Arachnophobia: fear of spiders. Though many people suffer from this fear it is very rarely questioned, spiders are just generally seen as a scary creature. Spiders are also the main metaphor used for a centralized organization. A centralized organization is one with a central command structure, a clear leader and rules which are enforced. These organizations are seen often. We see examples in the government and most highly regarded for profit organizations. Conversely a decentralized organization is one where there is no clear leader, there is no headquarters and rules and norms are not enforced. Due to their nature these organizations are not easy to spot but examples can be found in organizations such as terrorist groups.
It is easy to see that these two types of organizations contrast each other and thus the question arises: what would the outcome be if these two organizations were to engage in conflict. Partially due to my lack of military training and partially due to the nature of the two organizations the outcome would be hard to judge and if any guess was made it would have to include many scenarios. We can use for example the United States government (a centralized organization) and a terrorist organization (a decentralized organization).
The United States government has a clear leader. There is a chain of command from the man who is actually fighting on the front lines all the way back to the president of the United States. There are also specific locations where decisions are made about the conflict. The pentagon is an entire building dedicated to the United States and dealing with foreign conflict. There is also a situation room in the white house where the president is briefed on information with conflict.
The terrorist organization has no clear leader. There is no headquarters for a terrorist organization and there is no way to try and enforce rules among the other terrorists fighting. Even if someone were to give an example of Osama Bin Laden as a leader of a terrorist organization he is not crucial to the success of the organization. Why then is it that we are going after him? Sometimes if we are used to looking at the world one way, it is hard to make any sense of looking at the world a different way. We, in the United States are used to looking at centralized organizations, so if we are fooled by a decentralized organization and we see someone who looks like a leader we believe that that person is crucial to the organization and that if we kill them the organization will fall.
This approach is wrong. In fact, this may be the worst thing we could do. The more we attack a decentralized organization the more decentralized it becomes and the stronger it becomes. It is harder to detect the location of members of a decentralized organization after an attack, and we won’t know which direction to look for an attack from them. Decentralized organizations are flexible and immune to attack because even if you manage to kill members or groups of members there are still more and new ones constantly emerge.
The best way to handle a decentralized organization would be to plan attacks very carefully. The more you can take out at once. Don’t drop bombs at random and kill whoever you can. Wait, research, record and find when the most members will be in the same location at once. I would think the best bet would be if the decentralized organization had no idea you were even watching. They would have no reason to suspect anything was wrong. But this approach takes patience and skill.
Patience and skill, much like the metaphor for a decentralized organization: a starfish. If you cut an arm off, most of the time these animals grow a new one. If you cut the starfish in half the animal won’t die, and pretty soon you’ll have two starfish to deal with. The starfish doesn’t have a head and the major organs are replicated throughout the entire being. Much like the decentralized organization, the starfish has no essential part to it. Currently we don’t hear much of a fear of star fish but maybe sometime soon. Thalassophobia: fear of sea creatures.
Sunday
Friday
News Media: The Google Way of Life
It was destined to fail; Google Inc seemed to be lacking from the start. The bizarre creation of the company began in 1996 as a research project by two Stanford PhD applicants. Sergey Bren and Larry Page were both computer science majors who were known as “scary smart”. After the two computer geeks misspelled the word googol, they had created a website where people could efficiently search the internet. Three years after the two founders launched their website they decided they might want to begin to make a profit. After the advertising setup we Google users know as the right hand side column, Bren and Page had a full functioning company.
From the beginning both founders knew they wanted their company to be different and different is most certainly one way to describe the life inside the Googleplex. As the video illustrates, Google is no average company. Though this video is directed to describe how Google caters to female employees, we thoroughly see the ideas and philosophies on management and the workplace environment. From programs, to food, to sports, Google offers it all, but what does this mean for worker productivity, the workplace environment and the management approach. Obviously, Google did not fail so they must be doing something right.
It seems as though everything about Google was created for employees to be as productive as possible. The design of the building, the contents within the building, the norms of the workplace all seem to increase worker productivity. Some of the social norms referred to include, meetings over a pool table, bringing your pet to the office, taking a lunchtime hockey break, or getting a back massage. By relaxing the environment these characteristics of the company might seem to slow down the workers but in fact there productivity is the highest in their field. While it takes Microsoft years to work through innovation, design, product testing and completion, Google seems to be adding a new component to their website daily. Google also believes in continuing education. Google has tech talks once a week for employees to ask questions and be informed on everything in the technology community. This constant learning helps keep employees up on current technology allowing them to be more productive and innovative.
One of the most unique aspects of the Google community is the workplace environment. The feeling when you walk through the doors of an organization says a lot about their values and their priorities. Google employees feel as though they are working for a small company even though Google is an international corporation. Google hires only the best of the best; they receive over 1000 resumes each day. This gives Google a competitive edge to hire people who they want in their environment. People in the Googleplex are intelligent, enthusiastic people who are passionate about what they do (usually they are pretty smart too).
Another unique component of Google’s environment is their 20% idea. Google allows its employees to spend 20% of their time at work to create and develop their own project. This allows users to feel free from constraint or domination and it also helps the company with constant innovation. Something often praised about at Google is the free food. More than just a regular lunch line; there are gourmet chefs, candy jars lining halls, closets full of cereal bars and free pop machines at every corner. Google actually has a rule that there must be food within 100 feet of each employee. In case you gain what is known as the “Google 15” there are plenty of ways to work it off in one of the many gyms or fitness centers on site.
Though it is easily seen that Google is taking a step into unknown territory in their management style, they are still keeping the general ideas of the human relations approach. The Googleplex it self could be seen as the Hawthorne affect on speed. Workers aren’t just being paid attention to; the Google worker has it good. This illustration of the “Hawthorne affect on speed” was awarded by Fortune magazine naming Google the best company to work for in the year 2006. What’s more is the ratio of executives to engineers is extremely low. This distancing of management allows employees to feel less watched over or inferior. Google also has a mentoring program for new employees to orient them to their new environment. This program directly correlates with the human relations approach in that the company is recognizing the needs of the employer and then meeting those needs.
One may think of the Google Corporation as a machine, but it is certainly different from the machine used in the scientific management metaphor. Google earnestly seems to care about its employers. Any company can implement strategies to increase worker productivity, manage to the best of its abilities and create a sound work environment, but few can do what Google has accomplished. Though the company began with a bizarre start, it certainly did not fail. With company worth at over 120 billion dollars Google is far from failure. Google is far from failure because of their welcoming workplace environment, their relational management approach and their high worker productivity.
Monday
Comparing classical management approaches with approaches to organizational communication
Most scholars believe that there is not one simple definition of communication as an organization. There are some concepts such as senders, receivers and channels which stay constant, but rather than a definition scholars have agreed on multiple approaches to organizational communication. There are four approaches to communication which are most widely known and those are: communication as information transfer, communication as transactional process, communication as strategic control, and communication as a balance of creativity and constraint.
Similarly to communication, there are generally agreed upon approaches to management. There are the classical management approaches, the human relations approach and the human resource approach. The classical management approach includes theories on scientific management, bureaucracy, division of labor, and hierarchy.
When you take a closer look it becomes easy to relate communication as an information transfer to the classical approaches to management. The main metaphor used with communication as an information transfer is a pipeline. The idea of a pipeline is easily transferred to the management hierarchy. As you can see in the photo below, information would flow from the top down, much like a pipeline. Communication uses a pipeline to represent a sender transmitting a message to a receiver, where as the pipeline in the organization would represent who is in contact with who and who works with whom.
Communication as an information transfer is often thought of as a tool people use to accomplish objectives. This idea can be applied directly to the classical approach to management. Managers use subordinates as tools to complete the tasks at hand. Communication as an information transfer is very impersonal, as is the classical management style. Communication as in information transfer believes that once the message has been sent the work is over. If the sender speaks the message there is an assumption that the receiver understands what the speaker intended. The classical management style mimics this approach. If an employee is hired for the job and told what to do there is an assumption that the work will be done because the worker fully understands. Neither communication as information transfer, nor the classical approach to management, account for different interpretations of sender and receiver or employee and employer.
Classical management includes the theory of scientific management which was developed by Frederick Taylor. This theory treated management as a true science based on certain laws , rules and assumptions. Communication as an information transfer also treats communication as an exact science. We know now that neither communication nor management are exact sciences which makes both of these theories hard to follow, but this does prove how they are interrelated.
Both communication as an information transfer and the classical management approach are early theories in their fields and have been widely improved upon and criticized. Neither is perfect in any sense or accounts for all situations. Communication as an information transfer follows the pipeline metaphor that a sender transmits a message to a receiver. Classical management also has this same idea with the hierarchy theory: a superior sends a message to a subordinate. Both of these approaches have many theories and ideas in common and are interrelated. It is not difficult to imagine those mangers that were using the classical approaches to management were also using communication as an information transfer and vice versa.
Similarly to communication, there are generally agreed upon approaches to management. There are the classical management approaches, the human relations approach and the human resource approach. The classical management approach includes theories on scientific management, bureaucracy, division of labor, and hierarchy.
When you take a closer look it becomes easy to relate communication as an information transfer to the classical approaches to management. The main metaphor used with communication as an information transfer is a pipeline. The idea of a pipeline is easily transferred to the management hierarchy. As you can see in the photo below, information would flow from the top down, much like a pipeline. Communication uses a pipeline to represent a sender transmitting a message to a receiver, where as the pipeline in the organization would represent who is in contact with who and who works with whom.
Communication as an information transfer is often thought of as a tool people use to accomplish objectives. This idea can be applied directly to the classical approach to management. Managers use subordinates as tools to complete the tasks at hand. Communication as an information transfer is very impersonal, as is the classical management style. Communication as in information transfer believes that once the message has been sent the work is over. If the sender speaks the message there is an assumption that the receiver understands what the speaker intended. The classical management style mimics this approach. If an employee is hired for the job and told what to do there is an assumption that the work will be done because the worker fully understands. Neither communication as information transfer, nor the classical approach to management, account for different interpretations of sender and receiver or employee and employer.
Classical management includes the theory of scientific management which was developed by Frederick Taylor. This theory treated management as a true science based on certain laws , rules and assumptions. Communication as an information transfer also treats communication as an exact science. We know now that neither communication nor management are exact sciences which makes both of these theories hard to follow, but this does prove how they are interrelated.
Both communication as an information transfer and the classical management approach are early theories in their fields and have been widely improved upon and criticized. Neither is perfect in any sense or accounts for all situations. Communication as an information transfer follows the pipeline metaphor that a sender transmits a message to a receiver. Classical management also has this same idea with the hierarchy theory: a superior sends a message to a subordinate. Both of these approaches have many theories and ideas in common and are interrelated. It is not difficult to imagine those mangers that were using the classical approaches to management were also using communication as an information transfer and vice versa.
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