Organizational Communication: June 2009

Conflict Management

Conflict can be both destructive and constructive.

By definition: The interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims, and values and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realization of those goals.

Incompatible goals - most central to org conflict and can stem from a variety of reasons.
Interdependent - Incompatibility is not an issue until interdependent behaviors become a problem.
Interaction - conflict involves the expression of incompatibility, not just the existence of it, and this is done through communication.

Levels of Organizational Conflict

Interpersonal - among members
Intergroup - among departments or teams
Interorganizational - among orgs

Phases of Org Conflict

Latent Conflict - conditions are ripe due to interdependence and incompatibility.
Perceived Conflict - when one or more parties believes that incompatibility and interdependence exist.
Felt Conflict - both parties begin to formulate strategies about how to deal with conflict and outcomes that would or would not be acceptable.
Manifest Conflict - The strategies and goals are worked through
Conflict Aftermath - short and long term aftermat exist.

Managing Organization Conflict
Conflict Styles:

Descriptive W/W
Avoidance L/L
Accommodating L/W
Competition W/L
Collaboration W

Classifying conflict, though, has it's drawbacks:

It downplays the fact that people can change their tactics when in conflict with others.
This s just a two-dimensional model that excludes outside factors
It doesn't address nonverbal and non-rational communication that occurs in escalated conflict.
By looking at the person only, the org setting gets ignored.

New Directions in Conflict Management
Conflict message style is now factoring into the study of conflict management in terms of perception and style.
Politeness and formality impacts the process.

Bargaining and Negotiation

Bargaining is often a formal activity where disputants settle conflicts about scarce resources or policy disagreements.
Often involves individuals who serve as representatives for the parties in the dispute.
Often used to settle intergroup or inter organizational conflicts.

Distributive bargaining - Deals with limited resources that must be divided, the outcome is win/lose and since everyone is in it for themselves, the communication is withheld or deceptive.
Integrative bargaining - Both sides are trying to maximize gains, both parties win.

Third Party Conflict Resolution
Sometimes a difficult conflict can't be settled between two parties, requiring someone else to be brought in to mediate or arbitrate the proceedings. In orgs this is usually the manager.

Managerial Conflict Resolution - the conflict resolution style depends on the nature of the conflict and how much control the manager has over the proceedings.
Sometimes it's best to bring in an objective outside party.

Mediator - helps facilitate the conflict but has no decision power. They can initiate recommendations, clarify misunderstandings, set agendas for resolutions, and regulate the tone of the exchange.
Arbitrator - makes decisions that ae binding based on the proposals and arguments of the parties involved.

Factors Influencing the Process:
Personal - gender, personality, character, play a big part in how we deal with conflict.
Relational - roles and relationships also impact resolution;

Power - where one falls on the hierarchy will dictate what type of style one will use, one is more competitive with those down, but more accommodating with those higher.
Co-orientation - how much parties see the conflict the same way

Cultural - whether we're dealing with others in our own culture or others outside out culture, people have very different ways in how they deal with conflict.

Conflict as an Exchange
A feminine approach

Decision Making Processes

Models of the Decision Making Process
The most critical activity in the organization can take minutes or years.

Rational Models - Normative v. Exploratory Methods
Exploratory methods begin from the present, and see where events and trends might take us; normative methods begin from the future, asking what trends and events would take us there.

Alternatives to Rational Models - March and Simon's approach:

Satisficing is a strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near) optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete information, are considered in the outcome calculus.
Bounded Reality is a concept based on the fact that rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make decisions.
Intuitive Process - Sometimes decision makers have to come to an immediate conclusion and use gut instincts, without being aware of it, to guide their choices.
Analogical - managers make decisions based on what worked in the past.
Garbage Can - problems, solutions, participants and choices are all dumped together in an independent fashion.

Small-Group Decision Making
Fisher believes that groups go through a series of phases in an attempt to reach a decision:

Orientation - members become familiar with each other and the problem (what can you bring to the table)
Conflict - possible solutions to the problem are presented and debated.
Emergence - the group arrives at some kind of consensus.
Reinforcement - the decision is supported.

Decision making, though , is rarely linear and involves a number of paths. Remember the hazardous materials?

Ineffective Small-Group Decision Making
Janis' Group Think - A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group when members striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternate course of action.

Illusion of Invulnerability
Direct Pressure
Illusion of Unanimity
Self-Censorship

The Pepcon Disaster

Participation in Decision Making
Job Satisfaction

The Participative Process:
The Affective Model - Higher order needs are satisfied (self-esteem and actualization).
Te Cognitive Model - Improves flow of information through the org.

Overall, people like to be included in the decision making process and seeing their input valued and implemented.

Assessment One

Familiarize yourself with the developing situation in Iran. It's crucial to have an understanding of the impetus of the protests, the questionable election results. This link is a good place to start along with the associated links on the right of the web page.

Once you have a general understanding, review the approaches we've discussed in class and in the text that deal with organizational analysis, including the Human Relations Movement, and the Systems, Cultural and Critical Approaches.

In a discussion format, apply what you understand from these theories to an analysis of the events in Iran; the protests, the mobilization of the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian State's handling of the civil unrest and the involvement of the religious clerics, namely the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Please make these specific applications:

In terms of the hierarchy of needs in a social context, how would Maslow describe the protest of the election results? What does a victory for Ahmadinejad mean for the people in terms of these needs?
The Systems approach holds that an organization is a complex organism that must interact with its environment in order to survive. What do you think is inherent to preserving Iran's progress?
The mean age of Iranian citizens is 33 years. It's been thirty years (a generation) since the country's previous revolution in which we've seen an evolution and western influence of beliefs, attitudes and values. As the supreme leader of Iran appeals to his religious followers, what's at stake for Iran's young population, particularly its women? (Cultural approach)
In terms of power in the Critical approach, how does the existing Iranian Government control its constituent's perception of reality?

In addition to using your text, notes, and this website, I'm encouraging you to discuss this with your classmates. Use the class time Thursday to meet and talk this through.

Then after careful consideration of opinions and standpoints, along with your research, write your responses to the four items above. Email your assessment responses to me no later than midnight, Monday, June 29 using my imnost62@mac.com address. Label your email "OrgComm Assessment 1" in the subject line.

Assimilation Proscesses

Assimilation - Those ongoing behavioral processes by which individuals join, become integrated into and exit organizations.

This is a dual process whereby there is a socialization process where members are adapted through formal and informal means, and an individuation process, whereby a person changes some aspect of the organization to better suit their needs.

Two Models of Organizational Socialization (The When of Socialization)

I. Phases of Socialization - A process that may have many ups and downs and sometimes may not follow any pattern at all.

A. Anticipatory Socialization - the process that occurs before one ever enters into an organization. Three ways:

Learning about work - what it means to work
Learning about a particular occupation - ideas about what people do for a living.
Learning about a particular organization - learning through research where you might be working.

B. Encounter - where the employee encounters point of entry, or life on the job. These comprise orientation programs, informal/formal mentoring, and the employee seeking out information on their own.

C. Metamorphosis - where the outsider (new employee) has become an insider and made that transition into acceptance.

II. Content Socialization - what must be learned in order to adapt to the organizational context.

A. Role related information - one must learn info, skills, procedures, protocols and rules one must grasp in order to perform the job.

B. Organization culture - One must learn the issues in the culture. This is done through observation of behavior and artifacts to draw inferences about the values and assumptions. The org's stories (lore) tell more about the place than anything else.

Communication Process During Assimilation

I. The Employment Interview
Perhaps the most important step in the anticipatory socializing process.

A. As a recruiting and screening tool - the most important function of the interview is the recruiting and screening of potential employees.

Most interviews gather information in structured ways.
Research suggests that interviewers often cue applicant about appropriate response through he use of directed or leading questions.
Lots of variability marks the content of interview questions among different employers and industries. Some may focus on the college classes you took while anlther on hypotheitical situations, but all report that fluency of speech, composure and hte ability to express ideas are very important.

B. As an information-gathering tool - provides a glimpse into the future employee depending on the types of questions asked and the behavior of the recruiter.

C. As a tool for socialization - serves to ease newcomer's adaptation to the organization should they be offered a position. This means that some interviews might actually produce issues that will arise in that position, giving the applicant a true view of what the job will take.

Addressing Red Flags in a Job Interview -- powered by eHow.com

II. Newcomer Information-Seeking Tactics
There is a proactive role that newcomers play: they're seen as more than passive recipients of training programs and handouts. Instead, they activiley seek information that will help them adapt to their new roles and stewardship, along with the norms and values of the org.

III. Role Development Processes
Ways pepople act to define and develop thier roles. This role is developed by an org member through social exhange with their leader, or the Leader-Member exchange, the LMX theory:

Role-taking Phase - the leader requests a variety of activities from the member and observes performance and evaluates the member's abilities.
Role-making Phase - the leader gives the member a job and is allowed autonomy to do the job to thebest of their ability and work wth other members.
Role-routinization Phase - the point at which the role of the member and exepected behaviors are understood by both the member and the leader: in the circle, or out of the circle.

IV. Organizational Exit Interview
Not as much study here as the job interview. Also applies to intracompany transfer.
This influences not only those who leave but those who remain.

Critical Approaches

Put on your waders, we're going in deep...

Critical Approaches in OrgComm adopt a radical frame of reference by considering orgs as sites of domination and that theorists can emancipate people from the dominating forces, taking an active role in creating change.

One heralded agent for change is Karl Marx.

Marx was a German intellect who thought that there was an inherent imbalance between owners and workers in a capitalist society, and that eventually the workers would revolt.

Critical theorists believe that certain societal structures and processes lead to fundamental imbalances of power.
These imbalances lead to alienation and oppression for certain social classes and groups.
The role of the theorist is to explore and uncover these imbalances and bring them to the attention of the oppressed.

The Pervasiveness of Power
1. Power is the most important term to critical theorists, and it is related to constructs of control and domination.

In the radical approach, theorists are concerned with the deep structure that produces and reproduces relationships in org structure - patterns.

2. How capitalists owners have control - Modes and Means of Production

Substructure - economic and production base
Modes of production - economic conditions that underlie production
Imbalances therein create conflict between workers and owners, leading to alienation.

3. Control of Organization Discourse - Organizational reality is socially constructed through communication interactions, a context for domination.
Org narratives can be looked at as they potentially legitimize dominate forms of org reality and lead to ways to react to things making a script of the meaning of the organization - dogma.

4. Ideology - Ideology defined in this context is the assumptions about reality that influence perceptions of situations and events.

This is more than a set of beliefs and attitudes, it structures thought and controls interpretations of reality. This tells us what exists, what is good, what is possible.
Ideology also deals with assumptions that are rarely questioned or scrutinized.

5. Hegemony - Defined in this context is a process in which a dominant group leada another group to accept subordination as the norm.

The subjugated group often becomes complicit in the control (power) process.

6. Emancipation - the liberation from restrictive traditions, ideologies, assumptions, power relations, identities that inhibit or distort opportunities for autonomy, clarification of needs and wants and greater satisfaction.

The critical theorist here is like a psychoanalyst, they break down resistance to reveal social structures and processes that have lead to hegemony.

Two Critical Approaches in Communication

I. The Theory of Concertive Control - Power relationships can be transformed in an era of team-based and alternative forms of orgs.

Three broad strategies for exerting control:

Simple control - direct and authoritarian exertion of control in the workplace.
Technological control - exerted through technology like in assembly lines or computer programs. (Bristol compressors and WordPerfect layoffs.)
Bureaucratic control - based on the power of structure and the rational/legal rules.

Identification - The feeling of oneness or belonging to where a person identifies their self in terms of the group in which they're a member.

Discipline - Communication interactions develop a system of rewards and punishments that conform or deviate from the values identified as important by the work group.
The Discipline is meted out by the work group.

II. Feminist Theories of OrgComm - Gender permeates organizational life and many bureaucracies are patriarchal. It would appear that traditional characteristics of logic, aggressiveness and competitiveness prevail.

The Framing of Sexual Harassment

Women tend to "story" sexual harassment in ways that normalize it and supress further discussion of it as an oppressive influence in the workplace.

Discourse at Women-owned Businesses

Talked the talk of cooperation and flexibility but did not walk the walk.
The org was marked by emotion and conflict and dismissed as just the way women are.
Many women played into the sexual stereotypes of women.
Women felt empowered to work with other women who could empathize.

Disciplined Bodies

How women use or don't use their bodies in the work place, how they see themselves physically and what it means emotionally.

Organizational Analysis Project Rubric

These instructions outline the steps you should undertake in conducting your organizational analysis. Before you embark on this project, read this document and think about the analytical process, so you can plan accordingly. This is a time-consuming assignment. Be sure to get started early and give yourself plenty of time for completion. I hope that you will find it intriguing and worthwhile as a learning tool. Each of the response papers have been leading up to this analysis paper. This is your chance to become a communication consultant and apply the ideas you have learned this semester.

Project Instructions
The steps for conducting your organizational analysis are outlined below:

1. Identify an organization in which you will conduct your analysis. I assume you will want to look at your own organization being that you are already there and can do it while you are at work, but you are free to investigate another organization if you would like to do so.

2. Be careful and disclose information. Yes, this is your analysis, but in order to do a true study, you will need to talk to others about their experiences. Just be aware that some information shared with you is for research purposes and should not be shared with others. Also, be honest about your assignment.

3. Brainstorm central questions about the organization you want to discover. Some
of these questions might include (but are not limited to):
a) what is the management philosophy most apparent in the organization
(classical, human relations, human resources, situational, etc.)?
b) what Deal and Kennedy organizational culture does this organization seem to
have? how else can we describe this organization’s culture?
c) how does systems theory relate to this organization?
d) how does mentoring work at this organization?
e) what nonverbals do we notice? body language? environment? clothing?
f) how are meetings handled here? how could they be improved?
g) how is conflict handled--formally and informally?
h) what informal and formal networks are in place?
i) how diverse is the organization? (race, ethnic backgrounds, sex, religion,
sexual orientation, etc.) does the organization have any diversity initiatives or
policies?

4. Collect a variety of appropriate data. In order to learn in depth about the organization, you will need to obtain data using a variety of methods:

a) One-on-one, in-person interviews
Be prepared with your list of question before the interview. You may ask follow-up questions as you feel the need. Ask all different types of questions: open-ended, yes-no, rate on a scale, etc. Be sure to start each interview by going over the above document with each interviewee. Start interviews with simple questions and lead up to more personal ones. Set up your interviews very early as they may need to cancel and re-schedule several times. Be flexible--
remember THEY are doing YOU the favor of their time. Take no more than 30 minutes of their time--unless they keep you there talking longer. Be on time or early to your interviews.

b) Questionnaires and surveys
Surveys make it possible to get responses from a larger number of people quickly and provide quantitative data. Questionnaires can use open-ended questions or closed-ended (providing respondent with fixed list of choices) or a mix of both. Try to get a response rate of at least 50%. Do NOT do more than one survey at your organization. Ensure that all responses will be confidential. Include a brief statement of purpose at the beginning. You may need to send the survey more than once to those who are not responding.

c) Direct observation
Hang out in the lobby or cafeteria (with permission) and see what you can observe. Ask to “shadow” someone for half a day. Attend a social function of the organization. Attend an orientation day for new employees or a speech given by a leader. Observe how people have decorated their offices or cubicles. Ask to sit in and observe a meeting.

d) Archival data
This includes the following: organizational charts; financial performance records and annual reports; statistics on employee turnover or absenteeism; human resources materials; memos and emails; rules, policies and procedures in employee handbooks; mission statements, charters and ethical codes; employee newsletters; advertising brochures or materials; newspapers articles or any press about the organization.

e) Personal experience.
Your personal reactions can provide important information on the climate of the organization. Does it feel tense, relaxed, cheerful, depressed, guarded, open, optimistic or in crisis? Do the people in the organization return your phone calls and emails? What might this tell you? Is it easy or difficult to get organizational members to participate in this project? Are they disclosing or vague and guarded in their responses in interviews and surveys? Why do you think so?

5. Analyze your data with respect to the questions you brainstormed and outlined. As an individual, look at your data and answer those questions.

6. Your project analysis report might include the following sections:

a) Introduction:
This should clearly set up your study, the organization and the organization of the paper.
b) Description of your methodologies
How did you do your study?
c) Analysis (answers to your questions) might include tables and charts here too
d) Recommendations (how could the organization improve--specifically its
communication)
e) Your personal feelings about the organization
f) What you learned from doing this project
g) Appendix that includes all raw data

7. The final product should be a 5-7 page paper. The paper needs to be typed, double spaced, 12 font, and well written.

Ethical Issues
You will be entering a real organization where many people have jobs, careers, products and ideas at stake. You may be probing issues that are politically sensitive. It is essential that you honor any promises of confidentiality throughout your data collection and analysis. You may find that most candid and provocative quotes are the ones that bring your final report alive. However, these are also comments that could get some people into serious trouble, costing them promotions or even their jobs.

You must promise each person you interview that you will not reveal anything they tell you to anyone else in the organization. You should assure them that the only person to see the final report will be your team members and your instructor. You may offer to not use their names in the final report, but to only identify them by their title or department. If they prefer this, you should honor it.

Be careful of some well-meaning manager asking, “So, what did my marketing people say about the new initiative?” Even though you may be eager to provide feedback to this person, who might be very nice and helpful, be careful not to let an offhand remark slip. You will need to be very discreet about what people tell you. Simply respond, “I am not free to discuss my interviews with anyone else within the organization.”

If the organization shares information with you, but tells you not to duplicate or share it, please honor this agreement. The information can help inform your overall impressions without you having to disclose the specific details (even to me). If you have any uncertainty about which corporate data was meant to be confidential, check back with your company contact person who gave you the material or information.

I trust that none of you will deliberately violate the standards of confidentiality. I also strongly caution you against doing so accidentally. Please be very mindful how you transport and store your data (notes, quotes, tape recordings, etc.) was well as where you discuss the data with your group.

Cultural Approaches

Prescriptive Views of Culture

Careful not confuse organizational culture with corporate culture.

OrgCulture describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization.
CorpCulture is the total sum of the values, customs, traditions and meanings that make a company unique.

The Views:

Deal & Kennedy's Strong Cultures

Values - beliefs and vision that members hold for the organization
Heros - people who come to exemplify the organization's values
Rite and rituals - the ceremonies through which an org celebrates its values
Cultural network - the communication system through which cultural values are instituted and reinforced.

Peters and Waterman's Excellent Cultures
Ways to identify aspects of org culture that were prevalent in high performing companies deemed excellent by employees and experts.

Common themes emphasized the value of people and downplayed bureaucracy.
Moved analysis away from strictly rational models of organizing.

Think about this...

It's naive to believe there is a single culture that is responsible for organizational success.
These prescriptive approaches treat cultures as a thing that an org has, and by doing this we de-emphasize the complex process that an org created and sustained.
Org scholars now seek to describe and understand the unique ways in which org culture is developed and maintained - my preferred approach.

Alternative Approaches to Culture - Instead of seeing culture as a managing influence, study is turning to the emerging values, practices, narratives and artifacts that make up the org.

Org Cultures are Complicated - belief systems, lore, communication rules, and watercooler chatter are just a few ways to get a sense of culture.
Org Cultures are Emergent - created through social interaction of org members.

Performance, communication processes that allow for culture creation on an interactional, contextual, episodic, and improvisational level.

Org Cultures are not Unitary - many subcultures can exist in harmony, conflict indifference to others.
Org Cultures are Ambiguous

Schein's Model of OrgCulture - Edgar Schein was a management scholar and consultant interested in the role of leaders in the development and maintenance of org culture.

Schein's definition of culture - A social group, an org or other collective that i based on:

Group phenomenon - it can't just be one person as the culture depends on communication in order to perform.
Basic pattern of assumptions - beliefs that make up the culture are relatively enduring and hard to change.
Emerging and developing - they are learned and invented as a group meets internal and external challenges.
Socializing - developing an understanding of the assumptions and values that make up that org's culture.

Schein's Model
Organizational culture consists of some aspects that are relatively more visible, as well as aspects that may lie below one’s conscious awareness. Organizational culture can be thought of as consisting of three interrelated levels.

At the deepest level, below our awareness lie basic assumptions. These assumptions are taken for granted, and they reflect beliefs about human nature and reality.

At the second level, values exist. Values are shared principles, standards, and goals.

Finally, at the surface we have artifacts, or visible, tangible aspects of organizational culture. For example, in an organization one of the basic assumptions employees and managers share might be that happy employees benefit their organizations. This assumption could translate into values such as social equality, high quality relationships, and having fun. The artifacts reflecting such values might be an executive “open door” policy, an office layout that includes open spaces and gathering areas equipped with pool tables, and frequent company picnics in the work place.

For example, Alcoa designed their Headquarters to reflect the values of making people more visible, accessible and to promote collaboration. In other words, understanding the organization’s culture may start from observing its artifacts: the physical environment, employee interactions, company policies, reward systems, and other observable characteristics.

When you are interviewing for a position, observing the physical environment, how people dress, where they relax, and how they talk to others is definitely a good start to understanding the company’s culture. However, simply looking at these tangible aspects is unlikely to give a full picture of the organization. An important chunk of what makes up culture exists below one’s degree of awareness. The values and, deeper, the assumptions that shape the organization’s culture can be uncovered by observing how employees interact and the choices they make, as well as by inquiring about their beliefs and perceptions regarding what is right and appropriate behavior.

Points:

OrgCulture is reflected in a complicated et of assumptions, values, behaviors and artifacts.
OrgCultures change over time as groups adapt to environmental contingencies or issues.
OrgCulture is usually composed of subcultures existing in varying degrees of harmony or competition.
OrgCultures are created and maintained through the communication interactions of members.

Qualitative study - Ethnography
The writing of culture sees it as a text to be read, and the ethnographer will try to become immersed and then create an understanding of that culture and wrote about what they experienced (sound familiar?). They try to create the cultural tale:

Realist - a documentary where everything is objective and factual.
Confessional - the ethnographer talks about their experience with the orgCulture.
Impressionist - a narrative in which the info about the culture is slipped in the story that could stand on its own merits.

Systems Approaches

Systems Overview

Systems is the keyword here, stemming from the metaphor that a system is a complex organism that must interact with its environment in order to survive. So, organizations are organic.

General Systems Theory is the book on the concept of systems, written by Ludwig Van Bertalanfy. He believed that studying systems was just as appropriate for sociology as it was for biology.

Systems Components - A system is a breakdown of parts or components. In an organization, this would mean the people and departments that make up the company. So, to further the metaphor...

Hierarchical Orderings are arranged in highly complex ways that involve subsystems and supersystems. We look at how these smaller systems make up larger ones.
Interdependence implies that the functioning of one component or department of a system relies on the others in the system.
Permeability allows information and materials to flow in ad out of the organization.

Systems Processes - Input-throughput-output. The systems takes on material, changes that material and then releases it in a different form.

Exchange Process means there must be an change between the system and the environment. This process requires an exchange with the environment outside the system.
Feedback happens as a result in controlling the process. Corrective serves to keep a system on a steady course, and growth serves to transform the systems for better output.

System Properties

Holism, or nonsummativity - the system is more than the sum of its parts.
Equifinality - the system can reach the outcome via different conditions and by a variety of paths.
Negative Entropy - entropy is when a closed system runs down. An open system has the ability to sustain itself and grow. This is due to the flow of information that keeps the system dynamic in exchanging information to change.
Requisite Variety - Since a system is also a part of the environment, it must be responsive to the same complexity internally as externally. This allows the organization to keep up with market trends and adapt as needed.

Three Systems Theories
Cybernetic Systems Theory - Derived from the Greek word for a boat steersman, cybernetics is a process that deals with how the physical , natural and organizational systems are steered toward reaching the systems goals. (Don't let the latent definition of "cyber" fool you.)

System goal is the target for a particular aspect of the systems operation.
Mechanisms are a variety of ways that can be used to reach the system goal.
Feedback is the information that indicates whether or not the goal is being reached.

Karl Weick's Theory of Organizing - Organizations exist in an environment. The goal is to reduce uncertainty.
Enactment happens where different members of the organization create different meanings resulting in creating a different information environment.
Equivocality is the level of unpredictability present in the information environment - ambiguity.
Assembly rules (or recipes) guide sense-making in the organization.
Retention saves these rules and cycles for future use.

New Science Systems Theory
No all systems in nature and society are like those described by physicists. These systems may not be linear or striving toward equilibrium. Really?

Methods for Studying Organizational Systems
A. Network Analysis - Analyzing the map pf people, social groups, and what it all means.

1. Properties of Networks:

Network content - data and info that flows within it
Network mode - the medium used to maintain the network
Density - how connected or unconnected the members are
Level of analysis - Analysis of the organization itself or the relationships it has outside the organization.

2. Properties of Network Links - How things are connected

Strength - amount of content, durability and connectivity
Symmetry - the equality of the networking individuals
Multiplexity - diversity of content that travels the network

3. Network Roles - The ways in which people are connected to ech other.

B. Modeling Techniques - This allows researchers to assess complex relationships among variables. This is a statistical technique to try and model behavior and events within the organization.

C. Case Analysis - A rich understanding of organizational systems by looking at certain issues through observation, interviews, questionnaires, and archives. This can explain how and why an organization develops and behaves the way it does. This is also your term project.