Organizational culture theory pacanowsky and o donnell trujillo

COMMUNICATION THEORY

Week 2: Introduction to Organizational Communication

Commentary

In Week 1, we learned communication is a dynamic and ever-changing process of attempting to

construct shared realities through shared meaning. When the process occurs between two people with

some type of ongoing relationship, we call the process interpersonal communication. When the process

occurs among several people, we are describing group communication. When large numbers of people

are involved, it is either public (rhetorical) or mass (mediated) communication.

Organizational communication is the process through which organizations create and shape events

(Shockley-Zalabak, 2002). It is similar to the other types of communication reviewed in this course. It has

sources and receivers who are engaged in the encoding and decoding of messages. It has messages that

are transmitted over channels distorted by noise. And its effectiveness is related to the competencies of

the individuals involved, their fields of experience, the communicative context, and the effects of their

interactions. However, organizational communication is distinct from other forms in that it is more than

the sum of the daily interactions of individuals. Goldhaber (1993) describes an organization as a “living,

open system connected by the flow of information between and among people who occupy various

roles and positions” (p. 11). In this view, organizations are defined by their process of communication.

Miller (1995) says five features of communication are important to understanding how this happens:

 Communication occurs in a social collectivity;

 Communication is a process that it is continuous and complex; it cannot be arbitrarily isolated;

 Communication is transactional;

 Communication is symbolic; and

 Communication is intentional

Miller concludes:

Studying organization communication requires looking at how communication processes

contribute to the coordination of behavior in working toward organizational and individual

goals. Such a study also points our attention to the impact of structure and power on

communication and to influences both within and outside organizational boundaries. Studying

organizational communication also highlights the multiple interpretations that symbols might

manifest as well as the impact of history and various organizational constituents on the

communication process. (p. 19)

In other words, organizations do not just exist and communication is not something “inside” them that

we study. Organizations are created through communication. Since our individual communications

reflect our different values, motivations, abilities, resources, and so on, organizations are not neutral

structures that exist apart from human activity. They are the visible manifestation of the human activity

of communication. As such, organizations are dynamic mergers of human behaviors and technological

operations. Eisenberg (2009) defines organizational communication as “the process by which language

and social interaction promotes coordinated action toward a common goal” (p. 701).

Organizational Culture

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Try to recall your first day on a job or in school. You were probably a bit bewildered by all of the new

people, places, and practices. No doubt you established a relationship with someone who could explain

the rules of your new environment—how to dress, whom to know and especially, whom to avoid. This is

an understandable attempt to make sense of your new environment.

Every social institution has its rules for speech and behavior. Some of the rules are written down, such

as in an employee manual. Many others, however, are unwritten. Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1984)

explored the rules for speech and behavior within social institutions in his Structuration Theory.

Structuration, he says, allows people to understand their patterns of behavior by understanding the

structures of their social system. It is “the process by which systems are produced and reproduced

through members’ use of rules and resources,” according to Poole, Seibold, & McPhee (1985, p. 102).

Rules (stated and unstated) govern how an organization and the individuals within it communicate. In

turn, the systems (groups, organizations) that people function in will also change based on how we

communicate and use rules.

 Groups and organizations are produced and reproduced through actions and behaviors.

 Communication rules serve as both the medium for, and an outcome of, interactions.

 Power structures are present in organizations and guide the decision-making process.

According to Giddens, structure is the medium and the outcome of action. It also enables action. Please watch this video of Professor Matt Koschmann, of the University of Colorado Boulder, explaining how organizational culture affects organizational communication:

“What is Organizational Communication” < insert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5oXygLGMuY&t=309s >

The transcript can be found at http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/740670_369364a68a154f929ed9cce8d15b4727.pdf

The mortar that holds all organizations together is communication. Organizational communication is

the exchange of oral, written, electronic, and nonverbal messages among individuals working within an

identified and structured organization to accomplish a common mission and to work on tasks and set

goals that move the organization toward its mission. This definition includes most of the activities that

occur in the workplace. Similar organizational communication processes take place regardless of

whether the organization is a business, a government agency, or a non-profit organization. For the

purpose of this module, we will focus our discussion on organizational communication applied to

business and the workplace.

Communication in organizations often is one of the most significant challenges facing businesses and the

individuals who work in them. Barriers to effective communication are always there when individuals

are brought together to operate as an organizational unit. Assumptions about the other people or the

goals of the company can be wrong. Closed communication channels can obstruct the free flow of

information. Conflicts involving perception of authority or territory can inhibit the exchange of

messages. Resistance to change and reluctance to receive new ideas can be obstructive to

communication and organizational progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5oXygLGMuY&t=309s
http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/740670_369364a68a154f929ed9cce8d15b4727.pdf
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All organizations—businesses, government agencies, associations, etc.—have at the core a central

structure that is established to regulate how the organization operates, including how, when, and with

whom communication takes place. In other words, organizations, by their very nature, are bureaucratic.

The leadership in all organizations exerts a varying degree of control over all the operations, the

hierarchy of individual participants, and the internal and external communication undertaken by all

participants. Theorists studying bureaucracy have continued to increase our understanding about how

organizations and organizational leadership really work, and how the nature of organizations and

organizational leadership is changing in the face of rapid advancement in communication technologies.

Categories of Authority and Control

These researchers have been able to categorize how authority and control occur in organizations as

follows:

Charismatic authority structure derives from the personal qualities of a single leader, such

as expertise, knowledge, vision, values, and communication skills.

Traditional authority is the product of the shared recognition of and adherence to

authority based upon history, succession, and canons.

Rational-legal authority arises from rules, policies, procedures, laws and other like ways of

conferring power.

All communication within organizations, and between organizations and the outside world, occurs

within the context of some form and combination of the above leadership structures. Therefore, the

type of leadership that the organization is built around colors all organizations' communication. These

classical theories of organizational leadership and structure have contributed to the establishment and

conservation of the closed system of organizational management, which has its roots in the industrial

revolution, and became the norm throughout most of the twentieth century.

The closed system of organizational structure is highly effective when the same product or service is

produced time and again, and where precision is the most important goal of the organization.

Individuals working in these organizations perform as "human machines," contributing to the smooth

and efficient operation of the system, and are expected to be compliant and cooperative—to "do their

part" so that all the parts fit correctly together to form the desired end product of the organization.

Communication in a closed system is mostly one way, from the top down, and its goal is to pass just

enough information down the line to enable the "business machine" to continue to operate smoothly.

This classical "mechanical" approach to organizational communication limits individual information

sharing and relegates the majority of workers to faceless impersonal parts of the overall operation.

When the majority of workers were serving the production lines of the industrial revolution, this form

of organizational structure might have made sense. Today, the majority of workers are appropriately

categorized as knowledge workers. The larger numbers of college-educated and white-collar workers

and the nature of the "product" of business have changed the complexion of how organizations are

structured. Even many of the formerly "blue-collar" jobs now require the operation of sophisticated

computer-robotic controlled-equipment and processes, to such an extent that a growing number of

these people can also be designated as knowledge workers.

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Open System Organizational Structures

This progression toward a knowledge worker-dominated workforce has given birth to a new form of

organizational structure called open systems. Open systems are organizational structures that allow,

and encourage, the free movement of energy, the free flow of ideas, and the unfettered two-way flow

of communication to and among all levels and all participants. An open system puts the highest value on

knowledge, innovation, and creativity, viewing the resultant knowledge base as its most valuable asset.

Open systems encourage communication in the ongoing effort to solidify and increase this asset. Open

systems champion diversity among workers, and support individual education and advancement as

being equally valuable to the organization. The knowledge generated by such worker activities as taking

college courses and attending professional workshops, performing community service, and professional

association membership and collaboration, all enhance the organization's knowledge-asset value by

supporting an ongoing influx of additional expertise and new ideas. Open systems also increase

employee morale, altitudes of participatory ownership in the "product," and tend to garner loyalty to

the organization.

The emerging open system organizational structures—and variations on this theme being attempted by

government agencies in an effort to become more productive and competitive with the private sector—

have created a school of theorists who are striving to develop a new theory of organizational leadership

science. This new school of organizational communication theory is attempting to bridge organizational

structure and the revolutionary advances in science and technology by drawing from scientific models

coming out of quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology to overturn earlier forms of organizational

structures and communication. Wheatley (1992), who studies the evolution of open system structures

and the communication channels that arise parallel to open systems, says the relationship between

people and organizations has changed in large part due to the emergence of knowledge workers.

Because the heart of how organizations operate and develop lies in communication, the realm of the

communication professional has expanded to include analysis and intervention activities within the

organizational milieu.

Models of Organizational Communication

The nature of business "product" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has become

information, with the majority of workers evolving into principally knowledge workers—the creators,

processors, and transmitters of information. Just as the closed system of organizational structure grew

out of the needs and mechanization of the Industrial Age, today the open system of organizational

structure is becoming the norm. Communication is the fuel that enables open system organizations to

operate, grow, and prosper. In fact, the value of information and communication to the open system is

incorporated into its organizational or corporate culture. Organizational culture is the social glue that

holds an organization together, consisting of shared values and beliefs, and shared understanding of the

organization's goals and mission. Communication methods and systems that work well for one company

may be an utter disaster for another, due in large extent to differences in organizational cultures.

Organizational culture can be deconstructed into the following basic components (Geertz, 1973):

Values: Goals, ideas, and philosophies that an organization holds as important and

essential to its operation and survival.

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Rites and rituals: The activities that define the important and/or mission-critical issues in

an organization.

Role models: Key participants in an organization who have achieved success in advocating

and advancing the culture of an organization.

Communication: The systems and networks that carry messages within the organization,

and between the organization and the rest of the world.

Norms: Social, personal and organizational standards and procedures for getting things

done within that specific organizational structure.

History: Stories, legends, and retold experiences that convey the important events in the

history of the organization.

Climate: The general attitude or environmental "tone" that is formed by the way the

participants interact with one another and with the outside world.

Members of an organization bond through these performances, a metaphor suggesting that

organizational life is like a theater presentation:

 Ritual Performances - Regular and recurring presentations in the workplace.

 Passion Performances - Organizational stories that employees share with one another.

 Social Performances - Organizational behaviors intended to demonstrate cooperation and

politeness with others.

 Political Performances - Organizational behaviors that demonstrate power or control.

 Enculturation Performances - Organizational behaviors that assist employees in discovering

what it means to be a member of an organization.

(Ritual performances include personal rituals, things you routinely do at the workplace; task rituals, the

routines associated with a particular job; social rituals, those routines that involve relations with others

in the workplace; and organizational rituals, which are routines that pertain to the overall organization.)

It is through these "performances" that members of an organization create and maintain a shared sense

of reality (Tracy, 2009). This reality shapes the values they share and understand. Different organizations

have different organizational realities. Because of this, the actions performed by members of an

organization are interpreted differently depending on the organization. Different organizations use

different symbols. Common symbols in the workplace are:

 Physical Symbols: Material objects including logos, design, decor, and even buildings.

 Behavioral Symbols: Rewards and punishments, rituals, traditions, ceremonies, and customs.

 Verbal Symbols: Jargon, names and nicknames, jokes, stories, history, and metaphors.

Studying organizational culture is an effort to understand how an organization and its participants view

themselves as a collective whole. These organizational culture components provide the basis for making

activities within the organization effective and meaningful. Organizational culture is at once the

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substance of how communication is structured and the context from which message meaning can be

extracted. Effective communication in open systems is based upon a cultural climate that includes the

following:

Supportiveness: Participants, regardless of organizational rank, provide psychological

support to one another.

Decision-making: Decision-making is participatory, with everyone having opportunities to

contribute to the formulation of decisions that affect them.

Openness: Free, candid, honest, and open communication is practiced by and available to

everyone.

Credibility: The organization places a high value on, and expectation of, integrity on the

part of all of its members and the organization itself.

Innovation and knowledge: The organization places a very high value on knowledge and

innovation, and rewards the same regardless of the relative ranking of the member

showing such initiative.

Performance: The overall expectation from the organization of its members stretches

beyond the stated goals and average performance toward always striving for a shared

"ideal" or vision.

The flow and reception of information and messages is multidirectional within an open system

organization. Unlike the limited and top-down communication flow of the classical closed system,

participants in an open system organization are always striving to keep the flow of information and

communication as a dynamic balance among:

 Downward: Messages from superiors to subordinates, such as job instructions, work rationale

(why tasks must be performed), procedures, performance evaluations, and mission

indoctrination.

 Upward: Messages from subordinates to superiors, task problems, information about

coworkers, understanding and contributing to policies, contributing to innovation and

improvements, and reports on progress and goal accomplishments.

 Horizontal: Messages transmitted between colleagues at the same hierarchical level in the

organization, such as discussions about problem solving, innovation and task improvement, task

coordination, coordination between teams or departments, conflict resolution, morale building,

social interaction, and mission reinforcement.

In an organization characterized by multidirectional communication and information flow, hierarchies

collapse toward a more functional one in which rank and authority are fluid, depending more upon task

and knowledge requirements than bureaucratically assigned job titles and job descriptions. Positions of

authority are built upon knowledge and communication skills rather than management titles. External

communication in open system organizations—that is, communication between the organization and

other organizations or the public—tends to become fluid and situational as well. The individuals most

capable of representing the organization change depending upon the knowledge and information the

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organization wants to communicate. In other words, situational knowledge becomes an important and

highly valued part of an open system organization's strategic communication.

Electronic communication, while increasing the amount of information available to all levels of and all

participants in an organization, also increases the complexity of an organization's operations. Thus, the

same technologies that aid in equalizing participation and enhancing the open system nature of an

organization at the same time force the organization to value more highly those participants with

greater communication and information technology skills and abilities. This places any communication

technology have nots at a clear disadvantage.

Organizational Information Theory

Organizations often have to find creative ways to present information, much of which is equivocal or

ambiguous. Indeed, Weick (1995) says the main activity of organizations is the process of making sense

of equivocal and ambiguous information:

 Human organizations exist in an information environment. This is not referring to a physical

environment but rather the various stimuli and messages that all organizations encounter.

Today's society has offered us many outlets (electronic and otherwise) to receive information.

Therefore, it is important that members of an organization create and maintain an information

environment because without current information and an accurate interpretation of that

information, especially in today's information-bombarded society, an organization will fall

behind.

 The information an organization receives differs in terms of equivocality. Equivocality means

that something has multiple meanings, which can be confusing in an environment where it's

necessary to have a level of clarity about the information being shared and processed. Since

members of an organization have different amounts of knowledge and different abilities when it

comes to interpreting information, said information is often understood in multiple ways.

 Human organizations engage in information processing to reduce the equivocality of

information.

According to Weick, making sense of equivocal messages involves three Stages of Reducing

Equivocality:

 Enactment: any type of action gains more information than no action at all, and thus it is

important for an organization to do something instead of allowing ambiguous information to

pass by. This basically means that the organization has to choose an interpretation of the

information.

 Selection: organizations must select the best process for gathering information. In other words,

the information seeks out extra information to help clear up the ambiguity of existing

information.

 Retention: organizations must use their accumulated knowledge in order to make

knowledgeable decisions. Retention is necessary to avoid repeating mistakes, and it allows for

knowing what is successful.

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Information moves through cycles or a series of communication behaviors that serve to reduce

equivocality:

 Act: communication behaviors indicating a person's ambiguity in receiving a message

 Response: reaction to equivocality (serves to provide the clarity which is being sought in the act)

 Adjustment: organizational responses to equivocality

Organizations have explicit or implicit rules or guidelines for analyzing messages and responding to them

(help to reduce equivocality):

 Duration: organizational rule stating that decisions regarding equivocality should be made in the

least amount of time

 Personnel: organizational rule stating that the most knowledgeable workers should resolve

equivocality

 Success: organizational rule stating that a successful plan of the past will be used to reduce

current equivocality

 Effort: organizational rule stating that decisions regarding equivocality should be made with the

least amount of work

Summary

The essence of organizational life is found it its culture, a word that in this case refers to a way of living

in an organization, not the races, ethnicities, or backgrounds of the individuals within the organization.

Organizational culture includes emotional and psychological climate or atmosphere (morale, attitudes,

and levels of productivity) as well as the symbols (artifacts, actions, routines, conversations, and so on)

and the meanings that people attach to these symbols. The members of an organization create cultural

meaning and understanding through communication.

Some of the Communication Theories You Should Investigate This Week, Classified by Context

Context Theory Explanation Author Tradition Approach to Knowing

Organizational Communication

Organizational Culture

This theory contends that people are like animals who are suspended in webs that they created. Theorists in this tradition argue that an organization’s culture is

Geertz, Pacanowsky, O’Donnell- Trujillo

Socio- Cultural

Positivistic/Empirical

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composed of shared symbols, each of which has a unique meaning. Organizational stories, rituals, and rites of passage are examples of what constitutes the culture of an organization.

Organizational Information Theory

This theory argues that the main activity of organizations is the process of making sense of equivocal information. Organizational members accomplish this sense- making process through enactment, selection, and retention of information. Organizations are successful to the extent that they are able to reduce equivocality through these means.

Weick Cybernetic Positivistic/Empirical

Structuration Theory

Groups and organizations create

Giddens, Poole, Seibold,

Cybernetic Positivistic/Empirical

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structures, which can be interpreted as an organization’s rules and resources. These structures, in turn, create social systems in an organization. Structuration theorists posit that groups and organizations achieve a life of their own because of the way their members utilize their structures. Power structures guide the decision- making taking place in groups and organizations.

McPhee, Bowlby

Fig. 1

Keywords

Organizational communication theories, organizational communication competence, organizational

culture theory, organizational co-orientation theory, organizational control theory, organizational

information theory, adaptive structuration theory, structuration theory , systems theory, cybernetics

References

Eisenberg, E. (2009). Organizational communication theories. In S. W. Littlejohn and K. A. Foss

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of communication theory (Vol. 1, pp. 701-705). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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Giddons, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Goldhaber, G. (1993). Communication in organizations. Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: West.

Miller, K. (1995). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Pacanowsky, M., & O’Donnell-Trujillo, N. (1988). Communication in the empowering organization. In J.

Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 11 (pp. 356-379.) Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Pacanowsky, M., & O’Donnell-Trujillo, N. (1983). Organizational communication as cultural performance.

Communication Monographs 50, 127-147.

Poole, M. S., Seibold, D. R., & McPhee, R. D. (1985). Group decision-making as a structurational process.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 71, 74-102.

Shockley-Zalabak, P. (2002). Fundamentals of organizational communication (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn

and Bacon.

Tracy, S. J. (2009). Organizational culture. In S. W. Littlejohn and K. A. Foss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of

communication theory (Vol. 1, pp. 714-7166). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Wheatley, M. J. (1992). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly