375. Follow the instruction to write 1page activity shell

Pre Activity Work History
The activities in this course rely heavily at times on reflection from your own work
experience. Thus, it would be helpful for us to know more about your work
experience. In the space below, please provide a brief description of your work
experience (i.e., the types of places you have worked and the positions in which
you have worked). This only needs to be a few sentences. If you have limited
work experience, please reflect upon the types of organizations in which you hold
offices and/or membership (e.g., Greek organizations, student organizations,
volunteer organizations, etc) as these too can be used for reflection activities.
Thanks!
Communication in Organizations:
Implications for Training & Development
A summary for each of the perspectives described in Unit 1 appears below
— accompanied by a statement clarifying the implications for training and
development. Read through each and then think about a communication problem
you experienced at work that would fit within each perspective. Provide a specific
example that reflects each organizational communication perspective in operation.
Be specific in demonstrating how your example illustrates the basic tenets or
features of the perspective.
1. The Classical Management Perspective
Summary: Work is segmented. Division of labor and standardization are
paramount. Communication is top-down, task-centered and formal.
T&D Implication: Appropriate when examining the transfer of information in
traditionally structured/bureaucratic organizations. How accurate is task
information? How clear are the downward channels of communication?
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
2. The Human Relations Perspective
Summary: Communication is task-centered but also meets social needs. It is not
merely downward, but multi-directional. And it is informal more than formal. Yet
consent is important and necessary; achieved through persuasion and incentives.
T&D Implication: Appropriate when examining discrepancies between informal
and formal communication and disconnects between management expectations and
employee needs/motives/goals, etc.
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
3. The Human Resources Perspective
Summary: Both task and social communication exist as well as innovative
communication. Communication flows in all directions and between members in
participative arrangements.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for examining how employee communication
could benefit an organization. What obstacles are preventing management from
receiving or hearing effective upward communication? Or preventing employees
from directing suggestions toward management?
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
4. The Systems Perspective
Summary: Communication is patterned. Patterns occur with regularity, are
observable and routine. Communication networks can be formal or informal and
vary in terms of size and density.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for identifying the lack of information transfer
through a formal organizational system or the content of informal organizational
systems. What is preventing accurate and timely communication between parties?
What content is present in informal networks that is not apparent in formal
networks? Does this content signal employee concerns, low morale, etc. How
widespread is such commentary?
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
5. The Cultural-Interpretive Perspective
Summary: Communication is the building block of organizational culture,
achieved through have rites, rituals, ceremonies and the telling of stories.
Employees learn and perform culture communicatively.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for examining how both formal (e.g., mission
statements, awards ceremonies, etc.) and informal communication are contributing
to or detracting from organizational culture.
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
6. The Critical Perspective
Summary: Communication builds and protects dominant power interests within
organizations, giving preference to certain interpretations of reality over others.
Power, then, is the struggle over meaning and is found in normal and routine
organizational practices. Communication functions both as a means of enacting
power as well as a means for resisting or contesting power.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for uncovering how power functions in a given
organization, particularly beyond the stipulated hierarchical relationships. Which
groups control resources? Why? How? Also appropriate for examining how
employees communicatively resist power. Is their dissent or resistance?
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
7. The Discursive Perspective
Summary: Talk and discourse are fundamental to reflecting organizational features
and outcomes, shaping organizational reality, and anchoring organizational
experience.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for examining how communication shapes people’s
experience of organizational processes and practices. How does communication
shape people’s reality? For example, does talk about the performance evaluation
process convince employees that it is inherently unfair or flawed? Why?
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
8. The Identity Perspective
Summary: Communication is fundamental to shaping our varied and fluctuating
identities tied to being a professional, employee, and organizational member, as
well as to the type of work we perform.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for understanding which identities are important to
employees in an organization and how those may compete and conflict, as well as
the consequences or challenges that arise when identities are challenged or
threatened.
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):
9. Organizational Sensemaking Perspective
Summary: Communication serves to help us know and understand our
organizations and our place within those organizational environments.
Communication is the vehicle by which we make sense of unexpected occurrences
within organizations. The means for crafting explanations with other coworkers
that help explain organizational life.
T&D Implication: Appropriate for examining how organizational members come
to understand organizational happenings, how that knowledge feeds back into the
larger body of organizational knowledge, and how novel events can disrupt
ongoing activities.
Example from your work experience (use as much space as necessary):