11.3 Future Research

It was very interesting to work on the annotated bibliographies for the COMM 244 class. Our research is focused on Global Business Communication – Intercultural mannerisms. Fortunately we did not have a hard time to find peer reviewed journal articles on our area of interest. In terms of future research, however, it will be valid to have more articles focused on other aspects of Intercultural mannerisms. We noticed that most articles touched cross-cultural negotiations as the main aspect of intercultural mannerisms. We believe that there is much more to be explored in this area.

Based on how people portray themselves throughout the organizations I have worked at, I see that aspects such as informal conversations over the coffee room, phone conversations, dress code, and cultural festivities within the ethnic employees should be highlighted as important aspects of intercultural mannerisms. It would be wonderful to see more finding on these additional aspects I just mentioned.

Garota de Ipanema

11.2 Business Ethics

One of my favorite concepts discussed in COMM 244 was ethics in communication. This concept, so present and so absent in the organizations nowadays is indeed something that occupied my thoughts for long hours along this course. It is sad to realize that although the majority of companies defends that they have ethics in their businesses, actually, they have total lack of ethics in their businesses.

My final project in my undergraduate program was a thesis with focus on child labor. It broke my heart to realize that so many companies employee child labor. When I was collecting some interviews, many employers told me that they were actually doing a big favor by contracting children in their factories. They’d rather seeing children working than in the streets. My whole argument was that every single child deserves to enjoy the childhood in school, deserves to have time to play, to enjoy life with their loved, to be kids, instead of spending 12 hours working in a factory.

Bottom line is that the unethical behavior of many companies is so pervasive that many parents I interviewed sort of shared similar beliefs defended by these companies. Of course I only interviewed poor people, who obviously were struggling for more financial income. But from that point on, I started paying closer attention to how companies behave in the name of their own “ethics”.

Garota de Ipanema

11.1 Elections & communication approach

Today is certainly a remarkable day in the American History: it is election day! I thought it would be interesting to make it a topic for my blog because it is a subject that calls my attention, and because I believe it has everything to do with organizational communication.

In my entire life I’ve never been so into Politics like now. The way mass media has reported information about the presidential candidates is astonishing to me. What has counted the most since the campaigns started around 18 months ago is race, gender, and minor details that do not even deserve attention.

Establishing a comparison between organizational communication and how mass media reports information, I see that both have the power to manipulate information to convey the message they want. As a result, the same way employees get frustrated with misleading information within an organization, voters feel twisted and frustrated with how mass media portrayed information the way they wanted during this election season.

Garota de Ipanema

9.5 Different context of Change

"Scientific management focused on changes that would create efficient routines (p. 317)." My current job is perfect to illustrate this passage of the textbook. As a subdivision of Human Resources, my department is responsible for processing transactions - such as hires, separations, position creates, promotions, leave of absence, return of leave of absence, among others.

The Personnel Data Maintainers (PDMs) are the ones who handle these requests. So for every request we receive from our internal clients - managers and supervisors, we must follow a checklist to process them following what one once established as correct.

One of the negative aspects of blindly following these checklists is that they are rarely updated. Then, whoever is brand new to the PDM position can not perceive whether the information is updated or not. But they still want us to follow the checklist as if it was our bible.

The problem here is that sometimes what is considered efficient to one might not mean the same to another individual. While I understand that some standardization/routine is necessary to bring order to the organizations, I also believe in creative solutions. Clearly change is not so welcome in this department. In other words, it is what Frederick Taylor implied in his theory of systematically documenting inefficiencies: “change per se is not good".

Garota de Ipanema

9.4 The Ambiguity of Multiple Meanings

“Change is the process by which alteration occurs in the structure and function of a social system” (p. 315).
Recently some contractors were hired by the company I work for. From this point on, they will be granted benefits, access to Internet, and all additional benefits full time employees have at this company. So I would say name it change.
“We also use change to refer to a solution. The implication of planned change in organizations, along with related ideas such as organizational development and continuous improvement, is that we can control change” (p. 315).
To minimize the number of work related accidents, my company decided to promote a “safety moment” prior to every single meeting. By doing so, they believe they can make people cognizant of the importance of working in a safe environment.
“At other times, however, people talk about change as if it were something over which we have no control, as if it were something that happens to us” (p. 315).
For this scenario, I would mention the contractors who have not been hired by this company. Talking with some of them, they said that although they did their best during the interview, it was up to managers to make the final decision. So the fact they were not get the position this time was something totally out of their control.

Garota de Ipanema

9.3 Individual or Group Sources

“Conflict also occurs when people perceive that valued relationships or identities are threatened” (p. 285). This passage of the textbook motivates me to talk about one of the companies I worked for in 2007. Right now this company is facing hard times due to the economic crisis in the US, and it will potentially “close the doors” this year. Talking to a former co-worker she described the current scenario to me:

a) Employees do not respect their leaders;
b) The meetings are not productive because employees interrupt the speaker all the time;
c) Employees do not quite say what they are thinking;
d) Employees have no personal tone in their voices anymore;
e) Employees rarely agreed about anything.

Clearly this challenging moment that this company is going through has threaten relationships and identities. Hence, employees have minimum tolerance with all disconfirming messages they have been provided with.

Garota de Ipanema

9.2 Managing conflict effectively

Listening is indeed something human beings do not know how to do effectively, because people tend to speak more than listen. This passage of the textbook reminds me of my grandmother asking me if I knew why humans have one mouth and two ears. As a child, I gave her the right answer: probably because we are supposed to listen more than talk.

But when it comes to practical situations, we tend to speak abundantly, and listen poorly. On page 281 of the textbook the authors defend that “a key skill for people in conflict is empathic listening – trying to understand the other party’s accounts and their reasons for seeing the situation differently.”

Having had the opportunity to work in diverse environments I realize that it is really challenging to listen when the other part presents his or her truths. In my view, managing conflict with other people requires first of all the willingness to listen to what the other part has to say, without becoming defensive right away.

Garota de Ipanema