Theory Comm Exam 3
CH.9 The strong culture approach by Deal and Kennedy (1982). What are the four organizational cultures according to this theory? What is the assumption of this approach?
Organizational Culture: (Example with Southwest Airlines)
1. Values: Providing great customer service.
Heros: The President of Southwest Airlines. Or 12th man.
Rites and Rituals: Ceremonies like Silver Taps.
Cultural Network: How we connect with people different
from us.
Four organizational Cultures:
1.Rapid Feedback and Reward+Low Risk: Work-hard play hard.
2.Slow Feedback and Reward+Low Risk: Process culture.
3.Rapid Feedback and Reward+High Risk: Tough-guy macho.
4.Slow Feedback and Reward+High Risk: Bet-the-company.
Assumption:
Culture exists on three levels (Schein, 1991). Culture is not something that an organization has but is what an organization is. Culture is a pattern of shared assumptions that have been shared and developed. Like a tree, an organization is like an ecosystem.
CH.9 Three levels of organizational culture (Schein, 1985). Understand these three levels and be able to give examples.
Three levels of organizational culture (Shcien, 1985):
1.Artifacts: Leaves. Most visible things that you can see and hear that represent its value. (Dress code and Decor)
2.Values: Branches. (Office policy and Accepted beliefs)
3.Core Beliefs and Assumptions: The roots of the tree. Very basic foundation and don’t talk about it a lot. Ex: Texas A&M is a university and is very different from ASU. Differences like how University of Phoenix is online and their goal is to make money.
CH.9 Organizational Assimilation. Understand the four stages of assimilation and be able to give examples.
Organizational Assimilation: A process in which new members of an organization integrate into the organizational culture.
Four Stages of Assimilation:
1.Vocational Anticipatory Socialization: When you were little and what you learned about different jobs. You learned it from your parents or from school. (Your parents teaching you about their jobs, because you were curious)
2.Anticipatory Socialization:When you know you are going to join an organization soon so you look up information about the organization. (Looking at the organization you are about to work for)
3.Encounter: When you are actually in the organization. (When you start working for the organization)
4.Metamorphosis: Change or transformation. We learn about the culture of the organization and adapt to it. We assimilate. The time period when you find out if you like the organization or not. (How we learn the traditions when attending A&M)
CH.10 What is Diffusion of Innovation? What are the stages? Why some innovations become successful?
Over time, an idea or product gains momentum and diffuses (or spreads) through a specific population or social system.
Innovation: An idea, practice, or object perceived as new.
Stages:
1.Knowledge Stage: A stage where you become aware of the existence of new technology.
2.Persuasion Stage: You are persuading yourself, actively seek out information about the new technology. You go on to do research and collect information.
3.Decision Stage: Where you weigh the benefit and cost of the new technology to decide if it is worthwhile.
4.Implementation Stage: Reinvention; repurposed of the new technology.; After you decide to try it and buy it, you are actually using it.
5.Confirmation Stage: After you use it, you decide if it fits for you and your lifestyle.
6.Adoption Stage: Alternatively discontinuance; go back to use something else, Replacement discontinuance; switching the new technology with something else, and Disenchantment rejection; stop using this and similar technology for good; Where you really like the new technology so you decide to use it long term.
Why some Innovations become successful?
1.Relative Advantage: Is your innovation better at achieving your goal than other technologies?
2.Compatibility: Is this innovation consistent with your values, lifestyle, and experiences?
3.Complexity: Is this innovation difficult to learn to use?
4.Trialability: Can users try it before they make decisions?
5.Observability: Can users see the innovation and its results in the public? We like to know that other people are using it.
CH.10 What is critical mass? Why is it important in our study
of the diffusion of innovation?
Critical Mass: A concept borrowed from nuclear physics. Minimum amount of radioactive material that is necessary to start a nuclear fission. Threshold after threshold, it will blow up. The minimum number of users before this technology exploids.
Why it is important to study Diffusion of Innovation:
Companies can predict which types of consumers will purchase their product/service and create effective marketing strategies to push acceptance through each category.
CH.10 What are the four types of people who adopt innovations and what are their respective characteristics?
Four types of people who adopt innovations:
1.Innovators: Have the money so they don’t mind investing.
2.Early adopters: all the influencers who sold you an item, opinion leaders.
3.Early majority: Group of people who carefully think about buying the item before actually buying it, have the money but think about it before (critical mass is here).
4.Late majority: The people who eventually adopt the technology, because the technology has infiltrated into society. They want to use it too because others are using it.
5.Laggards: People who hate technology and rarely adopt new technologies.
CH.10 What is reciprocal interdependence?
When the final product depends on each department or person's individual contributions for completion.
CH.10 What is Social Network Analysis? What is a node? What is a link?
Social Network Analysis 1: A study of the relationship between people in society or organizations.
What is a node: A person.
What is a link: A kind of relationship between two or more in the network.
CH.10 Understand the property of network links (strength, direction, symmetry, frequency, stability) and the network roles (gatekeeper, liaison, star).
Social Network Analysis 3: Representing the informal communication between a group of employees.
Property of Network Links:
1.Strength: The frequency, intimacy, and the intensity of the connection between two people. Ex: Friends who you hang out with everyday compared to some friends you see every once in a while. A strong relationship can be good, however, could be a bad friendship when it comes to competing.
2.Direction: Is it a one-way relationship or a two-way relationship? Idea of how people follow each other on social media.
3.Symmetry: Whether two people share the same type of relationship with each other. Ex: You and your boss, not symmetrical.
4.Frequency: How often do two people communicate with each other. Ex: Your friend/roommate. Different relationship than your high school friends or your family.
5.Stability: The existence of the link overtime, how long this relationship has been going. Ex: Elementary school friends or friends you just met.
6.Mediation: Whether the connection between two people exists because of a common link. Ex: You become a friend to someone because of their friendship with someone else who is middle ground.
7.Multiplexity: Do members have more than one type of relationship between them.
Network Roles: In a network you play a different role based on your position in the network. Says a lot on who you are and how much influence you have.
1. Gatekeeper: Can decide if information will flow from his/her group to the rest of the group. Lots of power.
2. Bridge: Connecting with others.
3. Liaison: Knows people in both groups and can control the flow of information.
4. Star: The person who knows the most people, more popular.
5. Isolate: By themself.
CH.10 Uses and gratifications theory: What are the three assumptions of this theory? What are the four gratifications? Understand and give example.
Why a person uses a particular media form.
Three Assumptions:
1.Audience members actively use various media to fulfill certain needs or goals.
2.A person must identify his/her need and make a media choice.
3.Media outlets compete with other available means of satisfying personal needs.
Four Gratifications:
1.Entertainment: You want to be entertained when you are bored.
2.Information: We want to learn about something.
3.Personal Identity: We consume media to confirm our personal identity.
4.Personal relationships and social interactions: We watch for the purpose of maintaining our relationships. You create a parasocial interaction with characters in the show, so feel as if they are actually their friends or have a relationship with them. Cultivate these relationships with people on social media influencers.
CH.11 Agenda setting: what is first-level agenda setting? What is second level agenda setting (framing)? Understand the four components of framing.
Two assumptions:
1. News media tells audiences what news to consider as important.
2. Most people would like help when trying to understand and evaluate politics and political reality.
First level: (First level) Media Agenda -> Public Agenda. The more media covers a topic the more likely we as a public will think it is important.
Second level: (Second level) How the media tells us how to think about a topic.
Framing the news:
Selection: What stories are chosen?
Emphasis: What is the focus taken?
Elaboration: What is added to beef up the story?
Eclusion: What aspects of the situation are not reported?
CH.11 What kind of people are most affected by media’s agenda setting effect?
The one's who watch it all the time. Need for orientation. More likely to be affected by the agenda setting effect.
CH.11 Cultivation theory: What are the main assumptions of this theory?
Three Assumptions:
TV has become central to American life and culture.
TV influences audience perceptions of social reality, thereby shaping American culture in terms of how individuals reason and relate with others.
TV’s effects are limited.
CH.11 What is the mean world syndrome?
Violence related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it is.
CH.11 Understand mainstreaming and resonance.
Cultivation Theory 5: How does cultivation take place and with what effects?
Mainstreaming: Viewers of television develop a common view of social reality based on their frequent exposure to the repetitive and dominating images and stories and messages depicted on television.
Resonance: Consistency between the viewers own violent experiences and what they see on TV in other words if viewer has been a victim of violence or they’ve seen violence in reality then when they see that on TV, they’re more likely to resonate with what they see on TV and then more likely to replate the violence again and again in their head and then they’re more likely to think the world is really dangerous
CH.11 Social cognitive theory: what are the assumptions of this theory?
How media influences our behavior, what we actually do in reality.
Assumptions:
1. Heavy exposure to TV may eventually make the televised images appear to be an authentic state of human affairs.
2. Humans can self-reflect.
3. We learn our behaviors mostly through observational learning.
CH.11 Our processes of observational learning. Understand three types of incentives in the motivational process.
Social Cognitive Theory 2: Four processes of observational learning.
Attention, Retention, Reproduction, and Motivation.
Different Motivations:
1. Direct motivation: You know if you do something, you will have a direct reward. Personally rewarded or punished.
2. Vicarious motivation: You see people who are similar to you being punished or rewarded. If he/she likes it, I’ll like it because we are similar.
3. Self-produced motivation: Individuals rely on their own personal standard engaging in observed behavior without the need for reward and punishment.
CH.9 What are the five types of organizational control? Why is identification important?
1.Simple Control: Direct and authoritarian exertion of power. Ex: you do this and have this done by the end of the day. Can only control a small number of people. Small businesses or small groups. Not a lot of explanation.
2.Technological Control: Control through the technology used in organizations. Ex: Assembly line and IT technology. You can’t keep an eye on everyone so you control through technology. Highly efficient, impersonal, could be invasive.
3.Bureaucratic Control: Control through a system of rules and standard operating procedure that shape the behaviors of individuals. Ex: product of industrialization, can control lots of workers. The rules are written and are already there, so they are consistent.
4.Unobtrusive Control: Control based on shared values within the organization. Identification is core to unobtrusive control.
5.Concertive Control: When members of a work group reward and punish each other for conformity to group values. Most common in flat organizations. Since you are responsible for each other, if one person fails, you all fail.
Why Identification is Important:
The sense of oneness with or belongingness to an organization. When individuals experience identification, they define themselves in terms of the organization. Happens the most in the metamorphosis stage.