Managerial Communication: content and development

The Mid Term Quiz is done. I seem to be much more relieved about this then my students. I guess it is all about from which side you look at things. I have now decided to go through with my original plan of teaching this year’s COM3068 in 3 sections. The first was the rhetoric of work, the second is the theoretical approaches to organizational communication. I am giving the students a 2nd paper assignment on this particular section.

For this paper assignment I am experimenting with having the students do some observations using the different theories to get information on aspects or issues in organizational life. An example would be if a student’s company has been giving out rewards to different employees or departments, the student would use Schein’s model of organizational culture to observe what sort of organizational culture this system of rewards creates.  The student could do interviews, observe company meetings about the topic, research past archives in the company and look at other researchers who wrote about similar reward systems.

I think that in many cases this will be interesting and feasible for most students but I do know there are going to be several students who either do not have access to an organizational environment that they can study or they have no idea of how to go about it. So I might also give the possibility of looking at an organization in the news and have the students use one of the theoretical approaches to analyze the event.

I still believe quite strongly that it is through writing these types of papers that the student will learn the content on a deeper level. However, I am still experimenting on how to make these types of assignments work well. Any feedback on this assignment is welcome…

I assigned the Eisenberg article “Defining Organizational Communication” for this Monday’s class. I woke up and listened to the news on the financial institutions crumbling, and I wondered if my students would make the connection between the Comm strategies in the article and this current event? Especially the strategic control theory… Well delights of delights, about 10 students had made the connection, 4 students actually had text messages from their CEO’s, ( in full strategic ambiguity mode) and the rest of the class seemed to really get the theory and how it was being played out right in front of their eyes. I had to struggle to keep everyone to a minimum in speaking not the other way around!

I am curious to hear more about Caryn’s hesitations on the Strategic Control theory and the Creativity and Constraints. I found the students really seemed to delight in debating the ethical side of the former and I feel these days the students really have some true to life examples of what it is and how it works. But perhaps there is a  side to it that I am not fully capturing.

I am also wondering how we could take some of these real life events and the communication; internal and external, and put it into an assignment or a paper. Perhaps  there is a way to use this relationship between ORG COM theory and the current financial crisis and something on the exams. Maybe to use the current financial crisis and see how the students can analyse and write a recommendation to the CEO or the board…

I have just had a very fruitful class discussion on the Claire chapter “Philosophy and rhetoric of work.” I would like to give credit to my students, who not only seemed to have read the whole chapter but took notes and had many things to say. They found the chapter easy to read as well as a good historical and contextual understanding of what I meant when I talked about the course as a Macro look at communication in organizations and how the influence of the global world influences how we talk about work as well as organize it.

I am now working on the prompt for the first paper. I have asked the students to write a 2-3 page paper on their work experience and how it relates to the Clair Chapter as well as Chapter one of the Miller book. Chapter one in the Miller book talks about the complicated way in which modern day communication happens and what that means for the world of work today. I might even add the Eisenberg chapter as background for their paper… I would like it to be in a personal essay format where the students explore their personal work history and put it into context. Hopefully, they will do this through the use of definition, historical context and references to the chapters I previously mentioned.

I am hoping this paper will bring them closer to thinking about the subject matter in a more theoretical way and at the same time show them how much a part of their lives these philosophies are. It would also be a mini exercise in what will be a more formal final paper.

As I re read this it sounds like a lot, but I think it should be pretty simple for them to do…? Do you have any feed back or suggestions?

I am also in the processing of putting up a few more articles in the reading section so keep your eyes open.