or her every move has been recorded? Of course not good at all. So in this case the employee will feel under pressure of being watched by the higher authorities and not be able to perform with ease and confidence. At my workplace most of the websites have been blocked as well to limit the people to use work related web-sites only. I think that is like telling the employees that we own you and in the time we pay you to work for us, you should be doing a single thing else.

For me personally it has been a cause of nervousness and stress so I can say that control should be there but to an appropriate level.

Power: Can it be misused?

Sometimes given too much power and control to an employee doesnt turn out to be the most productive option. It has been reported that many employees when left on their own slacked a lot in their work and tend to waste time and didnt even showed up to work. So in this case what can we tell to the people supporting the concept of employee power? But at the same time taking away all the power from them and pushing them to the tasks can make them less productive as well. I like to be given some room and authority to work on my tasks, so that I feel at ease and confident. So in my opinion, giving power to the employees could be both beneficial and if in access, harmful for the organization.

Teamwork: Why Doesnt It Always Succeed?!?!

I have been working for many organization for the past 3-4 years. In this time I have observed that even though the concept of teamwork is very good, i.e. to get a task done as a group but it doesn't always succeed. And the same job, if done individually, could have been very successful. There are different reasons I observed in this regard. One thing was the jealousy among different team members and specially among team leader and the group members. Usually other members of the team feel that they were the better option for being a team lead but this other person got lucky and became his/her team lead. Due to this very factor team members try to put others down in some cases. Also its very common that once given authority, team lead tries to take advantage of it and instead of he/she himself doing his/her work, put it on the team members. This also leads to a bad team work and project sinks. So I believe that even though there are many benefits of teamwork but it also has some drawbacks attached. So a manager should give much importance to the matter before assigning it to the team, that does this task really needs a teamwork or it can be done individually.

Democracy: Good or Bad?

First of all lets discuss if all (or most) of the organizations now a days have a democratic structure or not. I believe, even though companies make us feel like it, they actually dont. Most of the companies these days go by their own rules and regulations and they leave very little to the employees to decide or choose from. But they try to give them as much power that they feel like their voices are heard and they do count. How can we say that? VP of our company doesn't always make rules after asking us. Most of the time things happen and later its announced to us that company is taking such and such steps towards such and such thing. Recently our health insurance policy has been changed to a high premium policy without even asking us and all we know is that its there now. But at the same time, is it ok to leave all they decisions to the people of the company? Would company be benefiting from this decision and after so many demands of the employees and so many suggestions it can close down. So I believe in some cases democracy is good and in some bad.

Importance Of Leadership

Being a leader puts great responsibility on one person but to be a true leader one needs to have a few qualities.What exactly does a good leader do? The first thing that a leader has to do is know how to communicate with his followers. A true leader asks what and why rather than how and when. The right questions always get the right responses and so a leader should know what to ask and when. A person who is good at communicating with the people he is leading makes the people connect with each other, as well as, with the task at hand. The result is that people put in a lot more effort in what they are doing because they feel that the task is their task. Another thing is to know how to delegate a specific task to the person who knows how to do it.

Communication Networks

It was the Orientation for our MBA Program at SJSU. Dean of our Department started by explaining us the importance of building social networks while being in MBA Program. So much so that I had to admit that without having a strong social network we wont be able to go up in our career.

Social and business networks provide us point of contacts to broaden our sources of information. In corporate world its extremely critical to stay aware of new opportunities and technologies. Even if one is looking for a job, he must be aware of industry's requirements to trim himself according to the industry's needs. People who stays out of touch with working professionals and ongoing industry information find it extremely hard to find jobs. Because the standards and requirements keep changing in the market. Even if you were a successful engineer 7 years ago does not promise you a good job this year unless you work hard to acquire additional skill by inquiring other people in the industry.

So in my opinion, having a strong social network is extremely necessary to survive in the corporate world.

Superior-Subordinate Relation

"My manager is such a freak. I wonder why our CEO thinks he is a talented person. I believe I could have handled things in a better way than him". You may hear such things from your friends working in different companies and you might tell them: " My manager is such an awesome person, always treats me with respect and appreciate what I do for him".

Now what makes these two managers different from each other and makes their subordinates speak about them this way. Textbook explains about Upward and downward communication flows on p 150. The difference is found in the way superiors deliver these 5 categories of messages to the subordinates. A manager can deliver all what that is needed to explain a task to the subordinate and still make him feel valued whereas a different manager makes his subordinate hate him for even communicating with him. Smart managers realized this phenomenon and try to give the best working environment for their subordinates so that they can feel valued and hence try their best to provide best possible outcomes for company.

Work and Home..

If we look back twenty or thirty years ago, we see that the general lifestyle of people of that era was a lot different from what we have now. People were more family oriented and they used to work just to get food on the table. Workplace behavior and interactions were pretty formal and home/friends environment was very open, warm and friendly. Now all that is gone and something else has taken its place. Now a days technology has become so wide spread that human need to do physical labor has become nominal. People have to compete so much to stay hired and being able to earn for their families. So for this purpose people are working long hours at work and almost have neglected families. Formal workplace behavior has been replaced by the informal behavior because workplace has become the place where one spends most of his time. At one hand this is good for companies as they are paying people less for more work and they can keep them work longer hours, but at the same time next generation has been totally lost because of not having their parents with them when they are needed. Even the moms are working full time to get the best education and dresses for their children but they have abandoned them when it comes to their personal and moral training.

So even though the way people communicate in organizations has changed, people are becoming more friendly and interactive, I believe they should not leave their family behind and should give their kids an appropriate time that they need.

Customer Relations

Having a close relationship with customer, their needs and desires, and providing them what they might find interesting has been a major Goal of big organizations on the world. And why wouldnt it be? This is what makes these big companies "Big Companies". For the same purpose companies have come up with sales people trainings before sending them out to the clients. One thing that most of you have noticed is that majority of Sales people are noticeably good looking and handsome. Is it a co-incidence? Not really. If you enter any Express outlet in a mall, or a Diamond Jewelry store, you would certainly see a beautiful female and a very handsome male representatives. And manager as well would be a nicely dressed young male or female person. So even though we think of these things as co-incidences but in reality companies are working hard to attract customers to buy their products by putting attractive, friendly looking representative. And of course this technique has been very successful for them and bringing great business for the company.

Corporate Culture

Most organizations have some traits specific to them. Most of the time they are good but sometime they can be bad as well. Some are directed towards the internal people of the organization and some to the environment external to the organization. We classify these special traits as Corporate culture. Corporate culture usually gives an organization a feel of uniqueness that exists in it. Google, for instance, provides its employees with a lot of fascilities at work that they otherwise would be paying a lot for outside. Laundry service, gym, food, entertainment etc etc. This way employees of Google feel specially treated and feel rewarded for what they do. In return they try to work hard to stay up to the standards of Google. Even because of the same reason, people from all over the world dream to join Google.

So such culture encourages employees to work even harder and at the same time gives them a feel of being rewarded and specially treated.

Challenges to Organizational Identity

Struggle to be heard:

I really find it fascinating the way organizations advertise their products. This is one of the biggest challenges as well that organizations face after manufacturing a product. For instance, Apple-when it came out- wasnt too much in demand, its truggled its way up to the point where it is right now. Now if another company manufactures a product like Apple, they first have to announce it to the world that they exist, secondly they have to convince them that their product is better or equivlent to apple and/or lesser in price. Even then, people dont always go for new things which they have tried before. So this company will certainly have to spend a huge amount of money to advertise their product and stay in market.

Different companies use different tactics in the process of getting themselves heard. Alcohol/Beer companies usually show some beach in their ads plus beautiful girls to give an impression that this is kind of feeling you get if you use our product.

Making long story short, organizations face much difficulty in getting themselves heard and they pay a lot of money just to overcome this problem.

Socialization: A Learning Factor

Every time we join a new organization or change our jobs we go through a similar process every time. Going to work the first day, being a bit nervous about the new environment, looking for a friendly face to start communicating with; all these things happen with almost all of us. The process is known as Socialization. A learning process that helps us blend into a new organization and helps us become a part of working environment. Once we are part of the organization we feel more confident in doing our job and taking even more bold decisions.

Big companies have realized the importance of socialization and hence try to give their employees a very friendly environment so that employees can work to the best of their abilities.

Language and Narratives

While watching a British TV channel or may be an African wildlife documentary , we realize that even though the people are speaking the same language i.e. English, but there is something more to it. Sometimes we are unable to understand what a Program host is saying, and even if sometimes we do understand the meaning of words said, we are still not able to understand why person is saying a word in a specific way. Most of the times when a word is said differently or in a different pitch it can be concluded into many different meanings. For instance take the word "Healthy", now if someone in India is saying this word for someone, he probably means that this other person is too fat, why? because in their culture people don't get enough food to survive, and in this case someone is getting sufficient food for their bodies, they will be considered healthy. Africa and poor countries would fall in the same category.

Now if we look at people from US, we would realize that people who don't have much fats on their body is considered healthy, why? Because the standard of being healthy are different here.

So the point comes down to that it all depends how the languages are understood in different regions of the countries.

And to make things easier and consistent Companies are using standardizes languages like English, Spanish etc.

A New Culture and Me!!!

We usually dont realize the uniqueness of one culture or the core beliefs a culture is based on unless we look from the outside. I, when came to United States, went through a great deal of realization of such differences between my own culture and the one I saw here.

For me I had never seen my mother, sister or even other women from all around the country showing their bodies to stranger men. This idea was like when a woman shows her body out to a stranger, or in this case, a bunch of men, she is seducing them to come closer to her, so that later she can capture them in her sweet talks and make them take her a life partner, so that she has someone to take care of her both financially and physically. For my culture a woman inviting men to her like this is considered a woman without much honor, who lacks the good qualities that she has to get the attention of other men by showing her body, who has gone down to a very low level to attract men towards her. Modest and honorable women would only let people approach them through their parents or guardians, just so that they know if this man is approaching her through a proper channel, he is making it public, he will take the responsibility of providing for her for life, will do justice with her as people are witnessing their marriage and its known that only this man will be the protector, provider and care taker of this woman.


Saying all this, I had a very hard time communicating with fellow students and even colleagues at work. It was too hard for me to accept that how can a woman not know that men are staring at her chest or behind. And if she knows that, why doesn't she cover herself and show her beauty only to her spouse? Bulging out breasts and tight clothing was a major distracting for me in talking to females in United States.


So I believe in my case, the mindset I had and my belief made me act in a certain way in a community and caused communication gap between myself and other member of the society. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, the main purpose, that was studies at college level, and job related work in case of my organization was affected.

So in my experience culture differences are one of the major factors affecting communication in societies.

Analyzing Organizational Communication

Our Textbook lists nine points about analyzing a given topic. I would like to take the second point and discuss that in further. According to the textbook, "An analysis involves selecting or highlighting the most important or most interesting features of the object of analysis".

What I found most important about the organizational Communication is that it combines the thoughts of many minds working in an organization and produces a well polished idea, piece of work, or a product in some cases. In other cases, if the organization is already producing goods or is in business, communication helps conveying messages between the entities of the organization so that desired messages are delivered to the other end and the results can be received as well.

I find the concept of communication itself very interesting and hence when its done to solve a problem or to achieve a purpose, it even becomes more valuable and affective.

Hierarchy in an Organization!

Any organization is ,in fact, a hierarchy. Someone has to be above you and there's bound to be someone below. But the question is that do we really need to have a hierarchy for smooth working conditions? The answer that comes to my mind is "yes". In an organization you need to have someone who'll issue orders and someone who will follow them. The higher you go up the hierarchy the more you will notice that as you go up the less becomes the number of people. This is because if there are too many people to giving out orders there is bound to be some heat as every one would want their orders to be given top priority. If one person gives orders and the rest follow the result be a smoother flow of information and higher productivity. If every one works on the same level there is never going to be any equilibrium and the work would be done in a haphazard manner.

Bureaucracy: The Most Affective Approach?

Now a days all the large companied use Bureaucracy as an Organizational Structure. Question arises "Why"? Answer lies in the fact that Bureaucracy fulfills the need of today's Organizations.
As the size of the organizations have increased the processes and roles have spread as well. Reporting about all the processes and all the operations to one single Authority has become almost impractical. This is why Bureaucracy kick in to make the things easier for an organization. Bureaucracy is a well defined spread out system where authority and status are differentially distributed among different people.

Under Webber's analysis, a bureaucratic organization is governed by the following seven principles:

"

1. official business is conducted on a continuous basis
2. official business is conducted with strict accordance to the following rules:
   1. the duty of each official to do certain types of work is delimited in terms of impersonal criteria
   2. the official is given the authority necessary to carry out his assigned functions
   3. the means of coercion at his disposal are strictly limited and conditions of their use strictly defined
3. every official's responsibilities and authority are part of a vertical hierarchy of authority, with respective rights of supervision and appeal
4. officials do not own the resources necessary for the performance of their assigned functions but are accountable for their use of these resources
5. official and private business and income are strictly separated
6. offices cannot be appropriated by their incumbents (inherited, sold, etc.)
7. official business is conducted on the basis of written documents" *1

So in my opinion now a days Bureaucracy is the most practical structure any Organization can use.



*1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy

Webber's Charismatic Authority: My Dad's Company

I find Webber's observation about Charismatic Authority very interesting. Because apparently its one of the most affective form of authority I have ever seen. People inspired by one leader, one person who they love and trust to lead them right, one person who doesn't even force people to do certain things, yet get that to be done.

My father runs a small company, an Industrial lights distribution firm, and he has 4-5 people working for him. I sometime communicate these people and I was so much amazed to know their behavior for my father. It was like I am not his son but they were, as if they were not his employees but people who would stand for him no matter what. Even one of them fought with someone just because they were trying to harm my fathers business.

Later I wondered how come my father has made such a great impact on them and have completely won their hearts, that now they dont even care about anything else but just work for me father as faithful followers. Then instead of asking my dad I observed his attitude with them. For my amazement I learned that he even scolds them, sometimes get harsh with them as well, and even asks them to stay late sometimes but then I realized that its just that he treats them like a family, cares about their social and financial problems. Also make them sit with him and eat lunch, discuss with them if everyone's family is doing ok.

So I believe for a small organization where you know all the employees this way is very affective and can bring you happy employees and good business at the same time.

My Understanding of Organizational Structure

Sometimes when we work in an organization, we dont even think about so many things that create the atmosphere we work in. Basically that environment is the structure of our organization. Things that are predefined for us to follow. I never thought that why cant I report to my team members instead of my manager or why my manager does not take orders from the janitor. Why accounting people dont share their numbers with software developers and why reporting people dont care what kind of equipment has been used for routing the network Traffic. The answer is that our organization already has a structure defined that explains how and in what heirarchy things are interconnected and what sequence we have to follow to maintains our organization's productivity and stability. Else we would be having a new way of escalating the problems everyday and that would create a great difficulty. To avoid the same, every organization works according to a structure that keeps the things in order so that the organization can actually work toward earning profits.

Web Meetings and Desktop Sharing

One thing that fascinates me so much in the world of communication technologies is desktop sharing. I am sitting at home, logged in to a website where I can see a bunch of people already present and attending a meeting. In that meeting host is sharing his or her laptop and everyone can see the demonstration of new product their company is about to launch. Or in another case, a System administrator logged into a client's machine and troubleshooting it from another country. Few years ago it was just like a myth, accessing a system from a distance, but science has made it a reality. Even I can access my personal computer from work when its sitting on my study table in my apartment.

Such great inventions have provided the organizations to work a lot more efficiently and even organizations train their employees using net based educational sessions. Many softwares are present in the market that allow the user to access computer from a distant place and view contents of another users on their own desktop screen.

I consider it a great step in the life of Organizational Development that will open many new horizons for Businessmen to improve and expand their businesses.

Conference Call: Another Amazing Mode of Communication

Most of us are used to of attending Conferences calls at workplace. One person is calling from China, other from India, another from France and few are sitting in the conference room discussing how to improve the company performance all around the world. Earlier companies used to spend a lot of money on travel expenses for their employees, just so that they can travel to different countries of the world and have meetings with people to share their thoughts and ideas. Now, science has made this so easy that important issues are being discussed in the meetings over the phone and we barely see people flying to other countries for that purpose anymore except its really necessary.

So in my opinion, Conference call is one of the very useful invention of Science.

Speed: An Intriguing Factor of Communication Technologies

The word "communication technology" brings to our minds a plethora of images but one image that persists is that of a work table having a computer and a telephone on it. In today's fast paced life style it is not only the technology that matters but its speed too. Imagine living without instant messaging, text messaging, mobile phones and high speed internet, it would surely seem like a strenuous living to us.

Speed counts when you are working be it a multinational firm or other wise. Without a high speed internet connection the work will be too much and the wait too long. Even if we do not acknowledge it, these things do have a strong hold over us. Internet helps us in collecting, monitoring and processing a vast amount of data enabling us to give the world on our fingertips within a millisecond.

My work as an Administrator means that i have respond to a query as soon as i can or it might result in a huge loss. People get an instant solution to their problems and i get the gratification of not having to make one wait to provide a solution.

E-Commerce and E-Business (A New way of doing Business)

Who wouldn't want to sell their product to the whole world instead of just one market or group of customers? World Wide Web has given business a new meaning. Manufacturers are now targeting the customers all around the world instead of marketing their product to one geographical region. Also the way people used to buy products of their needs have changed. The notion of sitting in one's house and buying the product of their own choice from a variety of products has been so attractive to the customers. Now people are not stuck to just one or two malls, but now they can look around whole world and see whats in fashion right now and from where they can get it the cheapest.

Internet has made shopping so easy and convenient that even if people dont want to buy stuff online, they atleast shop around to see different choices they have regarding their desired product.

So I would say E-Commerce certainly has made a great impact both on sellers and buyers in ways that are beneficial to both.

Telephones (Can We Imagine a Life Without Them?)

The obvious answer will be, "Of course Not". I remember the time of Katrina when I was in Mississippi. The impact in Mississippi wasnt as bad as New Orleans Louisiana, but was enough to drive people out of their towns. No electricity, no food, no water, no gas and above all no telephones were working at that time. After the hurricane all the phone services went down. There was no mode of communication between outer world and the people stuck in the affected areas. At that time I really understood the importance of telephone in my life.

Organizations now a day would feel the same way if they have an outage of phone lines for just one day. I work as an Administrator at a multinational company and our major mode of communication among all the clients and company personals is mainly telephone and email. Most of our clients are outside of US and we provide them services by calling them or sending them an email. Even a one day outage of phone lines will stop our support for all the clients and affect business greatly, resulting in a major loss for the company.

In short, even though we take technology for granted but we do feel the importance of it when we are deprived of it.

Company's business depends upon how well are we able to communicate with them and provide them with good services.

Economic Globalization

What is Economic Globalization and what are its benefits.

Economic Globalization is the process of increasing economic integration between two or more countries, converting them to a one bigger market where the investors can invest their money and gain higher profits.

"Terry Flew puts forth that globalization is one of the widely used concepts in social theory today. According to Flew, globalization is defined as a "term used to both describe and make sense of a series of interrelated processes such as the rise of multinational corporations". It is also a widely used term in the areas of international production, trade and financial systems,and the increase in the multiculturalism of societies." *1

Of course the most apparent benefit is that we can have a larger market to sell our products and even buy them on a competitive price, in return bringing money to the country. Secondly providing a bigger product line for manufacturers so that they can produce something that is not needed in their own country but has demand in other. etc.

*1 Source: Wikipedia

Organizational Ethics

When we talk about Organizational Ethics, We look up to the CEO's and higher personal in an organization to set the standards. Because these standards are the factors that will help the employees in that organization to feel secure and contented. And if thats the case then of course satisfied employees turn out to be more productive and profiting for an organization.

What falls under organizational ethics? Well if one asks me I would mention few of the things from an employee point of view.

1. Organizations should treat the employees as a resource and not to exploite him
2. Managers, and high personals such as CEO's should not be biased towards a specific person for any given reason.
3. CEO's and higher personals should give preference to the organizational benefits and not to their own personal interests.

There is much more than this but I believe these are very few points that make the back bone of a growing productive organization.

Ethical/Unethical

We all know the incidence of Napster being shut down in 2002. Was it doing an unethical thing by providing people a platform for sharing files? Or was it unethical that the files were music files to be more specific?

I believe that all of this depends upon who has the power and who hasn't. In my opinion napster provided a platform, or may be a community where people were able to share their "stuff". Now if we go to facebook or youtube, thats happening opening, even copyrighted material has been published without and hesitation and no one has any problem about that. But as it just impacted the business of some major companies they made it unethical and filed a law suite against them.

At the end it all boils down to who has power and resources to rule over other. If napster was big enough to fight for its service, it wouldn't have been out of business now.

Business Ethics: Does it Exist?

Business Ethics:

Now a day we hear this term a lot, “Business Ethics”. That the companies should follow Business Ethics in their dealings. Now the question arises that does this thing actually exists in reality or not? If yes then who make the standards that this thing is ethical and this is not? Above all who in the organization keeps track of it that all the dealings/operations taking place in the organization are ethical or not?

Theoretically yes. Business Ethics does exist but most of the time it’s the CEO’s of the company who decide whats ethical for their company and what not. Currently there are many well known companies who hire people with no immigration status. Just because they make their business grow and bring them dollars; they don’t care about the ethics. All what matters to them is the profit of the company.

So in my opinion, Business Ethics is there but organizations themselves define the boundaries of being ethical according to the percentage of their profits.

Communication in Global Context

We have been talking about the economical, financial and political aspects of Globalization but I believe that social aspect is as important as all other aspects. People from different parts of the world carry different norms and different mindsets to deal with organizational matters and hence difference of situation. Sometimes something very common to one employee of a company may sound totally unacceptable to another.

"Hello Ali, Tonight you would be going to this cocktail party organized by ABC Investments and there you will be meeting Miss Lisa Joly. She would be explaining to you the financial reports of last quarter of ABC investments"

"But Mr. Manager I dont drink as its not allowed in my religion and I do not feel comfortable going to a party where alcohol is served."

"Thats not my problem, if you cannot attend the gatherings where our business flourishes then consider yourself out."

More or less all the big organizations are currently reaping the benefits of outsourcing and globalization; but with that comes the communication and cultural gaps that sometimes create a not so friendly and sometimes even depressing situation for employees. Most of the time this is overlooked and hence employee have hard times staying in such an organization and they fail to give the 100 % performance.

Role and Importance of Theories in an Organization

Importance of Theory:

To learn the importance of theories lets first understand what they actually are.

According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia, “Theories are constructed in order to explain, predict and master phenomena (e.g. inanimate things, events, or the behavior of animals). In many instances we are constructing models of reality. A theory makes generalizations about observations and consists of an interrelated, coherent set of ideas and models.”

Theories don’t always cover the specific details but more often describe the generalized model to explain how the process takes place in an environment (in our case, organization). We can say that theories talk about the universality instead of particularity.

Our book mentions about the formal theories that these are something researchers develop over time to make sense of various aspects of this world such as how the governments of UK of USA work.

Now coming down to the importance of Theory in terms of an Organization:

There are various questions mentioned in the textbook that theories try to answer regarding Organizational Communication. These are as follow:

What happens when people come together to create a new organization?

How can the members of an organization work together effectively?

How should an organization be governed, managed and led?

What values should an organization embody and promote?

What is good organizational communication?

Looking at these questions we understand how important is the role of a theory in achieving the goals of an organization in a convenient way. Without a well established and non practical theory it can become very hard to govern the productive growth of an organization.

Organizational Communication

First thought that comes to our minds when thinking about Organizational Communication is how people interact within an organization. But the reality is a bit broader. An organizations success relies on how efficiently its people are able to communicate with each other and deliver the message across so that the tasks are not misunderstood and done inefficiently. Organizational communication also plays a great role in building bridges between the outer world and the company itself. Bringing more business by communicating with the clients and customers is one of the key aspect of earning the business.

Another aspect of Organizational Communication is satisfying human relationships. That how good a person feels at a work place and how it affects its working skills. Many people hate to go to work place just because of the way how people communicate with them or make them feel depressed.

Things affecting organizational communication:

There are few things that analysts have noticed that could affect the production of an organization:


1- Differences in Background
2- Levels of Communication

Hopefully we will discuss these aspects in a little more details as we move further.

SJSU

My first blog. I will be posting here very soon.