[Music] hi there i'm dr steve klein from the department of communication at the university of missouri this is the latest in a series of online video lessons intended to provide you important principles and helpful concepts for the study of communication this video is the second part of a two-part series providing an introductory look at theories of organizational communication in a previous video in the series we took a more fundamental look at what we mean by organizations and organizational communication and then in part one of this two-parter on theories we took a look at two foundational traditions in the organizational communication tradition classical management theories and human relations and human resources theories what we're going to do in this video is to take a look at two more contemporary theoretical approaches to organizational communication looking at organizational calm from a systems perspective and from a cultural perspective but first let's just take a couple of really quick minutes to review what we did in the previous video so that we can have a contextual frame of reference for what's going to come the first tradition of organizational communication theory that gets developed pretty early in the 20th century is the tradition of classical management theories these theories taken together hold a few central premises they think about an organization essentially as a machine an inhuman set of interconnect an inhuman set of interconnected parts that functions in ways that are standard and predictable and are goal oriented to a particular result so the goal of organizational communication from this kind of standpoint is a big focus on efficiency and effectiveness is the communication doing what it needs to do in order for us to effectively achieve our goals while minimizing costs and waste and so features of this theoretical tradition focus on such elements as specialized components in the organizational structure processes in the organization that are standardized and predictable a clearly established bureaucratic structure with specialized a clearly established bureaucratic structure where the roles of those in the organization are specialized and intended to reduce or eliminate redundancy and a clear top-down hierarchical sense of authority where the rules and norms for the organization start at the top and move their way down unilaterally as a potential response to classical management approaches the second theoretical approach that we see in the middle part of the 20th century are the human relations and human resources theories this kind of approach to organizations is a definite contrast to classical management in that they see the organization as a group of people and they recognize the fundamental importance of the human element in organizations because after all organizations are made of people in what they do so the goal of these theories is to maximize the potential of employees recognizing that if employees get specific recognition and attention and have their needs met they can do more for the organization and the entire organization benefits so when we think about the features of this theory there are two slightly different emphases for each of these particular approaches in human relations theory the real emphasis is on attention to human needs specifically the motivational needs that come out of the psychological tradition of abraham maslow if employees have their needs met they are more productive employees a little bit later on the human resources approach that emerges in the 1980s takes it a step further it's not just enough to meet humans needs in order for them to be more productive employees they're ultimately going to be much more productive and much more satisfied in their jobs if they have a greater sense of investment in the organization that they're part of something larger that they identify with and respect and they have opportunities through things like flattened hierarchies and involvement in the decision-making process to use their talents for the betterment of the entire organization now there was a lot of really important contributions made from both of these larger theoretical traditions but as we ended up our first video in the series we were left with a question hanging out and that is what is the relationship between the organization and its surrounding environment this is a question that heretofore in the tradition of or com theories we didn't really have a square answer to this is where the system's perspective is going to come in really handy what is the relationship of this larger organization to the rest of the contextual environment around it the social and the public scene not to mention other organizations and other individuals and groups interacting with your organization from the outside this is where innovations from a systems perspective and organizational theory really come in handy now there's a governing metaphor here as well if classical management theories look at the organization as a machine and human relations and human resources theories look at organizations as communities of people a systems perspective looks at the organization as an organism as a living being that is complex and made of multiple parts that all operate synergistically in order for the entire living entity to survive and thrive within its larger environment the key premises of this theory are relatively simple when you think about it from the standpoint of this metaphor an organization is like a living organism and must exist in its external environment in order to survive any kind of living thing whether it's a plant or whether it's a kitten or whether it's a human being needs to be able to live and in order to live you need to be able to meet the various challenges in the environment around you and so from a systems perspective when we think about organizations we're concerned with problems of relationships of structure and of interdependence rather within with the constant attributes of objects in other words for organizations perhaps the most important constant is change and this is a premise that the previous theoretical perspectives we've looked at don't really necessarily engage quite as squarely in classical management theory and in human relations and human resources theory the things that happen in order to structure the organization's work the needs that human beings have tend to be pretty constant if you can identify those and you can plug in the right things then things are going to be dandy but in a context of complexity and change where things are always in flux we need to think about the relative adaptability of that organism in order to survive and so think about a plant cell now plant cell has got lots of different individual organelles and components within it don't worry this isn't a cell biology class i don't know what the names of many of these things are either but here's what we do know in order for plant cells to do the things that plant cells do that plant cell is going to need a couple of components from the outside it's going to need sunlight and it's going to need water be it from rain or be it from other sources the energy from sunlight and the water that comes from water sources are going to go into the plant cell and the plant cell is going to do a number of important things you might have learned about it in school as photosynthesis a way to create its own food and energy from sunlight and water from the outside and thus as a consequence that plant cell is going to kick out a couple of important products it's going to kick out sugars that provides the energy for the plant to live and it also provides the energy that animals and people who eat plants get as well and of course in addition to the sugars that are created by the plant cells it's also creating oxygen that kicks out into the atmosphere and provides that most important component of the air that animals and humans breathe now why am i talking to you about plant cells well you can think about an organizational system as very much like an organism such as this plant cell if this is our organization there's going to be three primary things that we're going to have to consider in that organization's existence we're going to need to think about inputs what goes into the organization in order for the organization to do its work and so depending on the nature of the organization this could be everything from raw materials to financial capital investment to the ingredients that go into producing whatever it is that you're going to produce it could be the human personnel power that are going to make up the organization to be what it is whatever it is that goes into the organization that the organization needs in order to do what it does once the inputs are there then the organizational system is going to engage in throughput in much the same way as that plant cell is going to use the photosynthesis process to convert the light and water into sugar energy and so forth there's going to be a variety of different processes procedures social interactions all of those things that happen within the organization that produce whatever it is that it produces and those things that the organization produces are known as outputs this could be everything from manufactured goods that are done through a factory to the profits that's generated through the financial activity of the organization it could be other forms of communication in the forms of public messaging whatever it is that that organization is designed to put out these are the outputs so we think about the organization not just in terms of what it does but what comes in from the outside and what that organization puts back out to the outside it exists in a larger ecosystem it doesn't exist all by itself in a vacuum and so when we think about organizational properties there are a number of important concepts that are going to apply to any kind of organizational system one is the principle of equifinality a really fancy term that essentially means there's more than one way to achieve goals because the nature of the contextual circumstances that organizations face is going to shift and change organizations need to be nimble enough to try to figure out if we've got certain objectives to meet and we can't achieve those objectives using plan a do we have a plan b do we have a plan c those are available as long as we're thinking about what we do in the context of our environment another important principle is negative entropy if entropy is the natural state of any organism to essentially degrade and to have its energy release itself negative entropy is the ability to prevail and overcome being run down in other words there's always the potential for that organization to exist survive thrive and grow life uh finds a way provided you react to and adapt to your environment effectively hence the requisite variety principle organizations must respond and adjust to the external environment and that can be everything from the physical environment to the economic environment from competing and cooperating other organizations to the political and public and social climate surrounding that organization in ways that might potentially affect its work we also have the concept of homeostasis the need for stability if an organization exists in an environmental context that's always in flux that organization is going to do things as much as possible if not to completely control then at least to be able to maintain a sense of reasonable predictability and stability basically to find that balance point and finally there's the principle of complexity and that just like organisms the more that an organization grows and evolves the more complex those internal processes and systems and procedures those throughputs we mentioned before the more complex those are going to be and of course using the organism metaphor you can kind of get a sense of this in the difference between the complexity in a single cell organism like a virus and something that is much more complex and sophisticated like a human being the more that the organism evolves the more that the organization involves the more complex their processes of interaction are going to be and so from a systems perspective the role of communication is essentially to use the interactions that take place to organize their activity and make sense of the unpredictability if we live in an environment that is defined by change and flux what we need to do is figure out how to reach that sense of homeostasis and negative entropy to continue to grow and thrive amidst the unpredictability and so we use our communicative interactions to figure out ways to negotiate and adjust and adapt to our environment in order to make the organization do the things that it needs to do now as you can see there's a real sense of organic growth and interdependence between parts in the system's perspective although it also starting to feel a little bit less human again after all this isn't a science of impersonal biochemistry and physics that's where the final theoretical perspective comes in and that is of course a cultural perspective if we understand the organization as a culture then that means that a key premise for this theory is going to be that each organization is going to have unique characteristics and cultural differences such as language traditions symbols practices pastimes and social conveniences that distinguish it from other organizations likewise they are rich with their own histories stories customs and social norms han and peyton's definition of organizational culture here is really helpful and in a prior video in the series we drill down a little bit more into what is the nature of a culture and how do cultures actually do the work of being a culture to get a sense of how organizations as cultures are constructed in a nutshell helpful for our purposes today we can think about some standard cultural elements that exist in any culture and so in any organizational culture any culture is going to be constructed by and through artifacts symbols used by an organization to represent the organization's culture so everything from a specialized language that members of a particular business might use internally to refer to various processes or various external stakeholders to things like logos and slogans and mission statements all of the things that go into symbolizing here's who we are this is what's meaningful to us now these various artifacts of the organizational culture are going to articulate the culture's values preferences for how things should happen or strategies for determining how things should be accomplished correctly you might remember for instance having a new job and attending the orientation for that job congratulations on joining the galactic empire as emperor i'd like to personally welcome you to the death star [Music] welcome to the death star we're glad to have you hello there good to have you here yes welcome to the death star our mission is not only to crush the rebellion and establish our place as the ultimate power in the galaxy but to have fun while we're at it although this battle station is fully operational we are building her from the ground up starting with you welcome wasn't that great and one of the first things that you learn in a jobs orientation is to discover this is who we are this is our mission this is how we do things this is the way in which we envision our relationship with customers this is essentially our purpose and those kinds of values are articulated in the various different kinds of social communication that takes place within the organization as well as the communication that takes place from the organization to external stakeholders out in the society organizational cultures are also going to have core basic assumptions unconscious taken for granted beliefs perceptions thoughts and feelings that ultimately influence how members of that organization experience the world just as it's true for any cultural group it's going to be true for an organization if you work for mcdonald's for instance or the walt disney corporation or google there are going to be certain ways that you become enculturated through your interactions with other members of the organization to look at and assign significance to everything from your co-workers to the customers for your organization to the way that the outside society and external stakeholders that work with your organization are going to look at you to provide an example that illustrates how these various cultural elements come into play in a large and successful organization i want to take a brief look at the organizational culture of google and the ways in which they utilize symbolic artifacts in their internal and external communication and the ways in which they articulate their values and basic assumptions within the organization contribute to what orgcom scholars often refer to as organizational climate the general workplace atmosphere or mood experienced by organizational members google as arguably one of the most powerful organizations on the planet today has a widespread global reputation of having an overwhelmingly positive organizational climate people who work in google and people who represent google to the outside society have a multitude of wonderful things to say and let's get a sense of why that might be the case google is a place that i just fell in love with the culture i fell in love with the energy there was just a vibe that i wanted to be a part of it's just some place where i can never imagine myself getting bored because we're thinking about billions of users and so that's a lot of impact that you can have and it's just really gratifying google is so much at the forefront of technology and the way that our culture is built we are always looking for the 10x we are always looking for the leapfrog innovation so you have to be willing to let all your preconceived notions be broken at any moment you're gonna have to make your own rules sometimes and this is actually part of the fund i get to try new technologies i get to implement them in different ways that maybe no other company has done them before and so you can really go beyond your skill set that you think you have at the moment and push the boundaries the part that makes it really fun is there are so many teams across google that have amazing expertise and i get to work with these people not only build something with them but i learn so much [Music] pick any topic and i can promise you there's someone here who is both better at it than you are more knowledgeable and also and more importantly willing to help you learn everybody here is so nice they're so encouraging so that's very reassuring to be in a company where people value you i am fortunate enough to work with people from a lot of different experience a lot of different backgrounds and we use that in our advantage it's really the best idea when there's a lot of debate but it's really to bring those different viewpoints together and that's what we want our products to represent we believe the benefits of technology should apply to all and that's a mission that really is very very inspiring so when i show up at work i'm able to do all the things that i love solving heart problems and working for the people that i manage that makes it worthwhile for me to show up every day [Music] what we might be able to take away from google as an example are the ways in which they have been able to take into account some of the most important innovations and organizational communication theory as it's evolved over the past century or so from classical management perspective that looks at the efficiency of an organization in terms of its structure its sense of authority and the ways in which it emphasizes efficiency while google has that in spades they haven't forgot about the very important human element that's involved recognizing that human beings have needs and each human participant in the organization has specific things that they can bring to the table to contribute to the organization as a whole human resources philosophy has been a very important central premise for how google does their work they understand themselves as an organic system google is an entity that essentially has a unified identity where everybody recognizes themselves as part of something larger and it's not just from a systemic perspective but indeed there's a very distinctive organizational and workplace culture where the ways in which they communicate the ways in which they understand themselves and regulate their social interactions and communicate themselves to the world articulate basic assumptions and values about what and who google is and who the people are in google contributes to the overall picture of their success it's not the only reason of course that google is a monumentally successful organization but arguably it's a really big part of it so this brings us to the end of our two-part introduction to theories of organizational communication if you've got any questions about the content in this video or any of the other videos in the series please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know otherwise i'll see you next time [Music] you