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Chapter 9: Workplace Communication
Chapter Objectives and Integrator Guide
After reading and thinking about this chapter, students should be able to meet the
following objectives:
Objectives
1. Describe the structures of workplace communication as they are created within diverse
types of organizations.
Key terms: economic orientation, political orientation, integration orientation,
pattern-maintenance orientation, communication networks, formal communication,
downward communication, upward communication, horizontal communication, informal
communication, organizational communities
2. Create and communicate your personal brand in preparation for a job search.
Key terms: cover letter, objective statement, functional résumé, chronological résumé
3. Take steps to effectively prepare for employment interviews.
Key terms: personal network, job description
4. Enact communication behaviors that will demonstrate communication competence in the
workplace.
Key terms: immediacy, supportive communication, strategic ambiguity, interaction
management, collaborative style, customer service encounter, emotional labor
5. Recognize and practice ethical workplace communication behaviors.
Key terms: sexual harassment, quid pro quo sexual harassment, hostile work environment
sexual harassment
Activities
Activity 9.1 Understanding Anticipatory Socialization
Objective
Students should be able to identify various institutions that influence our anticipatory
socialization experiences.
Procedures
Have students identify jobs they currently have, or jobs they have had in the past: full-time,
part-time, long-term, short-term, for large corporations, for small firms, even volunteer work.
Ask them: What did they already know that enabled them to do the job? What did they need
to learn to enable them to do the job better? What did they need to learn about the employer
organization to enable them to do the job appropriately? What did they need to learn about
their co-workers to enable them to work effectively with their peers?
Class Discussion
Have students identify how they learned the skills, information, and other data identified in
the exercise. Who taught them? Did they learn by reading instructions? By observing
“official” or formal demonstrations? Popular culture? Which methods were the easiest for
them? Did the best method vary according to what they were trying to learn? Did some
socializing agents distort images of work roles?
Application
This activity introduces students to the various socializing agents that influence the
development of role identities.
Activity 9.2 The Old Lady and the Fly
Objective
Students should be able to analyze the interdependencies of our organizational and
personal lives.
Procedure
Ask the class read the following poem. In groups of three or four, have students discuss the
“moral” of the story. Ask students to relate course concepts (e.g., division of labor and rules
and regulations) to the moral of the story.
who wiggled and jiggled
and tickled insider her
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird
Now how absurd to swallow a bird
She swallowed the bird to swallow the spider who wiggled and jiggled and
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tickled inside her
She swallowed the spider to swallow the fly
I don’t know why she swallowed the fly
Perhaps she’ll die!
Class Discussion
As part of class discussion, encourage students to reflect on the interdependence of systems.
Ask students to reflect on their own organizational experiences, including classroom
experiences that parallel the ironies present in the poem.
Applications
This exercise is particularly valuable at illustrating how today’s workplace solutions can
shape tomorrow’s problems. For example, the benefit of working at home may actually
encourage more time spent on work than with family.
Activity 9.3 Practice Job Interviews
Objectives
Students will gain experience as both employer and job applicant during employment
interviews.
Procedure
Pair students up. Before class, require that the student applicant provide his or her partner
with a job description and résumé. The student employer will use those materials to create an
interview protocol. Require student employers to include both behaviorally based and
hypothetical questions on their protocol. During class, the student employer will interview
the student applicant for the position highlighted in the job description.
Class Discussion
As a class or individually, provide feedback to student applicants and employers about their
interviewing performances. Allow students the opportunity to talk about communication
anxiety or other issues related to the role-playing experience.
Application
This role-playing experience provides students with the opportunity to develop their
communication skills for the interview context.
Activity 9.4 Observing an Interview
Objective
Students should be able to critique a mediated example of an informative interview.
Procedure
Bring in a videotape of an informative/probing interview from popular culture. Good
During class discussions, have students reflect on the overall success of the interview. What
was the interviewer’s goal? Who is the target audience of the interview? Does the audience
change the nature of the relationship between the interviewee and interviewer? Were the
styles of both parties appropriate for the context at hand?
Applications
Although this chapter focuses on a very pragmatic form of interviewing—the employment
interview—other types of interviews are commonplace. The journalistic interview is
common in the mass media. By observing such interviews, students can see how various
types of questions are used, as well as the effectiveness of certain question-answer strategies.
Activity 9.5 An Organizational Big Mac
Objective
Students should be able to understand how concepts discussed in the chapter play a role in
typical organizations, such as a fast-food restaurant.
Procedure
Have students go to McDonald’s or another fast food restaurant and conduct a mini-
environment. Have students reflect on whether or not a McDonald’s retail outlet resembles a
machine. Ask students to discuss reasons why the firm has been so successful. Are there
similarities between McDonald’s and other successful franchising systems? If so, what are
they? What customer service strategies (as discussed in the chapter) are used by employees?
Which ones are most successful?
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Applications
In addition to illustrating key concepts from the chapter (e.g., upward and downward
communication, customer service interactions), this exercise can lead to class discussion
about cultural forces (e.g., consumer movement) that may help explain the success of such
organizations and how those forces are present in other aspects of our lives (e.g., the
consumer movement in higher education).
Activity 9.6 Sexual Harassment in the Courts
Objectives
Students should be able to conduct library research to identify a current court case related to
sexual harassment in the workplace. Students should be able to think critically about sexual
harassment as a communication issue.
Procedure
Before class, assign groups of three or four students the responsibility of finding an
article highlighting a sexual harassment case that has been settled either through litigation
or mediation/arbitration. Students must become experts on the nature of the case. During
class, each group presents the particularities of their case, withholding only the outcome
of the case.
Class Discussion
Have students serve as jury members who must decide the outcomes of each case. The
student “experts” on the case should lead class discussion among jury members. After
student juries make decisions, each “expert” group can share the official outcome of each
case. Encourage students to talk about the “criteria” they used in making decisions.
Encourage the class to reflect on the discursive dimensions of sexual harassment, including
enactment, interpretation, and consequences of harassing behavior. How might these cases
have been prevented?
Applications
This activity requires students to apply course material on quid pro quo and hostile work
environment forms of sexual harassment.
Activity 9.7 Negotiation and Compliance Gaining
Objective
Students should be able to use negotiation and compliance-gaining skills in an organizational
simulation.
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Procedure
Students will be divided into teams of five to seven people. Each team will be given the
following materials:
• Approximately 100 standard drinking straws
• Two rolls of standard tape
• One small ball of string
• One small soccer ball (any type of small ball with some weight will work)
• Scissors
Before class, on the floor, use paper tape or some other way to create a “river” that runs
through the classroom. The river banks, marked by tape, should be approximately three feet
apart. Students in each group should be evenly divided on either side of the river and cannot
cross from one side of the river to the other.
bridge. The observer should pay particular attention to examples illustrating how one group
member tries to get other group members to agree on how to do something—that is, gaining
compliance.
Class Discussion
The bridge-building activity is useful as a short but fun group task that involves problem
various group members by blindfolding some, requiring others to not speak, etc. These
constraints can potentially illustrate how organizational members with diverse abilities must
be integrated into organizational life (or can illustrate the challenges faced in such attempts
without deliberate planning).