ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Organizational Communication

Organizational Communication

Social Construction of Information Technology

Innovative, organization-transforming software systems are introduced with the laudable goals of improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness, reducing costs, improving individual and group performance, and even enabling individuals to work to their potentials. Though, it is very difficult to get these software systems to be used productively and efficiently. Some people in some organizations resist the changes. They resist using the systems, misuse them, or reject them. As a result, the goals are not achieved, intended changes are poorly implemented, and development budgets and schedules are not respected (Michael, 2007).

Misguided decisions and evaluations and less than rational behavior are often offered as the causes of these problems. Bergman, King, and Lyytinen (2002) observe (p. 168), “Indeed, policymakers will tend to see all problems as political, while engineers will tend to see the same problems as technical.

Gidden's Structuration Theory

The last of the action theory perspectives of Chapter 4 is structuration theory - the theory developed by Anthony Giddens to explain and integrate agency and structure. For Giddens, human agency and social structure are not two separate concepts or constructs, but are two ways of considering social action. There is a duality of structures so that on one side it is composed of situated actors who undertake social action and interaction, and their knowledgeable activities in various situations. At the same time, it is also the rules, resources, and social relationships that are produced and reproduced in social interaction. Structuration means studying the ways in which social systems are produced and reproduced in social interacton. Giddens defines structuration as "the structuring of social relations across time and space, in virtue of the duality of structure (Michael, 2007).

Systems and Structures

That is, it is the patterns of enacted conduct, the repeated forms of social action and interaction, or the "enduring cycles of reproduced relations" that form social systems. These could be systems such as families, peer groups, communities, or cities, either at the face-to-face level or existing via networks over space and time.

For Giddens, structure is somewhat more specific and detailed and refers to practices which are structured along certain lines. These are:

Procedural rules - how the practice is performed. Ethnomethodology analyzes these. Give and take of encounter, language rules, walking in a crowd.

Moral rules - appropriate forms of enactment of social action. Laws, what is permissible and what is not. Not ultimate values, but appropriate ways of carrying out social action and interaction.

Material resources - allocation of resources among activities and members of society. Means of production, commodities, income, consumer and capital goods.

Resources of authority. Formal organizations, how time and space are organized, production and reproduction, social mobility, legitimacy and authority.

 

Subjectivity

Cohen notes that Giddens approach to the acting subject is less like Weber and Parsons, and more like Dewey and perhaps, Mead and Goffman. For Giddens, "actors are not inherently predisposed to sustained reasoning or existential reflection on the meaning of their conduct from moment to moment in everyday ...