Communication Chapter 8, 3, 15, 4

Chapter Eight Organizational Communication

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Cards In This Set

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Workplace Democracy
Principles and practices designed to engage and represent as many relevant individuals and groups as possible in the formulation, execution, and modification of work-related activities
Employee Participation
Organizational structures and processes designed to empower and enable employees to identify with organizational goals and to collaborate as control agents in activities that exceed minimum coordination efforts normally expect at work -Stated by Stohl and Cheney
Employee Participation Programs (In Contrast with Workplace Democracy)
-narrower in scope--organizationally sponsored systems that may or may not have democratization as their primary goal or outcome. Usually refers to employees' involvement in decision making that is related to performing specific job tasks
4 rationales (theories) for employee participation programs
-Increased productivity -job enrichment and greater job satisfaction for individual employees -establishment of an element of democracy in the workplace -development of a more equitable and just society
Unitary Model of Democracy vs. Adversarial Model of Democracy
-Unitary: assumes that consensus is possible, even involving two or more differing groups -Adversarial: assumes that the best democratic results can only come with active opposition, open debate, and a clash of interests
Job Enrichment
-"top down" process involving the analysis and reconfiguring of employees' jobs, intended to allow greater participation by employees in the work process to enhance internal motivation and job satisfaction
Quality Circles
-comprised of 10-12 members from the same or closely interrelated work areas who meet voluntarily and on a regular basis to deal with problems of quality and productivity -trained in statistical procedures which help them analyze work-related problems and evaluate solutions -Can't make autonomous decisions because solutions evaluated by management committee that makes the final decision and determines procedure used to implement the innovation
Quality of Work Life Programs (QWL)
-designed to improve relations between managers and employees by increasing the involvement of workers in various aspects of organizational life
Semiautonomous, self-managing, or self-directed work teams (SDWTs)
-basic building block of "post-bureaucratic" organizations -workers take on role of former supervisors-->set their own work schedules, deciding on the best way to do the job, monitoring their own work performance, hiring additional workers, conducting inventory and ordering materials -work teams responsible for specified task -when team member absent, no one fills his place; team expected to fill in for his role -rely heavily on worker motivation/commitment -Emery and Trist coined the term "socio-technical system" to describe network of semiautonomous participatory work groups
Gainsharing Plans
-formal, supplemental compensation programs focusing on rewarding workers for improvements in labor productivity and cost reduction -plans providing workers with financial rewards based on organizational productivity -like quality circles, workers can't enact decisions without "okay" of management -Unlike circles, workers receive no formal training in statistical or group problem-solving processes
Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPs)
-most common form of employee participation -company contributes stock to employees along with, in some cases, ownership priveleges -as long as employee remains within company and company is profitable, the employee receives an agreed-upon amount of stock
Number of Dimensions of Participative systems
-Origin, Rationale, Direct/Indirect, Specific Requirements, Extent of Formality, Decisional Domain, Employee Autonomy, Level, Isolated vs. Universal, Temporality, Rewards, Training
Socio-technical Systems
-originally used to describe network of semiautonomous participatory work groups, the term now designates a general concern with the interrelations of the technical and social-psychological organization of industrial productions systems
Team Vs. Groups
Team: -small number of people with compleemntary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach, for which they hold themselves accountable. -Katzenbach and Smith state: teams have shared leadership roles, mutual (in addition to individual) accountability, a specific team purpose that is distinguishable from the organizational mission, and collective work products. -No leader, purpose is different from organization, collective work products (more team-based compared to work groups which are more individual) Groups: -collection of people with something in common
Work Groups
-Have strong leader, individual accountability, a group purpose that is the same as that of the organization, and individual work products