Week 5: Post 4- Deliberative Democracy

Web Lecture: Deliberative Democracy
I have never known there was so much more information into democracy. I always assumed that democracy means every voice is heard and a decision isn’t made until a majority is settled. Out of the various democracies that were presented into our web lecture I have to say Deliberative Democracy stood out the most for more. Deliberative Democracy asks everyone to participate but it goes on beyond another level. This type of democracy also has all participants to present and listen to arguments. Every voice is heard. It is okay to disagree when you are trying to come up with a conclusion; they want to make sure everyone is happy with the outcome. Sometimes people’s opinions change because they were convinced otherwise. So working together is key in this type of democracy.

Week 5: Post 3- Phatic Communication

Phatic communication is what I would like to discuss as part of Ch 11. Phatic communication is a form of small talk that helps us appear social and gives the impression that we are interested in others. I am a victim of using phatic communication. I am a sales associate at a retail store at Valley Fair. One of the rules that were passed down from corporate is that we must know 4 things about a customer before they leave our store. In order to do that I usually go: “Wow, I love that belt!? Where did you get it?”, or “Did you have a hard time finding parking today? The mall is crazy today! J “ I am sure I have been a victim of phatic communication as well, whenever I am getting my hair cut, or getting a pedicure, 90% of the time I am asked “Do you have a boyfriend?” Typical question… It is mentioned that if we rely on Phatic communication too often, it can be detrimental for us to learn something newer and more interesting about those who surrounds us. What do you guys think about Phatic Communication?

Week 5: Post 2-Competitive Strategy

Competitive Strategy: is a clear statement of why customers should choose a company’s products or services over those of competing companies.
The example I would like to use today is Target vs. Wal-Mart. Wal-mart is always known as the big store that has low prices, and you can find just about everything. However, in this battle I decide to stay with Target. Over the past several years, I feel like Target has really upped their qualities. I find shopping at Target with so much more ease. Everything is nicely organized and put together. Yes, their prices tend to be a bit higher than Wal-Mart. Except, I know there is nothing bad going on at corporate. Target is never in midst of scandals about treating their employees badly, unlike Wal-Mart. I can actually tell people “Hey I got this sweater from Target!” Target offers affordable and cute clothing that isn’t made out of poor quality. I very much am a Target shopper vs. Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart may be able to offer lower prices, but the overall quality of shopping experiences, Target overrules everything.

Week 5: Post 1- Motivation

Motivation: can be defined as “the degree to which an individual is personally committed to expending effort in the accomplishment of a specified activity or goal”. For this section our text is telling us how leaders motivate or discourage their group members. The texts mentions there are two ways of doing these tasks:
1) Provide information and feedback
2) Communicate with concern.
In my work experiences, on our one year review is when my manager gives us a packet of how they thought we did at work. She would circle 1 to 5, depending how satisfied she was with our work competence. I feel like whenever I got 5’s I would be very happy and it would motivate me to continue the way I have been working. If I get a 3 or a 4 under a category it would only make me work harder.

Week 4: Post 4 Creativity and constraint in teams and networks

Rothwell states on page 267 that “team-based organizations face the challenge of balancing creativity and constraint in group relationships and or productivity dealing with diverse interpretations.” I understand that it can be hard when you are formed in whether a small or large group, it can be tough to get your word across. Sometimes I feel like some group tension can be released, meaning that you are in a new environment with people you don’t know; it can be hard to mention something if you didn’t spend the proper amount of time to learn about one another. No matter how creative you can be in the group, maybe there is the person trying to become the leader of the group who pushes your thoughts down saying: “we tried that, it didn’t work”. Maybe the leader should take other opinions more seriously and the work can be finished quicker and more efficient. What do you guys think?

Week 4: Post 3 Types of Teams

There are various types of teams. There are three types of teams: project teams, work teams, and quality improvement teams. According to our text book on page 236, depending on the location of the members of the teams, they could all be considered a virtual team.
Project teams: which help coordinate the successful completion of a particular project.Work teams: is a group of employees responsible for the entire work process that delivers a product or service to a customer. Quality-improvement team: goals are to improve customer satisfaction, evaluate and improve team performance.
I fully understand what a work team and a quality improvement team is. I am a part time sales associate for a clothing store in the mall. The other sales associates and I are responsible for making sure the store is looking at its best, and all the customers are satisfied with our attitude and making sure all the customers are being helped. I guess my job is a hybrid of both of the type of teams I mentioned.
This summer I am beginning to recognize what a virtual team is as well. I am taking 2 online classes currently and one of them is comm41. The teacher assigns us group work; I however is spending the next month across the world in Switzerland. All I can do is use the internet to connect with my group members.

Week 4: Post 2- Gender Differences at Work

According to the book: “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” it is said that men and women communicate differently. On page 204 of our text book it mentions that men engage in: “report talk”, it is a style of speaking that: demonstrates knowledge, skill and ability, instrumentality, conversational command, direct and assertive expressions, abstract terms over personal experience. For women, they build relationships using “rapport talk”, which emphasizes: demonstrating equality through matching experiences, providing support and responsiveness, conversational maintenance, tentativeness, personal, concrete details. I highly agree with the text book on how men and women communicate differs. I also like how the author through in the book: “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”, it was a highly talked about books in the 90s for major media outlets.

Week 4: Post 1-Virtual or Real Communication?

It is interesting to think in the few most recent years it doesn’t really matter if we met in person or via email, text message, or email for it to be productive. I believe that doing things online with my other group members is still considered real. This summer I am in 2 different online classes in my comm41 class we have to do group projects and the teacher mentioned we have to meet in person or schedule a designated time online to meet, whether it is a discussion board, chat room or IMing session. We ended up doing fairly well on the project so I do not see why it would not be considered a real meeting session. What do you guys think? Do you consider interaction online real or fake?

Web Lecture Blog 2

Practical view is a internal variable used for organizational communication. What happens is when a company wants to be more efficient (time), they might change the way they do things to see if it will make a change for the better.
I feel like a lot of companies’ change the ways they work sometimes by cutting expenses and making more profit. I suppose it can be the more practical way of doing it, however sometimes I feel like it can hurt their workers. What if the company lays off people that have been there for a long time to hire incoming people who will work for lower wages? What do you guys think?

Web Lecture Blog 1

“True love can drive you insane” is one of my favorite metaphors. Without any surprise I figured that communication will have metaphors as well. Conduit metaphor was first founded by Redding and it has three parts.1. Ideas and meanings are objects2. Linguistic expressions are containers for meanings.3. Communication is sendingOrganizational communication metaphors have their perks and their problems. It is assumed that these metaphors can be transferred among speakers, listeners etc. However, sometimes information is not transmitted properly. It is like playing “telephone” as a child. After it gets enough sifting the quality of the information is no longer very accurate. I remember in elementary school we used to always play telephone I didn’t actually think of the “lesson learned” until now. But it all makes sense now.

Ch 6-Post

Ch 6 Concept 1 “The Centrality of Power”
For my first concept in chapter 6 I would like to talk about The Centrality of Power. This is with the assumption that person A has more power than person B. One person has more control than the other. There were five powers mentioned in this section:
1) Reward Power
2) Coercive Power
3) Referent Power
4) Expert Power
5) Legitimate Power
An example I would like to use to discuss this topic is Expert Power. This one is interesting because I have no supervisor title I am basically at the bottom of the pit “sales associate”. However, I have worked for the same children’s clothing company for the past 5 years. And the colleagues I have now have been around for 1 to 2 years. Even though I have no authority over them they sometimes tend to ask me questions about our company, computer systems and just how to resolve a problem because I have been around to observe how these issues can be resolved.

Ch 5-Post 1

For my first concept in chapter 5, I would like to talk about the Cultural Approach. When we all think about culture we don’t think about how many cultures there are actually out there. According to the text within every nation of cultures there are 1000s of other cultures that lie within it. Cultures can be based towards religion, ethnicity, geography, and many other factors.
Culture is not only how people describe it, but how they live in their everyday lives. Culture can be something like religion according to T.S Eliot. It has many things in common because people who follow the same culture have “common beliefs”. Also culture is not an agreement; that is how it differs from religion.

Ch 4 Post 2

The next concept I would like to discuss is: The Appeal of system theory for organizational communication. I think that this concept is important to discuss becaause this a good example for people who are interested in Organizational Communication. Surprise, surprise we are in organizational communication. More recently we have decided that organization takes time and practice for us to excel well in it. But a more historic point of view of organizational communication is that it is the "sender and receiver" theory.Research that have been dedicated to the research theory has not been too successful because researchers found it difficult to translate it into a research method that is testable. It is typical to use statistics but it has not been too productive. Hopefully in the near future we will find new research ways.

Ch 4-Concepts

For chapter 4, I would like to talk about Interdependence.

Interdependence is a essential quality of a system, it refers both to the wholeness of the system and its environment and to the interrelationships of individuals within the system (p. 107). A particular example that the textbook provided is that a student relies more on a instructor than a instructor relies on a student. Another example is that a marriage depends on both partners doing their share. If one partner has mentally checked out of the relationship then it probably would not work out. Interdependence is important because people usually should feel like they have to "share" rather than have the "me" mentality. This is called the "tradegy of commons". People should not have the independent mentality and more of the interdependent mentality.

CH 3-Concepts

It has started all the way back in the 18th Century when businesses, corporations, and organizations were much like Empires. Businesses and organizations were just like the government, they traded, they provided jobs, Depending on how far you lived from the "work site" the more or less "class" or "social power" you had. The workforce is divided like a hierarchy because each worker and supervisor have different tasks. The reason for this is so that all personnels would be able to put all their work together and make is as time/cost effective. This is based on the organizational action. A primary example of organizational action is inventor: Eli Whitney's demonstration of mass production in the year 1801 (pg 65). The division of labor has been highly praised and later on would be called the "classical theory of management" (pg. 66).

I believe this is a good example of organizational communication because it has all the functions laid out for us and it is easily folllowed. Everybody is sending and receiving information in order to compile a whole.

I am very aware of this example of the workforce. I currently have a job and I feel like depending on our different positions at work we have different tasks, but at the end of the day we are only a team when we all contribute.

Another concept I would like to discuss from Ch 3 is Partial.

Partialty: "An argument could be made that any attempt to trace the history of organizational communication is necessarily incomplete and therefore misleading".
I think it is absolutely mind boggling that we can never have a full detailed story. No matter how long in length, how long I verbally tell you a story. You can never have the full history of anything. This is an example of organizational communication. Because everything is partial, does it mean everything is a theory?

SUMMER!

Hey Everyone,
My name is Cynthia and I am orginally from Dublin CA. I am officially a senior starting this Summer session, woo hoo! I was first hired at my real job a week before I turned sixteen at the children's clothing store called: Naartjie at the Pleasanton store. Five years later, and I am 21 years old and I STILL work for Naartjie, but now at the Valley Fair location. Throughout high school I worked in the Pleasanton one, for the first couple years of college I went to junior college in Sacramento and worked at the store over there for about 11 months. And now that I am at SJSU I have been working at the Valley Fair location since September 2008. No, I am not a retail worker for life, but it sure seems like it. I've also worked at a tanning salon for 8 months while I was in Sacramento. And during the summers and winter breaks I usually work at my stepdad's office to be his assistant's assistant to catch up on paperwork and what not, and that was in Hayward.. Let's see...I've also worked as a somewhat administrative assistant at another office of my stepdads in Sacramento, and that was probably my favorite job! I didn't actually see my stepdad and his business partner was SO cool. It was such a laid back job! Maybe after college I'll get a job outside the job, MAYBE...just kidding, let's keep those fingers crossed so I don't ever have to hear a screaming child peeling off the size stickers off of the clothes I have to fold EVER AGAIN!

This is my first blog ever, and it's kind of exciting...so please bare with me :)