Week 8, post #2 - Victimage

Victimage is one of the best and worse means of communicaiton, especially organizational or industrial. Sometimes things will not work the way they are supposed to regardless of how much effort was put into ensuring smooth operations. Victimage is an extremely common practice in most successful and unsuccesful organizations. Victimage is the act of naming an external enemy as the source of all personal or public ills. This means that it is not the actual person who was supposed to perform the action, was at fault. That gives an out for that person, to not faced the reprocusions of a failed action. I believe that everyone has engaged in victimage at one point in their lives.

Week #8, post #1

The golden mean that was illustrated by Aristotle is similar to other concepts introduced throughout history, most notably Benjamin Franklin's temperance ideology. The extremes of communication involve lies, secrecy, and cowardice. The opposite extreme involves brutal honesty, soul-baring, and recklessness. The golden mean, or balance of communication, is characterized by truthful statements, self-disclosure, and courage. This well struck balance respects the boundaries of others, and keeps relationships balanced. If you have ever experienced one of the mentioned extremes from above, you know how this type of communication can lead to unstable relationships.

corporate colonization

I believe that one of the greatest catastrophes that arised out of the capitalism of this century, was the developement of Big Business CEO's. In this organizational system, much of the work is delegated down the line, to standard workers, and the CEO is simply providing a yes or no. However, the person who is actually performing the duties is highly underpaid for the duties performed, as compared to the CEO. The was an occasion in which my boss, had to pick up the CEO of our company, and he said something very profound. My boss has a BMW, but said he wanted to pick them up in a bad car, so they don't think he makes as much, and won't think he is expendable.

organizational

One concept that stuck out to me was the article regarding responsible communication in a business setting. This included voicemail, email, conference calls, and other means of communication. I have called some of my employees, or even perspective interviews and have listen to different musical tones, some of which contained swearing and other inappropriate things. This did not produce quality assumptions of the character of these employees, or perspective interviews. It almost shows immaturity by those persons. I would absolutely suggest that we all adopt a business practice when it comes to our voicemails.

Week#6, post#3

Chapter 18: Production of change, reproduction or stability

The group dynamic is ever present when interested in the group dynamic. This would include crafting the decision, duality of structure, stability, and change. Production is the use of rules and resources to create a new structure. Reproduction is the use of rules and resources to reinforce structures already in place. The duality of structure is the idea that rules and resources are both the means and the ends of group interaction. Lastly, the interpenetration of structures are unnoticed change over time as reproduced structures affect each other. All of these concepts combine to describe the group product.

Week 6, Post #2 - Chapter 18 - Phasing out

In chapter 18, the history of small group communication is explained throught the Phase model. In this model, which was accepted for much of the 20th century, it was thought that there was a universal pattern of communication that all groups use when they make a decision. These phases included, orientation, conflict, coalescence, development, and integration. However, with the work of Poole, he was able to uncover that only about one quarter of small decision making groups actually followed this pattern. There was obviously more, as an approach must be flexible, and recognize that some situations may not fit their model, but more than half not fitting, shows it is not a good model. Thus Poole began looking at the affect of social structures present in the group dynamic.

Week 6 #1 - From the tiny pond to the big ocean

I particularly enjoy this concept, from the tiny pond to the big ocean, presented by Hirokawa. He mentioned the obvious difficulty present with translating the results from controlled lab experiments to that of real world, seemingly unpredictable interactions. He presents that quality and not quantity in the group decision making process, is the key to the final decision. I definitely believe that statement, as when I am in a group, I would tend to side more with someone who does try to think out their thoughts while, speaking, but someone who has visualized what they wanted to say, the best coarse of action, and then contributed to the group in a well-mannered, non-rambling way.