Week 11 — Participation, Democracy, and Teamwork
Chapter 8, Teams and Networks: Communication and Collaborative Work, discusses some more recent research and theory about organizational communication and focuses explicitly on engagement and participation in organizations. These theories require that we change, fundamentally, how we think about the relationship between members of organizations and the organization itself. Theories we discussed earlier focuses on the familiar structures of organizations such as hierarchies, and here, we are asked to think about what happens when workplaces operate more democratically. Doing so requires that we rethink employees’ responsibilities as well as the organizations’.
Deetz, democracy, and engagement
The chapter starts off with an overview of the multiple-stakeholder model (Deetz 1995; pp. 225–227 in our book). We encountered Deetz earlier when we first encountered critical studies. Here, the multiple-stakeholder model breaks from earlier models by arguing that organizations should consider the interests beyond their shareholders’. The model argues that decisions with broad impact on the environment and individuals ought to include those individuals and their environment in the decision-making rather than leaving decisions up to a central authority such as a CEO or board of directors alone. In order to democratize organizational decision-making, Deetz suggests four courses of action (quoted from the textbook):
- Create a workplace in which every member thinks and acts like an owner
- Reintegrate the management of work with the doing of work
- Widely distribute quality information
- Allow social structure to grow from the bottom rather than be reinforced from the top
The book follows Deetz’s model with a discussion about employee engagement. They argue that engagement, when “employees are fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work” (p. 227) leads to higher productivity, less turnover, less absenteeism, and generally better conditions for workers. Organizing principles through which many organizations accomplish these goals of engagement and democratization are the team and networks.
Much of the remainder of the chapter discusses teams and networks and explains how they differ in their communication roles and practices. I’ll leave those details for you to read and to (hopefully) address in your posts.
Watchings
Two of my favorite “watchings” both happen this week: Lost (The Pilot) and Pitch Perfect. Both videos provide excellent opportunities to studying democracy, participation, and communication in organizations.
In Lost, the organization is new and results from some pretty unexpected circumstances. The characters do not have the luxury of choice either in their position on the island or of their “coworkers”. How do the characters in lost organize their work? What conflicts must they resolve, and how do they do it? What happens when they fail? The circumstances here are pretty intense, and some discussion of how they compare to the situations the Mann Gulch firefighters face would be interesting as well. Do they operate more like teams or networks?
In Pitch Perfect, the organization faces a different kind of challenge. Here, the organization, I’m talking about the Barden Bellas, specifically, has a long and storied history. The Bellas do have choices about their membership and goals that put them in a different position than the plane travelers in Lost. What happens when the Bellas face challenges to their centralized decision making practices? What communication roles do various Bellas play, and how do they play them? How do the Bellas balance consensus and conflict? Do the a cappella teams operate more like teams or networks?
(More) Ideas for Medium Posts
I hope you’ll use the videos for this week to ground your posts since they are especially fitting. However, if you’re still looking for ideas, here are two:
- Address the questions in the Everyday Organizational Communication sidebar about “Networking on Campus” (pp. 254–255). I’m especially interested in your responses to #2.
- What are communication networks? What characteristics do communication networks share with organizational teams? How does a communication net- work differ from a team?
