New Logics of Organizing

Chapter 11: Working with Integrity

The text outlines that the underlying logic of organizing has changed. No longer can organizing be taken for granted or hierarchies be seen as natural. Empowerment must be taken into account. Nowadays there is a great need within organizations to understand how changes in diversity have created the need for new communications strategies. With a new flatter global economy and work teams that may be seperated by oceans and cultures, companies have had to evolve their strategies and change the way they organize.

Ian Lennie aruges that organizing management favorably compares to poetry. Like poetry, management needs to be organized less by literal language and rationality and more by story and metaphor.

I believe that this part of the chapter is significant because it offers a clear view of how the changing dynamics of the world have created the need to change the way we think. Interpretation here is key. Organizations must be aware that cultural differences and the changing deemographics of the work world have brought new interpretations beyond the classic organization as machine model. Modern managers must be aware of how relationships, issues, and challenges change interpretations within the office.

Strategic Alignment

Chapter 10: Organizational Alignment

Strategic alignment is when companies or organizations modify their processes, hierarchies, trainings, or reward systems to better suit their new competitive strategies. It is necessary for a company to pursue strategic alignment in order to convince the public, inside and out, that their changes are organizational-wide and represent a new "way of doing things" within the company. An organization can communicate their message on only a superficial level unless effective changes are made. Without strategic alignment, an organization's attempt to convince customers or members of their new emphasis on service may fall on deaf ears when human resources does not return calls to employees or customer service remains inadequately staffed.

My experience with strategic alignment has been almost exclusively within political campaigns. Ineffective press outreach and plodding field campaigns have been the most obvious reasons for campaigns to hire new staff, argue that they are changing the scope and direction, and putting out a press blitz to highlight their strategic alignment. This has normally followed complaints from "political insiders" who feel that they have no had enough say in the campaign's structure or direction. These strategic alignments have mostly caused changes in strategy, staffing, and structure leading outside figures to believe that major shakeups have created a new vision for a struggling campaign.

Habits of Mind

Chapter 9: Communicating Leadership

According to the text, habits of mind are "patterned ways of thinking that define how a person approaches issues and conceives alternative ways of resolving or dealing with them." This can be a tough concept to interpret but Robert Quinn does a good job at simplifying it. Simply put, a leader should be mentally and emotionally flexible. In his research he has found that the strongest leaders do not copy other styles yet are flexible enough to take in "outside signals or stimuli" and are able to adapt to changes. Once managers' are able to get past their comfort zones and begin to be results driven according to Quinn they can begin to "perform and communicate as a leader."

I don't think there is any doubt that the most effective leaders in an organizational setting are those that remain flexible. Effective leaders have a unique style but are also open to new ideas. If necessary they can leave their comfort zones in order to implement new methods of increasing productivity or improving morale. A great leader must have the patience to "suspend" and be able to sit back and analyze a problem. Avoiding the knee jerk reactions marks the great leader from the normal middle manager. An effective manager sees the proverbial forest from the trees and understands that reaching most organization-wide goals takes time and energy.

Models of Democracy

Democracy & Dialogue Web Lecture

The web lecture lays out the different models of democracy. The procedural model consists of the basic fundamental rights necessary for any functional democracy. A competitive model has candidates vying for votes against each other to hold public office. The participatory model brings the people into it a common example being the town hall style meeting. Deliberative democracy is a model based on rational debate while the dialogic model recognizes the importance of people's emotions. Each model has their own weaknesses as on their own they can all result in serious difficulties for a functioning democracy.

Each of these models can be used in order to create a more democratic and open workplace. As in the real world these models can also lead to significant issues. Creating a participatory organization may make your employees or members feel more involved or of a greater use but it also can slow down the work process and hurt producitivity. A dialogic model may humanize and otherwise mechanical and coldly rational organization but there are serious issues with bringing to much emotion into an orgazination; this may lead to hurt feelings or a clouding of the organization's original goals. In my experience these models work much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is not necessarily and evolution of ideas but a working towards an ultimate goal of including all of the models together as seemlessly as possible. A workplace or organization that can involve small pieces of each model is more likely to have a functioning democracy of ideas and a truly open system for communication.

Democracy in the Workplace

Chapter 8: Teams and Networks

Stan Deetz's multiple stakeholder model is concerned with creating a democratic dialogue within organizations pushing them to listen to the concerns not just of shareholders or members of the board but all levels of staff and even the community. With this theory Deetz is attempting to create a model in which organizations will take heed that their decisions can impact the community and the world at large and try to think about these concerns when performing their service. By creating a workplace of owners, integrating management with work, distributing information throughout the organization, and facilitating a social structure from the bottom, Deetz believes organizations can become more democratic and town-hall like.

Reading about Deetz's theory I was most intrigued by how the diffusing of information horizontally across an organization can make it more open and democratic. We live in the information age, like never before the standard "information is power" rings especially true. As with a diffusing of power, information that is spread throughout the organization is a form of empowerment. Employees that are allowed into the decision making process and feel just as important and included as management make for better workers. In Deetz's model, empowerment of one's employees is the key to a healthy democratic and service conscious organization.

Organizing Difference in Organizations

Chapter 7: Identity and Difference in Organizational Life

Further defining how organizations can control and mold their members identities the book describes several practices such as directly defining, defining a person by defining others, providing for a specific vocabulary, explicating morals, knowledge and skills, group categorization, hierarchical location, making a distinct set of rules, and defining the context. Identities are created through things as different as simply being promoted to management, having a reputation for working well with others, or just having a nice office location. Through these things members of an organization will communicate differently with their peers or superiors.

By promoting hard working staff, moving offices, or forcing people to work in cohesive units an office helps to create and facilitate new identities. These attempts are not always successful and can result in some push back by the organization's members. Members may believe that they are more productive or better communicators than their superiors which can ultimately cause an organization-wide identity crisis. In the majority of places I have worked at this has become an issue. When members of the organization are promoted that are deemed by their peers to be undeserving or even worse manipulative and scheming, the result is a drastic loss in morale and the need for a reaffirmation of the organization's goals by management. It has been my experience that while an organization needs to be proactive in creating identities that are not based upon things like gender, race, or class it can go to far and stifle individuality or even just fail to identify the right people to raise up.

Virtual or Real Communication?

Technology & Teams Online Lecture

Where is the line drawn between real and virtual communication? Is there even truly a difference between the two? These are the questions our online lecture this week presents to us. Being able to manage your relationships, either of a work or personal variety, creates an overlap between the supposed virtual and real worlds that blurs any line that may or may not exist. Essentially if teenagers are using the “virtual” world to “begin, maintain, and end” romantic relationships then there can be no real line between the two forms of communication.

Most romantic relationships that I have noticed among people my age have one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. I rely extensively on instant messaging and text messaging with my girlfriend since we are both often too busy to be able to see each other on a daily basis. Instead of being able to have that time at home with each other we supplement our personal time by communicating through a medium that is hardly of a virtual nature for us. When I was organizing the medium I used almost exclusively was email in order to coordinate between different affiliates in order to meet project goals. No longer was face to face contact necessary, through our communication technologies we used email to facilitate contact, organize and set goals, and make timelines in order to get our organizing drives off the ground. I argue that there is no longer any need to argue between what’s real and virtual, much like the online lecture proposes the line has become so blurred as to be rendered meaningless.