Googleplex!

In class we discussed quite a bit about the Googleplex and the work enviornment. Here is their website.

http://www.google.com/corporate/culture.html

You can take virtual tours of the office and look at their many feautres! Insane! Enjoy!

Do You Prefer A Male or Female Boss?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5yOSc8GCQ

Interesting news clips about whether you prefer a male or female boss!

Why Are My Posts Backwards?

I cannot for the life of my figure out how to rearrange my post to go in chromatic order, sorry blog readers!

Question 6: Cultural Elements in SuperCDA

Organizational culture is defined as “actions, ways of thinking, practices, stories and artifacts that characterize a particular organization.” (127) These parts all play a part in an organization’s symbolic environment which can determine a lot about a company. While working at SuperCDA, the main cultural elements that play a part in our company at metaphors, stories, artifacts and performances.

First, metaphors are used to encourage bonding within the company. Metaphors, according to our text, are “figures of speech that define an unfamiliar experience in terms of another more familiar one.” (128) At SuperCDA, we are all considered a “family”. One employed there, you are a part of the “family” and are considered a bonding unit. My colleagues and I have even gone as far as assigning family roles to certain individuals. For example, my male counterpart, Jordan, is often referred to as “Dad” as I am referred to as “Mom”. “Mama V”, as they do endearingly address me, is a role I take on when people need to be nurtured. With this role sometimes comes very female oriented tasks (like if a special project needs creativity or visual content), I am on the in charge. If something needs a very male, “dad” like opinion (like moving heavy boxes), Jordan is in charge. Our boss, “Grandpa D”, is like the grandfather who is wise and oversees all tasks. Though this is playful, it absolutely conveys the “family like” metaphor that our text was trying to grasp.

Next, stories play a huge role in our everyday at SuperCDA. Generational stories are often told during meals when we all sit together of past employees, tragically funny campers and awkward situations. These stories convey who and what is valued in our work culture, as well as what is not valued in our work culture. These stories are referred to time and time again when giving example of how to act, or deal with a problem versus how not to respond when in a bad situation. Stories become timeless and shape the organization’s values and those who work in it.

Artifacts also play a part in working at SuperCDA. Artifacts are tangible or physical features of an organization (129). The most obvious artifact is our costuming. At SuperCDA, we are required to wear matching clothing everyday of the week. This work attire includes khaki shorts and the matching SuperCDA tee shirt. Girls are to wear their hair half up and half down while the guys are to be clean shaven. Also, tennis shoes (or cheerleading shoes) are a must since you are interacting with cheerleaders by giving hand on instruction everyday. Aside from all looking uniform to be professional, it is also essential so the campers can distinguish staff from non staff members. This way, if there is any questions on material we present, they can find a SuperCDA staff member quickly to follow through with their concern.

Finally, the art of performance is done everyday at SuperCDA. In fact, we are primarily a performance company. Performance centers on rituals, passion, sociality (or organizational etiquette), politics socialization of new members, and identity (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983). Cheerleading is a performance based activity. As staff members, the way we make money is by selling our choreography and instruction to teams who enjoy how we physically perform. We like to perform fun, interactive routines that pumped up our campers to be excited to learn and work hard. This performance work ethic sells clients to want to attend our camps and training sessions.

All in all, cultural elements are essential to an organization’s success. Especially in a company like SuperCDA, having concepts like metaphors, stories, artifacts, and performance sells the company and improves employee happiness. These small features build SuperCDA’s values and help expand the companies proud image of being one of the best private cheerleading organizations in the nation.

Question 7: Male vs Female Manager Styles in the Workplace

Feminine values have recently become present in the workplace. As Marie-Therese states, “The values contrast with competitive and authoritarian approach usually associated with traditional masculine management as they are based on consensual relations and inspire a different management approach to communication, leadership, negotiation, organization and control.” (121) A company, like SuperCDA, benefits from having both the traditional male management values and the feminie values at the same time. The balance of both keeps the staff and clients happy, which then provides a successful business.

The place I work, SuperCDA, is has a mix of both masculine and feminine management style. Unlike the feminine style of management which can be described as “social-expressive”, my boss emphasizes instruction giving and instrumental. However, there are times which the working environment is calm and nurturing.

I think SuperCDA has do be a mix of both masculine and feminine management styles because of its clients and purpose. Because we deal with both children and adults, the management styles switch depending on the client you are directly dealing with. When instructing an employee in front of children, it is important for the company’s image to manage from more of a feminine style stand point. However, when we are dealing with difficult coaches or parents, it is important to have more of a masculine management persona in order to not be perceived as a push over.

The chart found in Figure 12.1 of the Marie-Therese article compares male versus female managers. As a manager myself, I find many of my managerial characteristics in both quadrants. From the male manager side, I identified most with two concepts. First, male managers tend to exhibit a preference for live encounters. Especially in the organization I work for, this is important. I am working with teams and coaches everyday. If there is ever an issues, it is important for me to deal with them head on, face to face. If there is an issue concerning the hotel, I need to have live interaction with the hotel manager in order to see the results I want. Simply writing emails or leaving notes will not create the results I want. Also, with live interaction comes immediacy. I like to problem solve fast and not sit on an issue for longer than it needs to have attention on it.

The next concept I associate with is male managers maintain a complex network of relationships with people outside their organizations. Networking is a skill I like to pride myself with. I keep very good contact with people both involved with SuperCDA and other related organizations. I like to maintain good friendships and relationships with these people in case I need help or assistance in the future. This concept is also seen on the female manager side of the chart.
From the female manager side of the chart, I only associate myself with one of the characteristics. According to the chart, female managers tend to work at a steady pace, but with small breaks scheduled throughout the day. This holds true not only at my work at SuperCDA, but my work ethic in general. Especially dealing with academic environments, I like to work at a steady pace and take small breaks to refocus. I find the breaks are used as an incentive for working hard and efficiently during my time set aside to work.

In my opinion, men and women these days don’t really have different managerial styles. I think the managerial styles are strictly a result of what the company expects and what your client is. Whether or not a man or women worked in my position at SuperCDA, my boss would have the same expectations regardless. The better evaluation would be looking at the organization, who the staff is and who the clients are. From what I have experienced, the “iron maiden” is no longer a stereotype in the workplace. Women are no longer subjected to stereotypical female roles and can now take on the same tasks as men. As time goes on, the glass ceiling will hopefully lift and the expectation of women in the workplace with no longer have gender differences and opportunity with be equal.

Blogging Saves Trees!

I both liked and disliked the blogging assignment for a few reasons. The main reason why I liked blogging is its convenience. I was able to turn in assignments just by using the Internet. There was no need for hard copies of any assignments (which saves trees! and Vince, you know how concerned I am about the environment!)

Also, I found blogging interesting because it was a new tool I have never used. This semester, I blogged both in Organization Communication and Linda's New Media course. In both instances, I have been able to explore the world of Blogspot and create new and interactive websites. I like the informal style of writing blogs use. Also, I like that you can be creative in your presentation of the blog.

Other than having a few technical glitches in the beginning of the semester with my blog, I did enjoy playing with it frequently and posting my assignments. I recognize that it may be a pain for you to grade, but I do think as technology advances, having a blog for students to post assignments on will probably be much more common. I say keep the blog!

Describe one major change that you would make to an organization

The Empowerment Continuum of Work Teams

In the empowerment chart of work teams, it is difficult to draw the line in one place when unknowing about the work life and environment. Worker involvement is always challenging for depending on where you fall in the hierarchy, difficult decisions will need to be made. The question is, at what point to these decisions compromise the efficiency of team work? For example, the summer job I have sustained the past four years is with a cheerleading organization called SuperCDA. In this company, the ranking of employees is based upon seniority and talent to instruct and choreograph (which in essence, only gets better the more time you are with the company). When decisions are made, under level staff knows it is nothing personal, it is just what needs to be done in order to run an efficient cheerleading camp. Additionally, I rarely receive complaints because once a person puts in their time doing the “housekeeping” tasks, they know they will not have to repeat this job the following year (if they return to SuperCDA). However, in a more corporate setting, seniority may not always be valued as much as talent or skill level. In this case, the line may be drawn differently on the empowerment continuum of work team’s grid.

Starting from the bottom up, the line will absolutely not be drawn from housekeeping through external customer contact. Those eight steps are seen as entry level that team workers can take responsibility for without major repercussions. However, I feel the next item, hiring team members, is a bit out of line. That is a responsibility an employee at the manager level should have. Even though the line is low, I feel it is the safest place to put a cut in order to make team work the most efficient.

Post #4: Human Relations vs Human Resources

Human relations highlights the interpersonal and social needs of individuals. People like to relate themselves to something like a community or group to make them as an individual feel better. Ideas of empowering the worker through encouragement will increase the productivity level within an organization. A great example of this would be being a teacher or on a professional sports team. Like discussed in the second blog posting, my mother works as an administrator in the Illinois school districts overseeing many teachers and staff members. She practices a lot of human relations theories that relate to teamwork and practicing a strong efficiency model.

While the human relations approach is known for encourage employees to talk things through, the human resource approach encourages those steps to actually make it happen. The human resource approach evaluates how to get the task done by assigning roles and encouraging an individual to participate in goal orientated tasks. A theory associated with human resources is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This table starts with the bottom step recognizing the needs for food and shelter, all the way to the top of the pyramid exclaiming self-actualization. Psychology, safety, love, self-esteem and self actualization are the bottom to top ranking at which Maslow feels an individual needs to rate their life. When each of the lower level tasks are accomplished, it is easy to climb to the top of the ranks and fulfill self-actualization.

Blog Posting #3: The Relationship Between Organization Communication and Classical Management

There are four main definitions of organizational communication. First, communication is seen as an information transfer. With this theory, language is used to transfer thoughts and feelings from person to person, speakers and writers insert thoughts and feelings into words (which, these words contain the thoughts and feelings) and then finally, the receivers (the listeners or readers) then extract the thoughts and feelings from these pieces of work. This is assumed to be very effective for the receiver of communication understands and reacts to what the speaker or writing is trying to convey. It is criticized though for over-simplification and can oversee some complications due to how the message can be interpreted from the speaker to the listener (or the writer to the reader).

Next, organizational communication is seen as a transactional process. Through processing the information after the transfer, you create a relationship from speaker to listener. Through this process, the parties involved in the communication begin to pick up non verbal cues such as body language and other physical reactions to the message sent. Often times, this reaction can be more substantial than the words being exchanged back and forth (hence the common phrase ‘actions can speak louder than words’). The goal of the sender is to deliver a clear message that listener can understand without misinterpretation. If there is no misinterpretation and the sender and receiver are on the same page, the effectiveness of the delivery is very successful.
Organizational communication is also seen as a strategic control. Individuals try to control their own environments in which messages are being transferred. Depending on your environment, as the communicator, you choose what you say that will be acceptable politically, socially, morally and ethically. These strategies are chosen to try and motivate the communication process and achieve whatever goal is being sent from sender to receiver. By strategic control, effectiveness can be measured though the reactions of the message. Due to the message sent, multiple interpretations can be accomplished which can be both beneficial and harmful. Due to this independent way of thinking, there is a strong emphasis on individual thinking instead of group or community effort. This is a strong idea also in classical communication theories.
Finally, organizational communication is seen as a balance of creativity and constraint. This method has a strong emphasis on individualism. Creativity and independent thought processes through message sending and receiving can strengthen the community in which the information is being transferred. There needs to be a balance between the two in order for the message to effectively get across.

The classical management theory management approach emphasizes that organizations run like machines. Classical management supports scientific rationality for it leads to improved productivity within the workplace. Like discussed in chapter three, division of labor and a sense of hierarchy within the workplace is present and is fully supported by the top-down communication strategies. Of the different organizational communication definitions, the two that support the classical theory the most are strategic control and the balance of creativity and constraint. Individual creativity and power can lead to an organizations success. Through strategic control, classical theory supports how individuals interpret messages as long as it betters the community in which the message is being transferred. Same in the balance of constraint and creativity, the idea that the message is based on an individual learning process instead of a group only further support classical management theories. Group work and team work is more strongly emphasized in the human relations approach rather than in classical theory. The first two definitions of organizational communication also support human relations more than classical theory for they discuss how humans relate with one another as the message is being transferred from sender to receiver. The concepts of psychology and improved human relations are not parallel with classical management theory as much as it is with HR. Thus, only strategic and creative balance are the two organizational communication theories which are most like the classical management theories.

Blog Posting #2: Discussion of My Parent's Work Experiences and Their Relations to Organizational Theories in Chapter 3

When asked to interview someone with extensive work experience, I needed to look no further than my parents. My mother, a Saint Mary’s graduate, is a project director for early childhood block grant ECDC/Preschool for all and FIND II/Prevention Initiative in the Illinois school districts. My father, a Notre Dame graduate, has held COO and CFO positions at major companies like Citibank and Harley Davidson. Because their career paths are so different, each had diverse answers to the questions I presented them regarding worker productivity.

Since my mom works in a school practicum, she uses a strong efficiency model to encourage teacher productivity. Using the mentality of ‘you can do it’ and other encouraging slogans, teachers receive that extra boost of confidence and encouragement knowing that their boss, my mom, is fully supporting them. Another contributing factor, according to my mother, is where they work. In a school setting, teachers are in a professional learning facility. Each school is committed to success and failure is not an option. Therefore, knowing the task of teaching and learning is effecting so many children and adults alike, the productivity level must be very high in order to achieve the standards the state and government set at each particular school. Education is highly valued in society and due to the support of the families within the school, the administrators and the community, success (though may not be in tangible numbers) is always the outcome. Success is not measured in dollar amounts rather, the growth of the individuals within the school.

Working in a corporate environment, my dad’s standards for a productive work environment are very different. An example my Dad gave me was during his days at Harley Davidson, he once was on a task to fix a very inefficient calling center in Carson City, Nevada. He knew he had three tasks to get done; improve the technology, process redevelopment, and exert the ‘rally the troops’ mentality amongst his staff. His efforts were very successful for they increased focus on ramping up education around the workplace (teaching the staff how to use the technology and increase the pace at which the worked) as well as recognition though both money and fame within the company. He gave bonus and benefits to those who showed excellence in their job and this was apparent through the increased productivity of the call center. Within a year, the damage that was previously present in the Harley Davidson location in Nevada was quickly restored to a better place because of the increased worker productivity.

In both examples, my parents thought that their efforts were successful. Though my mom’s was more of a human relations approach and my father’s was more of a classical theory approach, each adapted to what was appropriate for their own work environment. Consequently, if they were to use one another’s tactics, the outcome probably would not have been as successful as with the methods they used. Undoubtedly it felt wonderful to be a part of a positive change within each of their careers and they continue to make these small changes within their jobs on a daily basis. In addition to them feeling good about their jobs, the increased worker productivity level raises the quality within their organizations as well. When students are achieving, the teachers are happy. When workers in the call centers receive a raise or promotion, they are happy. These factors, both tangible and not, are a definite reflections of increased productivity in the workplace through hard work and minor adjustments.

In the school setting, my Mom’s job reflects the Human Relations approach to organizational theories. Mary Follet, an advocate on empowering workers by sharing information, has a parallel view to how my mom handles her teachers. Like Follet, my mom emphasizes cooperation to solve problems and organizing teams to accomplish goals. Teachers are encouraged to work with one another to help each other out by sharing ideas, lesson plans, and even physical space within a classroom. Also, every grade level has ‘teams’ which are used to help each department lean on one another when they are struggling with a task. Again, within schools and education, failure is not an option. Each child has the right to a solid education and especially working with disabled children, my mother’s job can be especially challenging. It takes a very special group of teachers to work in these conditions and with some such passion towards furthering these kids education, success can be accomplished by improving human relations (which in part, improves the efficiency and productivity level).

My Dad’s workplace is a great example of the Classical Management organizational theory. The theme of this theory is that scientific rationality leads to improved efficiency and productivity. The organization (in my Dad’s case, Harley Davidson’s call center) is seen as a efficient machine. This was seen true when the call center made some major improvements within technology. With more technologically advanced machines, the productivity level raised immensely. There was a definite hierarchy and division of jobs within the call center ranging from the labor jobs of answering the telephone from my Dad’s position at the top overseeing the productivity level of the company. Top-down communication was definitely present within the organization as well. This business ran like clock work and presented characteristics of the classical management theory.

Even though both my mother and father’s jobs have different styles at which they approached organizational communication theories, the commonality between the two were achieving their goals. This required each to evaluate what communication tools would work best for their work environments and in my opinion, each did a great job of encouraging success within their own careers.

Blog Posting #1: Discuss your hopes for a happy worklife. How do you plan to avoid forms of worker alienation by Fromm and Fraser?

Defining what I would consider to be my ideal ‘happy’ work life is difficult. On one end, I would like my job to be intellectually challenging, fast paced and people oriented. I would like to spend time both being a mentor and working with fellow staff members to accomplish a goal. This ‘happy work life’ I am describing would ultimately result in financial reward and recognition which would help make the work life and personal life a good balance. The question at hand though is how do you define happy? I think each individual has their own set of standards at which they know they like to work. Items like work culture and task orientation is very important to me. I wish to not be stuck behind a cubical without interacting with other coworkers. It’ll be important for me to be hands on and a true voice on company projects and tasks.

In Fraser’s piece “The Pace Was Insane”, Fraser describes a friend, Catherine’s, miserable work life. Over worked and under paid in horrific conditions through IBM. Traveling all the time and constantly taking on an unmanageable amount of work, Fraser discussed a few reasons why Catherine stayed at this position. First, the job at IBM was continually demanding for all its employees, not just Catherine. She just accepted that this high stress job culture was supposed to be that way and no one was being cut any slack. With so many years working for the organization, it was also difficult to consider leaving after climbing so high in the company’s hierarchy.

I have no issue with Catherine being a workaholic. In fact, I understand that in today’s day and age, in order to succeed, you must put in the extra effort. However, there needs to be a balance in order to remain happy and stable. One concept I value in a happy work life would be friendly and accommodating work culture. Even if the job requirements are demanding, you need to enjoy what you are doing in order to reach self fulfillment. A concrete communication tool we use is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy is a scale of people’s basic needs for food, shelter and belonging that must be satisfied before they can move towards achieving their full human potential (or, “self actualization). With a job, you must be happy and satisfied in order to reach this high goal. If you are over worked, stressed, not getting enough sleep and unhappy at your position, the likelihood of you reaching you full potential within the organization is rare. Additionally, the likelihood of you wanting to becoming something great in the company runs thin as the expectation to do more and better pressures you into not being happy with the job at hand.

Even though my ideal work life would consist of minimal work with the most amount of progress, this only happens by putting in time in the low ranks. I recognize that I will not necessarily achieve my dream job within the next year of post-graduate work. However, with hard work sand high standards set, I feel I am aware of what would be considered an ideal work environment and I will mold the perfect job as I climb the ranks in whatever organization I decide to work for. As for now, I will just continue to research and challenge my own intellectual level of thinking and work to help myself realize what would make me happy and high achieving when choosing a career and occupation.

Welcome! (the remix)

Welcome to my blog! (round two!)
--I can't figure out why I am having trouble on my previous blog so here is a new and improved version!