Dialogic Democracy and Organization, Web Lecture, pg. 4

As the web lecture Democracy and Dialogue states dialogic democracy is well-suited to organizations because dialogue requires collaboration-participants must work together to create meaningful communication. Communicators depend on each other to clearly articulate their thoughts and actively listen to what others have to say. In addition, dialogue means that organization members learn together, encouraging a cooperative approach to problem solving and decision making (Hammond, Anderson, & Cissna, 2003) (p. 4).

This type of dialogue democracy took place every time I went through an implementation of a new system at a customer site. A committee is formed with the customer usually made up of members that represent the stakeholders for the implementation and use of the new system. As a member of this committee, I would listen intently to the customer’s needs, desires and current processes and functionality of the current system(s) our product is replacing. Since each member is representing a different functioning group within the company, the committee or organization would learn each other’s needs, desires and how their organization utilizes the current system especially process wise. Each member must actively participate to come up with a baseline and solution for implementing the new system and phasing out the old that satisfies all parties involved.

Mindless Communication, Ch. 11, pg. 344

Sadly to say, I am guilty of the mindless communication on a regular basis as described on page 344. The phatic communication example is almost verbatim to conversations I have had with parents at my daughter’s school when we pick up the kids. Unless either one of us is willing to spend the time to stand and share more intimate details of our lives, the conversation tends to be the very polite, mindless, phatic communication. For me, sometimes the small talk is due to being rushed and wanting to at least acknowledge the individual in a somewhat passing conversation. Other times, the kids just want to go and there isn’t time to have real conversations. The other excuse, for the lack of a better word, is that you sometimes wonder when someone asks you how you are if they really want to know. Especially, if you follow up with an explanation of how your life is going. In the workplace, this type of conversation happened a lot between coworkers but usually in the beginning when you are getting to know one another and feeling out the person to see if they really want to have more meaningful conversations.

Differentiation, Ch. 10, pg. 312

Once I read the example of the physician that recognizes that there is no medical care offered on weekends in the community and decides to address that need, it made me think about what I believe is becoming a new trend. This trend I speak of is a way for physicians to differentiate themselves from other traditional physicians. What I have noticed that more doctors are starting to offer is “concierge” –style practices as quoted in the MedScape Today’s article titled Boutique Doctors Cater to Patients' Needs. These boutique doctors offer special services such as being available at all hours for medical advice, prescriptions or same day appointments at an added extra cost out of pocket to the patient above the insurance cost. This allows for the doctors to have fewer patients to focus on. My husband’s primary doctor changed his practice to a boutique one. Although, my husband liked his doctor, he didn’t feel it was worth the thousands of dollars extra to keep him as his primary physician. Therefore, he was forced to change doctors. Soon after my husband received the announcement of his doctor’s change in practice, I received a letter from my primary doctor offering similar services. However, she is still keeping half of her practice traditional with no added cost. Fortunately, for me she kept part of the practice traditional because I did not have to make the choice of changing physicians. I like having a physician whom I’ve built a rapport with.

Expectancy Theory, Ch. 9, p. 291

The expectancy theory is one of the four best-known theories of employee motivation (p. 289). Expectancy theory makes three assumptions about employee behavior as stated on page 291:
1. Employees perceive a relationship between a specific work behavior and some form of payoff or reward; that is, the behavior is viewed as instrumental to obtaining the reward.
2. Each reward or positive outcome is associated with a value (or valence, in the language of the theory) that reflects how much the individual wants the reward.
3. Employees develop expectations about their ability to perform the desired behavior successfully.
When working in sales and consulting positions in the past, it was very clear that if you made your quota whether it was selling a product or your consulting services, you would be rewarded with a commission check and extra monetary bonuses. The communication of this type of work behavior was always established with goals set between the management and employee through a type of contract that was both communicated verbally and in written form. Usually, these goals were set for the level of the position you held and the team or department you worked for.
At one company, each month the president even communicated with the whole company the status of company level revenue goals and individual quota goals obtainment. He would send out a company-wide group voicemail stating where we were at with meeting the projected company revenue goals for that quarter and who brought in the largest sales and consulting dollars that month and where they were at with meeting their quota. This was another way of motivating the employees each month to achieve their quota to earn not only their monetary reward but the reward of recognition by upper management and fellow employees. Furthermore, if you made 100% of your yearly quota and more, you were eligible for the President’s Club. The President’s Club was an all expense paid trip to a vacation resort for you and a guest. I wonder if those days of the dotcom budgets and rewards are gone with today’s economy.

Team-based organizations, Ch. 8, p.23

In chapter 8 on page 235, the book introduces team-based organization as where in addition to their individual responsibilities they also serve as members of one or more working groups. A team-based organization is one that has restructured itself around interdependent decision-making groups, not individuals, as a means of improving work processes and providing better quality and service to customers. For years, companies have involved team-based organizations in implementing new processes and technology within the company to improve their time to market. As a consultant in implementing Product Lifecycle Management enterprise systems, team-based organizations were utilized in implementing these systems within the company. The groups my consulting team worked with at a customer site may include expert mechanical engineers within their department, configuration and document management employees, help desk representatives, database administrators and department managers for each organization the system will effect and most importantly, had contributed budget in implementing the system. These individuals that made up the team were considered the knowledge base and representatives for the stakeholders within the company since these system installations and rollouts affected the design, manufacturing and release of the products by the company. Their decisions impacted the product release and revenue.

Workplace Democracy, Ch. 8, p. 234

In chapter 8 on page 234, Deetz outlines four steps toward workplace democracy in which shared decision making among stakeholders is crucial.
1) Create a workplace in which every member thinks and acts like an owner.
2) The management of work must be reintegrated with the doing of work.
3) Quality information must be widely distributed.
4) Social structure should grow from the bottom rather than be reinforced from the top.
The fourth step resonates with me when I think of how social media networking is being used in the workplace and for that matter in the marketplace. Instead of the traditional top-down communication, social media networking is a bottom-up approach to communication. For instance, when I worked at IBM, the company utilized the software they developed and sold to consumers internally for employee communication. For instance, IBM’s Websphere Portal was utilized for the company’s intranet. Each employee had a profile based on what organization, department and job title they participated in. Based on that information, the end user’s main pages displayed the pertinent content and information for that employee profile at a company level. However, the employee can then further define their profile and add various functionalities based on their special interest or job specifications to have even more refined content displayed. This included access to newsgroups where communication or discussion threads were started, answered or discussed by various employees throughout the company. The types of subjects discussed ranged from technical questions about certain products to options on how certain company procedures could be modified. These discussions threads were monitored and sometimes distributed or directed to the appropriate people to change or knowledge experts to answer. This is the type of bottom-up affect a social media network has on workplace democracy.

Pervasive Communication Environment, Technology and Teams

Pervasive communication environment is described as allowing people multiple access points to access, create, and share information in an integrated communication structure with text, audio, video, and voice capabilities almost anywhere, at anytime, for any reason. The word pervasive deems very appropriate for the way mobile devices are being used in everyday life. One of the most recent phenomena’s is Twitter. Twitter is becoming more and more popular for all age groups to use not only for updating everyone of their followers on what they are doing but for consumer use also such as marketing and advertising for company products and services. The buck does not stop there! There are Twitter applications (apps) for distributing and collecting data through surveys. There are apps that send coupons to the end users at the time the person is walking through the doors of a retail store. There are apps that can help you save money such as FuelFrog that allows you to enter your mileage between fill ups, how much gas costs and how many gallons or liters you added to your tank as described on Mashable.com. The reporting of this information can give you insight on your driving habits and can help you decide on better ones to help save money. With so much new technologies being implemented, it makes one wonder what the pervasive communication environment will look like in 5 to 10 years.