Organizational communications and technological change

Overall this topic refers to examining the usage of communications technologies and how these new technologies bringing different impacts and effects on how the message conveyed. This topic paper will focus on the role of communication-technologies in an organizational environment which include with media richness theory. Trevino, Lengel, & Daft (1987) explained the richness theory as the ability of a medium to carry information. Often, researchers who observed this theory rank the communication media on their abilities to convey the both information types; ability to transmit information and the ability to carry information about the information (Sitkin, Sutcliffe & Choplin, 1992). The criterion for ranking the medium's ability is actually to obtain information of which is best to use. Newberry (2001) have ranked the seven different media types into a hierarchy from richest to leanest media. Rich media refers to media that able to convey most information; and lean media carries the least, the choices of media are varied from “face to face”, video conferencing, text-messages to E-mail. In conclusion, media richness theory is capable to make a decision of which communications technologies is the greatest competence or contain with the most attractive characteristics for the intended interaction

Emotion and stress in the workplace

In this topic we have looked at another important factor to examine in organizational communication which recognized by the scholars as the concern of emotion in the workplace. Several aspects in communication and emotion have been observed and investigated to expand research about stress in a workplace. This investigation of stress has led to a proliferation of terms used to describe various aspects of the phenomenon e.g. burnout.

The term burnout was first coined by Freudenberger (1974), refers to “wearing out” from the pressure of work (in Miller 2008, p. 205). Consider, for example, Sarah Palin, a woman, a single mother and a political. Over time, she must encounter pressure and stress with those activities she has; these situation perhaps burning her out. As added by Miller (2008) that the performance of emotional labor is a ‘gendered’ process. In conclusion, too much work or workload is one of the most significant workplace stressors. Some effects as the result from stress in the work place are indisputably poor job performance, exhaustion which leads to unhealthiness.

Diversity

This topic scrutinized diversity in the workplace, but what is diversity? Workplace diversity refers to the differences that people convey to their jobs on the basis of ethnicity, physical or mental ability, gender, age, race, religion or professional background. Indisputably, these differences have a direct and indirect influence on the work place environment. Most in every Asia country, such as Malaysia, the terms racial diversity continues to be underplayed in employment. Kandola and Fullerton (1994) stated that racial preference have diminished the equal opportunities over the last two decades. In fact, nowadays, it is common when someone is looking out for a job either in website and tabloid, he or she will see that it is not uncommon for companies to include a preference for a particular nationality as part of the job description; for example, American or British or Westerners “only”. Selective bias displayed in job ads is a reflective of serious discriminatory recruitment policies. On the other hand, diversity indeed has a positive element too. Diversity includes the perspectives brought from different people from different part of the world. These people carry intergenerational differences, international education and work experience, and a multicultural background. Consequently, the company will gain global and expand domestic markets and have a strong impact on economic growth and innovation.

Communications approaches to conflict management

The major topic in this chapter is to examine the universal component of organizational life, conflict. Also, it reviews a number of methods for dealing with the organizational conflict e.g. bargaining and negotiation. Conflict takes many forms in organizations since there are differences of opinion on how revenues should be alienated or as simple as how the work should be done. The terms “interdependent” means that people in a team or department systems have some connection and depend on each other to accomplish their tasks. Indisputably, when more than one person is working together; one might be stronger than the other in achieving the same goal. Such situations could eventually pit the two people against each other. On the other hand, conflicts bring in a positive impact to the organization such as creative solution; as agreed by Putnam & Poole (1987, p.552) that conflict is important.

Furthermore, Putnam and Poole (1987) define that alternatives are available to the basic forms of conflict management and resolution. As mentioned earlier, bargaining and negotiation; both are the same, they aimed at settling disputes over the distribution of joint gains, contractual relationships, and strategy.

Organizational communication and globalization

This topic addresses the need for organizational communication to understand the contested nature of globalization. It recognized the advantages and disadvantages issues affected by globalization in organizational communication. Globalization of culture; the dramatic changes wrought by globalization have forced policymakers to respond to public pressures in many new areas People around the world are becoming the witness that globalization are increasingly having a significant impact on matters of local cultures. Indeed, this matter is hard to pin down because it’s tangible and uncountable yet more often than not it fraught with emotion and controversy. In this contemporary world, globalization has united different cultures and turned them together into something else. It should be safe to say that the dominant view of globalization is distinguished from America or Americanization. This approach has been used since the late 1980s to conceal the unidirectional, top-down character of US-led globalization as it was being insistently imposed on the rest of the world particularly in the economic and cultural fields (Conversi, 2010). Taken for example, culinary culture that also has become extensively globalized, McDonald's and Starbucks from have been so popular outside of their countries of origin. They develop and imposed their companies try to on their environments, e.g. McDonald’s Malaysia offers “Ayam Goreng Spicy”, rather than simply adapt to them and simultaneously increase the economic revenues for the American.