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.