Organizational Communication

COMM 2600 Syllabus, Spring 2011

COMM2600-3

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

University of Colorado at Boulder – Department of Communication

Syllabus – Spring2013

Instructor:Pascal Gagné

Office:Hellems 65

E-mail:

Course schedule:Group A – 12:00 PM – 12:50 PMMCOLE186

Group B – 1:00 PM – 1:50 PMECLC1B75

Office hours:Monday after class, and by appointment

Course Overview and Objectives

Organizations affect our lives in incredible and powerful ways – and no one in our society is exempt from interacting with and within organizations. This course is designed to address the vital role of communication within these organizational contexts.Whatever your career goals, the knowledge you gain from this class will therefore help you think critically about the role that communication plays in organizational experience.

Organizational communication, as a field of study, analyzes how the actions of people inside and outside organizations are coordinated and controlled to achieve some collective outcomes. It is also concerned with the ways individuals are shaped by their interactions with the organizations around them. Therefore, rather than offer a set of skills that allow you to fit into the world of work, this course will attempt to show how communication is key to understanding how organizations function. Only when we understand how organizations work can we change them and consciously shape our own experiences with them.

In this course we will examine the ways people communicate in organizational contexts and the ways in which communication creates and sustains organizations. Specific course objectives include:

Developing a thorough knowledge of key organizational communication perspectives, theories, and issues.
Understanding the multiple paradigms through which we can understand and study organizational communication.
Promoting active critical thinking about the role of communication in – and as constitutive of – organizations.
Applyingcourse material to a variety of situations, including to your organizational experiences, to current events, and to representations of organizations in popular culture.
Integrating this knowledge into your everyday life and with concepts learned in your other classes so that you can critically assess the importance of communication in understanding how organizations work.
Developing skills that clearly demonstrate your ability to analyze organizational phenomena through organizational communication perspectives, theories, and concepts.

In order to meet these objectives, the course is comprised of lectures, case studies, engagement with a research project, classroom activities, discussions, and student presentations. Our goal is to work together to bring our personal insights into the classroom and use class concepts and communication theories to understand and evaluate various organizational experiences.

How to contact the instructor

The best and only sure way of contacting me outside of class and of my office hours is by e-mail (), which I check regularly.

Readings

For this course, there is one mandatory textbook, which can be purchased at the University of Colorado at Boulder bookstore on campus. Other mandatory readings (see below) are available on CU Learn.

Required textbook

Mumby, D. K. (2013). Organizational communication: A critical approach. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Electronic Readings (Available on D2L)

Allen, B. J. (2011). Race matters. Difference matters: Communicating social identity (pp. 65-94). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Callás, M.B. & Smircich, L. (1991). Voicing Seduction to Silence Leadership. Organization Studies(Walter De Gruyter Gmbh & Co. KG), 12(4), 567-601.

Hochschild, A. R. (2000). The nanny chain. American Prospect, 11(4), 32-36.

Kirby, E. L., & Krone, K. J. (2002). “The policy exists but you can't really use it”: Communication and the structuration of work-family policies. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 30, 50-77. doi:10.1080/00909880216577

Trujillo, N. (1992). Interpreting (the work and talk of) baseball: Perspectives on ballpark

culture. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 350-371. doi:10.1080/10570319209374423

Course Schedule

This schedule may be subject to minor changes over the course of the semester.

* Materials marked with “D2L” can be found on Desire2Learn.

DateTopicAssignment and/or Reading Due

UNIT 1: APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Week 1

January14Course IntroductionSyllabus

January16Course IntroductionMumby Ch. 1

January18Course Introduction

Week 2

January 21No Class — Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday

January 23Critical ApproachMumby Ch. 2

January 25Critical Approach

Week 3

January 28Scientific ManagementMumby Ch. 3

January 30Reviewing Proposals

February 1Scientific ManagementProposal Due

Week 4

February4Human Relations SchoolMumby Ch.4

February6Human Relations School

February8Systems ApproachMumby Ch. 5

Week 5

February11Systems Approach

February13Culture & OrganizationMumby Ch.6

February15Culture & OrganizationPaper # 1 Due

Week 6

February18Unit I Review

February20MIDTERM EXAM

February 22Going Back on Exams & Papers

UNIT II: DIFFERENCE & ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Week 7

February25Power & Resistance Mumby Ch 7

February 27Power & Resistance

March 1 Postmodernism & Organization Mumby Ch. 8

Week 8

March4Postmodernism & Organization

March6Gender & OrganizationMumby Ch 9

March8Gender & Organization

Week 9

March 11Communicating DifferenceMumby Ch. 10

March 13Communicating Difference

March 15LeadershipMumby Ch. 11

Week 10

March18Leadership

March 20BrandingMumby Ch. 12

March 22Branding

Week 11

March 25-27-29No Class — Spring Break

Week 12

April 1GlobalizationMumby Ch. 13

April 3Globalization

April5Meaning and IdentityMumby Ch. 14

Week 13

April8Meaning and IdentityPaper # 2 Due

April10Critical IssuesTrujillo

April12Critical Issues

Week 14

April15Critical IssuesAllen

April17Critical Issues

April19Critical IssuesHochschild

Week 15

April22Critical IssuesCallás, M.B. & Smircich

April24Critical Issues

April26Critical IssuesKirby& Krone

Week 16

April 29Course Wrap-Up

May 1Course Wrap-Up

May3FINAL EXAM

Course Assignments and Examinations

Participation and Attendance

Your attendance to class is essential to ensure your success in it. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of every class, either orally or through a sign-in sheet. Your participation grade does notreflect your adherence to the attendance policy, but your active participation in class.

Reading Responses

To guide your reading for the course and to help you connect your experiences with course concepts and theories, you will write a series of responses to our reading. These responses will be in one of two forms: answers to a set of questions about the reading and more open-ended responses to a prompt. You will receive specific information about each required reading response as we move through the semester. Your responses will receive a grade on 15 points as follows:

15: You demonstrate an insightful, nuanced understanding of relevant issues, and your writing is uniformly excellent. You consistently incorporate specific evidence (quotations, examples) from the reading in your answers. Where appropriate, you make connections to other course material and offer critiques. You cite the reading appropriately.

13: Your response shows basic understanding of the reading and your writing is average.

0: You did not complete the response or your answer does not provide evidence that you read the article.

Case Study

The case study is designed to accomplish a number of learning goals. It will help you to identify, explain, analyze and critique issues with organizational communication. It will help you to better understand the theories we have read about in class and how those theories can produce insight in real-world situations. Further, this project helps you to present ideas in a well-written, convincing, concise, and organized report. The case study has three parts. EACH NEW PART SHOULD COMPLETE PREVIOUS ONES: DO NOT REPEAT YOURSELF.You may choose to work on your case study individually, with a partner, or in a group of three. Collaboration is strongly encouraged. Requirements will vary for each of these options, as outline below. For each part of the assignment, please turn in copies of the previous parts of the assignment. This allows us to develop a conversation about your work over the course of the semester.

Paper #1: Proposal

First, you will turn in a proposal for your case study. The proposal begins your conversation with me, and will allow me to give you feedback about your selected topic in order to help you be as successful as possible in the subsequent parts of this assignment. Think of the proposal as an introduction to the larger project. A proposal is a sale pitch: should we invest money in your research project? Is the critical issue you are concerned with worth studying? In the end, you should convince me that your project is relevant. The proposal must include the following items:

Whether you are working individually, with a partner, or in a group of three. The names of all of the people you are working with should be listed. Individuals will turn in length requirements.
An organization that you have selected to analyze for the remaining two parts of the Case Study. Ideally, the organization should be one that you have participated in (as an employee, a member, or a volunteer).
A description of the organization, the major actors, and an existing problem the organization is dealing with.
A rationale for why this organization is interesting to study. Your own interests are important and can and should be stated. More importantly, though, you should make a case for why the organization will be interesting to study from a communication approach.
Your involvement with the organization: how will you gain knowledge on the critical issue you are studying? If you have experience as an organizational member, employee, or volunteer already, you should provide details about this involvement. You should detail other ways that you will learn about the organization (think broadly about organizational documents, communication, media presence, events, and products). Websites are great sources of information, but they alone will not suffice for this project. Provide a list of ways you will gain knowledge. For partnerships and groups you should provide details about who will take on specific tasks for learning about the organization.

Paper # 2: Analysis

In the first paper for your case study, you will apply one of the theories we have discussed in class to your organization. PICK ONLY ONE. Connecting multiple theories is hard enough to do, so please focus instead on the application of the theory. You will outline specific links between components of the theoretical perspective and actual practice in your organization. What insights does the theory give you about the organization? Then, evaluate what is important about the organization that this theory cannot help you to explain or analyze. Make some kind of suggestion about the limitations of the theory you have chosen, and, to the best of your ability, suggest other theoretical approaches that might help you to explain something specific about the organization that your chosen approach cannot.

Theories that you may choose to use for Paper #1 include:

Scientific Management (Taylor)
Bureaucratic Theory (Weber)
Human Relations (Mayo or Follet)
Human Resource Management (McGregor or Likert)
Systems approach (Weick or Luhmann)
Organizational Culture (either Pragmatist or Purist Approach)

For the best papers, you will want to select a specific aspect of the theory and provided a detailed, nuanced, and in depth application of that concept. For instance, if you select “Human Resource Management”, you will likely want to narrow one step further to use McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y or Likert’s Four Systems Approach, but not both.Your paper should demonstrate your familiarity with relevant course concepts and provide clear links between the case and those concepts. You should also be sure that you provide a sufficiently detailed explanation of the organization (in the proposal and paper # considered together) so that I can understand what organizational processes you are describing.

Paper # 3: Discussion

In the second paper for your case study, you will focus on power and difference in your organization. This is the discussion/conclusion part of your study, where you draw implications of your research regarding a critical issue. You need to problematize that issue in the light of the literature (chapters 7-14) and the results of your study (the results of your analysis). This means we learn something from your study, that you made a valid contribution by enhancing our knowledge of a critical issue. There are several ways to make a contribution (updating the literature; pointing attention to a neglected topic; identifying factors; making prescriptions, etc.). Please come during office hours to discuss the nature of your contribution with me. The focus should be consistent with our critical approach to organizational communication. Paper #3 should build on paper #1 and #2.

Analytic Approaches that you may choose to problematize a critical issue in your Paper #2 include:

Power (power as social influence, one- two- or three-dimensional power, or discipline)
Organizational Ideology
Fordist & Post-Fordist Organizations
Postmodernism
Gendered Organizations
Organizational Work-Life
Raced Organizations
Sexualized Organizations

These theories are quite broad, so successful papers will need to narrow within these areas to a specific concept (or approach). For instance, if you notice that a limitation of your theory is that it is inadequate for dealing with issues of race, you might draw upon the specific concept of whiteness and explore how organizational practices produce and sustain (or challenge) whiteness. Your paper should demonstrate your familiarity with relevant course concepts and provide clear links between the case and those concepts. You should also be sure that you provide a sufficiently detailed explanation of the organization (in the proposal and paper # considered together) so that I can understand what organizational processes you are describing.

For all papers, you will be evaluated based upon:

the insightfulness of your analysis
the appropriateness of your selection of aspects of the organization and the theory
the accuracy of your use of course concepts
the completeness of your analysis (the amount and quality of evidence and explanation you provide)
the professionalism of your product (including quality of writing, grammar, spelling, organization, clarity)

Midterm and final examinations

Exams are designed to give you an extended opportunity to demonstrate your careful thinking about the issues discussed in class. They also help you to synthesize information across several course topics. You are responsible for all course material, including in-class discussions, even if we have not discussed a particular assignment in class. Tests are likely to include some combination of multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and essay questions. The midterm exam will focus on materials from the first half of the semester, and the final exam will focus on materials from the second.

Grading Scheme and Distribution

There are a total of 500 points that you can earn in this course. The points are distributed as follows:

Class Engagement 5%25 points

Reading Responses 15%75 points

-5 responses(3% each)(15 points)

Midterm Exam20%100 points

Case Study35%175 points

-Proposal(5%) (25 points)

-Paper #1(15%)(75 points)

-Paper #2(15%)(75 points)

Final Exam25%125 points

Total100%500 points

A =100 – 93.3%466 – 500 pointsC =76.5 – 73.6%368 – 382 points

A- = 90 –93.2%450 – 465 pointsC- =73.2 – 70%350 – 367 points

B+ = 89.9 – 86.6%433 – 449 pointsD+= 69.9 – 66.6%333 – 349 points

B = 86.5 – 83.3%416 – 432 pointsD = 66.5 – 63.3%316 – 332 points

B- = 83.2 – 80% 400 – 415 pointsD- = 63.2 – 60%300 – 315 points

C+ =79.9 – 76.6%383 – 399 pointsF =< 60%< 300 points

Course Policies and Procedures

Attendance policy: Coming to class is a baseline expectation and is necessary for your learning and the quality of class discussion. You are allowed three absences without penalty. Please consider these days as “personal time off”. You can use these days when you are sick, out of town, or overwhelmed with other work. However, after you have used your personal time off, each subsequent absence will result in a deduction from your final grade. YOU WILL BE PENALIZED 1% OF YOUR FINAL COURSE GRADE FOR EVERY CLASS MISSED. This means that if you miss 7 total classes, you will receive a 4% deduction from your final grade. Please talk to me in advance if you have a problem that will cause you to miss a significant amount of class. I am very flexible, but I need official documentation as evidence that you tell me the truth. Also, if you come late, please let me know after class: otherwise, I will not register your attendance.

Technology in the classroom: Please remember to turn off your mobile phones upon entering the classroom. Laptop computers can only be used for educational purposes. NO FACEBOOKING ALLOWED.This behavior will be penalized with participation points. Computers and other technological devices cannot be used for any other purpose.

Policy on course readings: All readings from your textbook and from D2L Learn are mandatory and vital to your success in this course. Exams will test your knowledge of the conceptual material. These readings must be done before each class because you will be unable to fully participate in our discussions and analyses if you have not done the required readings beforehand. I have uploaded discussion questions for each of these readings in order to guide you through the readings and direct your attention to crucial ideas. You are strongly encouraged to consult the discussion questions, as they will form the basis of our class discussions on that specific reading.

Use of D2L Learn: All of the PowerPoint slides that I will be using in class will be available on D2L. Please keep in mind that your attendance in class is mandatory, regardless of me providing the slides online. As you will see, the material I present in class will go above and beyond what is written on the slides, and your grade – and knowledge about the subjects at hand – will suffer significantly if you do not attend each class and take supplementary notes. Furthermore, please remember that the availability of the slides on D2L is a privilege, and I can choose to stop uploading them at any time if class attendance becomes a problem.

If you have and questions as of how to access D2L, please contact the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Information Technology Services (

Grade appeals: If you feel that you have received an inaccurate grade on an assignment, you may submit a written grade appeal to me within one week of the date that the assignment was handed back. You must refer to specific course concepts and to your specific assignment in your written grade appeal. You will be required to defend your argument during a one-on-one meeting during which we discuss the calculation of your grade on that particular assignment.

Assignment requirements:

All written assignments should be turned in on D2L. I will submit every paper to Turnitin.com: If you plagiarize, I will know it right away and will report it to the Honor Code Office.

No hardcopy printout
Please do not e-mail me your papers
Must be typed in 12-point font, double-spaced, and in APA format for citing sources.
Be written in proper, standard English and be free of spelling and grammar errors.

If you are planning on being late, an extension can be negotiated. Once again, I am pretty flexible regarding deadlines. Please don’t send me all your papers two days before the exam, or I will penalize you.