Week 2: Communicating Effectively…or do we?
This week’s reading really delved into defining the different forms of communication that occur within an organization. These types of communications I erroneously believed only occurred within formal organizations and in workplace settings. However, this chapter illustrated how these forms of communication (info-transfer, transactional process, strategic control, and as balance of creativity and constraint) can apply to any form of communication we have with people regardless of the setting.
The most interesting aspect of this chapter for me, was reading how these different theories of communication can be applied outside the scope and use of formal “work” organizations. The idea that “all individuals are situated in multiple contexts and that as a situated individual the multiple contexts that we belong to inform[s] the interpretation of our selves” (Eisengberg Pg. 44–45). I’ve never really thought about how social media and the social networks that individuals belong to are a form of organization and that these theories can be applied here as well or more importantly should be applied here. However, it makes sense that the constraint of the self within these social spaces would be difficult to achieve as it is hard to distinguish what type of information we communicate should belong within specific compartments of our virtual selves.
Another thing that I found interesting was the application of these communication methods in the real world. I’ve always believed that it is a lot harder to execute theories of communication or leadership in real settings effectively, but perhaps this view is only a reflection of my own experiences. Having been a part of the workforce in settings that were both professional and not, I’ve experience the different approaches of communication outlined in this chapter. For me the two approaches that I identified with the most were the info-transfer approach and the communication as a balance of creativity and constraint. When I worked for a retail company, I felt very disconnected from the environment that I worked in. The policies, procedures, and needs of the company were often enforced and communicated in a top-down manner with very little room for communicating upwards or providing feedback on how these policies, procedures and needs affected the employees. The company issued out it’s requirements and needs for their business model and expected the employees to ensure that these things occurred. There was very little room for understanding or thinking about what it would take for they’re employees to perform effectively. I think this is the norm for many retail companies, especially as the “norm” for these has been increasingly changing over the years as the need to outdo one another becomes more dire in order to be a successful company.
The easiest way of observing this is by looking at how retail companies behave during peak holiday shopping times. In recent years the trend of retail shopping has shifted to include longer times that stores are opened, having more employees on hand and trying to please the consumer population. Companies struggle to juggle the needs of their consumers with the needs of their employees, often types the former outweighing the latter. It isn’t until consumers are part of this type of workforce that people understand how difficult these jobs are.
I think out of all of these theories have organizational settings where they are all effective. Sometimes the communication between consumers and retail organizations need to use the information- transactional method as they inform their consumers to behave a certain way (establishing open/close hours, the type of advertisement that they use, featuring specific items on sale depending on the season/cycle of the year) while at the same time using the strategic control form of communication as they use strategic ambiguity to force a specific understanding and interpretation of their consumers (like Victoria Secret’s “A body for everybody” ad that received negative feedback when people felt that although their ad expressed that their garments were sized for everybody they visuals did not represent a diverse body type) or McDonald’s “I’m loving it” slogan.
I think it’s interesting how this type of abstract communication still seems to deliver the message that these type of organizations are trying to convey when oftentimes effective communication strives to move away from ambiguous behavior in an effort to be clear and effective. The questions that come to mind regarding this method is how much conditioning does a person have to receive before they can read into “the right” type of message? and when does the diversity of the receiver becomes unified to how others interpret these messages?
