David's Web Poster

I have experienced first hand how leadership in an organization effects the productiveness of subordinates. I worked in one organization where my boss had a very transactional approach to leadership but very rarely used rewards to get things done it was mostly punishment and force. I did not work well under these situations as many before did not either and there was quite a bit of turn over in the company. It was a small company of about 3 to 4 people include herself and when 2 out of 3 people leave every six months (never her of course) it makes it very difficult to have a successful organization. The manager I work for now has a more transformational approach to leadership and this type of leadership is what is promoted for all managers in the company. Working for someone who has your best interest in mind, wants you to learn from your experiences and grow in your career is much more incentive to do a good job than anything else. I think that the topic of this web poster was very interesting. I am sure many of us in this class aspire to be great leaders and it is great to read information on different types and how they each can be effective in their own ways.

Communicating Change

In the current economic situation many organizations are going through significant changes. It is important to understand how change effects employees, shareholders, and customers and how to effectively communicate this change. This is a great web poster, especially in the given situation where many companies are now needing to communicate change, whether we are the ones communicating it or the ones receiving it, it is important to understand the significance. The research in Cathyblog08’s Web Poster was very relevant to the topic and although it was a little wordy it was easy to understand. Communication is truly a key part in change in organizations and it is so important to make it a significant part of a plan for change.

Pink Lady's Web Poster

Pink Lady’s Web Poster topic was very interesting to me especially since many individuals on my team and in our organization are virtual workers. I found the topic of managing conflict with virtual employees and the research about where the conflict is created and how to manage it very interesting, The web poster was organized very well and easy to read and understand. I was able to get the information quickly and easily. The research was very relevant especially with the fact that not only was there a lack of classic research on virtual teams before 2003, virtual teams were very new in 2003.

Anima's Web Poster

What a great topic Anima’s web poster is. The concept of working not only remotely but literally virtually is a wonderful way to look at organizational communication. In fact I work for one of the companies highlighted in the video. When I first saw that Cisco had created a virtual world for their Partner Summit in April I was amazed at what the technology could do and wondered what the business value was. It looked like it was just a really flashy tool but after reading up on why they used it I realized that it was a great tool for people to virtually meet, conduct business and socialize. Studying the topic of corporations going virtual is so interesting and I would love to read more research done on this. We have many virtual teams at my company because the members are spread out around the world not because they work in a virtual world but I think that creating a presence in Second Life for these teams could be a great way to replicate the environment of meeting face to face.

Office Politics

Having the election this week I found the dynamics of political party persuasion quite interesting. Typically it is not a topic that anyone talks about in out office., almost as if it is taboo and offensive which to some I am sure it is. After the election on Tuesday, it seemed that all apprehension to discuss party affiliation was gone. Obama supporters were very outspoken about their excitement that their candidate had one and McCain supporters expressed their excitement in the historic relevance of the win but also their fears from the elections outcome. It also seemed to me that McCain supporters felt uncomfortable expressing their support. So, Obama supporters were very expressive and McCain supporters did not say much at all. No matter what my political affiliation is, I find the dynamics of communications about it in organizations quite intriguing.

Suggestion for future research

My research these past few weeks has been on satisfaction of communications in an organization and how that effects job satisfaction, performance and commitment. I had a very difficult time finding recent articles about this topic and so I started to think about future research that could be conducted around this topics. In the research I did find it seemed that this topic was very popular in the 70’s and 80’s and may have been researched out. I believe that there are still opportunities to study this topic in current organizations. I think that a very interesting area for research around this concept is how the new communication technologies effect these same work-related dimensions. In my organization, and I believe in many others, there is a new communication trend to use web 2.0 technologies to communicate such as blogs, video blogs, wikis, and social networking websites. I know that it has been very difficult to foster adoption in our organization to use these technologies because people feel they are not the best for communication. I think that it would be interesting to see how satisfied people actually are with the communication that comes from these tools and if in turn job satisfaction, productivity, and commitment are effected.

Rewarding creativity

When I visited one of our factories a few weeks ago they told us that they often ask the line workers if they see any opportunities for improvement in the system. While they have very intelligent engineers who spend their entire careers trying to understand the manufacturing process and improve it the people who see it everyday may be the best to develop the solution because they see the situation first hand. One of the individuals in my group asked if they compensate or have rewards programs for this innovation. They don’t. We were discussing it after the fact and we believed that because there was no incentive given to the line workers to be innovative or creative that they did not even bother. Even a gift card to Starbucks or movie tickets are rewarding and can often help to get the creative juices flowing.