Web Lecture- Pervasive Comunity

I believe our professor was right on when speaking about how we live in a pervasive community. That is why this lecture has been one of the most interesting lectures thus far; we are all well ware of the importance of new communication technologies. The revolution of digital instant messaging along with other technologies has made a huge dent in our everyday lives. There is almost no reason not to either not get a hold of someone or send an important message. Having these technologies keeps all sorts of different groups or organizations connected. I wonder how the 2.6 billion cell phone subscribers would react if all networking signals went down. I'm sure there would be radical problems amongst everyone who puts in use these technologies. 

Blog 4-Technology and the Value of Work

I definitely agree with professor cyborg on that technology has brought many positive changes in life, but has also brought negative impacts. There have been many cases where advanced technological surveillance has helped save a company from problem. As chapter six tells us the top employees in the company are hardly surveillance, when in fact they create most of the moral/ethical problems. Which is a terrible system of checks and balanes. I recall reading about an employee who was caught stealing some medical bandages from work. He was later fired. The ironic part about the whole case is that, his employer provides faulty insurance. In this case who is more in the wrong? Technology serves two sides of the spectrum. It can be somebody’s savior at one point and another’s down fall in different instances. 

Chaper 6- Centrality Of Power

In life there is always going to be some sort of power structure. It is only obvious that there are going to power issues in any organization. We learn five different types of social power according to Robert French and Bertram Raven. There is reward power, coercive power, referent power, expert power, and legitimate power. These different types of powers come down one common theme. One person always has some degree of power over the other. Although, this is an incomplete way of thinking of power. What caught most of my attention was the invisible power that people have over there lives everyday. For example, I am in school so that I have a good job. In today’s world, competition for jobs is vastly growing, so to have an advantage over the next candidate is necessary. People have to work in order to survive. Many people are getting to know this more and more in the U.S. because of the current economic crisis. Our book suggest some type o reform from the invisible power to have a “lifetime of work” the way it is now. Will we see any drastic reform in power over the next eight years? This is something that our president and his staff should look forward to dealing with, while the opportunity is at head.

Chapter 5- Organizational Assimilation

We have all at one time or another been a so called "newcomer". Organizational assimilation talks about that very topic in organizations. At first most employee's preconceived thoughts about the job and quickly disintegrated. The goal of a new employee is to figure out what role they are supposed to perform. We learn that in many organization the CEO's give a welcoming speech to new employees, but they soon realize the reality of the job. Most newcomers can not risk asking a irrelevant question, so they go about it by looking for information through other colleges, customers, or company messages. Once they have figured out the normal procedures, the employee becomes more comfortable. And a certain degree of comfort should be with in all employees in my opinion. If an employee is not comfortable, than it is likely that there work will negatively reflect so. On the other side of things, some employee's that become too comfortable end up also slacking at the role possibly because of entitlement. That is why when ever I am employed I try to have the right degree of comfortabilty, so that I am also on top of my job. 

Chapter 5- Cultural Elements

In chapter five we begin to learn more about cultures with in an organization. It is interesting to see how often unnoticed daily processes can define culture in an organization. Learning how metaphors associated with an organization can transform the organization caught my attention. My current football organization has many metaphors or simple phrases around the building that are directed towards motivation of everyone involved in the workplace. For example, in the weight room we have an artifact, which is a huge Spartan symbol. On that symbol is a phrase that simply states, "A Culture of Champions". Alongside the artifact are all the teams who have currently won championships in their perspective sport. Having this metaphor and artifact is supposed to help motivate all the sports that come and work out in that weight room. It can contribute to harder lifting in the weight room and making smarter choices on what is done to the body of each athlete.  Another positive to having this artifact in the weight room is that it allows for outsiders to form an opinion of what it means to be a Spartan athlete. 

            At first I never really paid too much attention to artifacts that are posted around the facilities. But now I can see that these artifacts and metaphors are not there by accident and serve multiple purposes for the organization itself.   

Chapter 4 Goals

In this section of the chapter we learn about the goals in the open systems approach theory. What I found most interesting about goals and organizations is; when goals are a clearly communicated and broadly shared means that organizations will most likely be successful and forthcoming according to Jim Collins. This makes a lot of sense to me. If I am apart of a grand organization and I as an employee have a broader goal in mind, then I will know how to direct my work. I think Disney may be one of these companies who do so. When ever I have visited Disneyland or called via telephone I have always been greeted with joyfulness. I believe the top management makes it clear to the organization that their goal is to be “the happiest place on earth” in everything that they do. I find clearly defined goals to be effective in organizations.   

Chapter 3- Empire to Hierarchy

In this section of the chapter we begin to actually learn of some actually organizational communication theories that began during the industrial revolution. The classical theory of management seems to be very old fashioned because it is based off of military mechanics. Meaning that the system is highly structured, concerned with rankings among the employees. This is what we know as a Top down management. The problem that I find with this theory of organizational management is that communication is basically one sided. The director communicates to the president who in turn directs the managers and so forth. This linear way of communication does not allow questioning or feed back from employees. As we learned in previous chapter, when an employees voice is not heard, it was cause great problems in the organization.