Lecture Notes
Chapter 11: Communication in the Workplace
Outline and Key Terms
I. Introduction
A. The “workplace” a relational enterprise involving meaning making, shared
perspectives, and everyday communication.
B. Organizations can be studied in a structural way.
C. Structure is transacted in communication, and workplaces are transacted n
communication through relationships.
II. Learning About the Workplace
A. There are many ways people learn and think about the workplace.
1. Some are developed in childhood and reinforced later in life
2. Some are derived from practical experience with the norms and organizational
culture of a company
3. Some are refined by the relational interactions that occur among the specific
people who work there
4. People develop understanding, rhetorical visions, and predispositions or
expectations about how to behave and perform in workplace frames.
5. Organizations and the workplace are sites of meaning making
B. Vocational Anticipatory Socialization
1. Vocational anticipatory socialization is the early life preparation for becoming a
worker in the form of socialization through family interaction and media
exposure.
2. Family stories about work may send ambiguous messages describing the “true”
individual self and the reluctant “working self.”
3. Socialization leads to shared cultural understandings of the meaning of work, as
with the identity connection between the job and the person through the God term.
4. Work roles like “boss” and “workers” instill ideas of appropriate (power)
relationships in the child’s mind.
C. Metaphors of Organization
1. The machine metaphor represents organizations as standardized by repetition,
specialization, or predictability.
2. Organizations can also be seen as cultures based on shared meaning,
presupposing relationships between people.
3. Most people view organizations as instruments of domination that shape and
control worker behavior, thoughts, and ideologies.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
III. Going to Work: The Workplace as a Special Frame
A. Workplace Goals
1. Although instrumental goals characterize work, relational goals predominate
outside work.
2. Instrumental goals are focused on tasks and achievement of organizational
objectives.
3. Relational goals involve intimacy and support.
4. The requirement of instrumental purposes at work will affect the nature of talk
and reshape the way in which talk operates.
B. Workplace Formality/Hierarchy
1. Talk of work tends to construct distance and formality/hierarchy in certain
parts of the organization.
i. Formality/hierarchy distinction may be transacted directly by the use
of titles in talk.
ii. Formality/hierarchy distinction is more commonly transacted by what
is being said, by whom it is being said, and how it is being said.
2. Language performances tend to be formal and structured, aiding the
completion of the organization’s tasks.
3. Clear relational connections and positions of power in the workplace are
established through the ways in which people talk with one another.
4. Power outside of the workplace is much less formal and distinct.
5. Talk outside of the workplace is more recreational and focused on relational
goals.
C. Workplace Identities
1. The workplace constrains the kinds of identity you can perform and requires
that you develop or adopt a professional working identity.
i. Identity constraint and development can occur through clothing.
ii. Style of dress carries messages of connection to the organization,
requires you to perform roles not done elsewhere, and indicates your
position in the organization.
iii. Workplace identities are constructed through learning and using
unique speech codes, words, and terms.
iv. Knowing and using specialized language gives you special
positioning and expert involvement in the workplace.
2. Expected to adopt a new “working identity”
i. Working identity involves adapting communication to represent their
professional face—behaviors, courtesy, and interaction styles that are
appropriate for people to present to others in a workplace
ii. Workers often are expected to adopt high code
3. Learn to distinguish very clearly between the front and back regions
IV. The Workplace as a Culture
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
A. The workplace may be understood as a unique culture.
1. Particular shared meaning systems, realities, beliefs, values, and communication
styles and patterns influence and are maintained through our interactions and
relationships with others.
2. This knowledge is gained, incorporated, and passed along as a result of
interactions and subsequent socialization of new members.
3. People are part of, not detached from, systems that influence them.
B. Workplace Routine and Structuration Theory
1. Workplace culture is reestablished and maintained through routine.
i. These patterns of interaction emphasize that people are neither purely
free co-constructors of social reality nor simple pawns moved around
by abstract social structural forces.
ii. Existing interpersonal relationships produce and reproduce social
systems and their structures.
2. Structuration theory points to the regularities of human relationships that act
as rules and resources drawn on to enable or constrain social interaction.
i. Examples of rules/resources are norms or habitual expectations of
how to communication with one another, which become a context for
future interactions.
ii. Organizations produce and reproduce themselves over time through
conversations between the individuals within the organization.
iii. Organizational climate is not a property of organizations but an
interpersonally and relationally transacted product of communication.
iv. Culture therefore experiences sedimentation, or is laid down into the
organization by the workers’ talk and everyday relational practices
C. Industrial Time
1. The times a person is actually counted as being at work and paid for doing
their work.
2. Worker resist management’s control over their time at work and become clock
watchers, downing tools exactly at 5:00 P.M..
V. The Workplace as Relationships
A. Relationships are the true driving force of any organization.
1. All activities in the workplace occur in the context of relationships.
2. The workplace contains many different kinds of relationships—some good, some
bad.
3. Problems and successes in the workplace both have a relational basis.
4. Relationships outside of the workplace frequently affect work performance and
relationships within the workplace.
5. Understanding relationship issues in the workplace will improve your current
employment situation and prepare you for future employment endeavors.
B. Positive Influences of Relationships at Work
1. Support for workplace performance
i. Coworkers can serve as official or unofficial mentors
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
ii. People at work can be a source of information about the actual job
iii. Workplace relationships can also involve people from other
organizations
2. Support for personal matters
i. “Spillover effects” occur when a personal problem at home negatively
affects someone’s performance at work or struggle to negotiate
personal and professional roles
ii. Coworkers can provide emotional or other types of support for these
problems
iii. Supervisor support is especially meaningful when dealing with
spillover
3. Workplace benefits
i. The organization itself benefits from positive relationships among the
workforce.
ii. Cohesiveness can increase.
iii. Morale can benefit
iv. Productivity and success can increase.
v. Employee retention can improve.
C. Relationships and Workplace Challenges
1. Disruptive friendships
(a) Time spent away from doing work
(b) Expectation for friends to do favors
(c) Conflict among the friendship may cause disruption in work
2. Disruptive romantic relationships
(a) The same issues as friendships arise, but have a greater level of intimacy.
(b) Actual laws and workplace rules may be violated by engaging in a
romantic relationship in the workplace.
3. Hostile Relationships
(a) Backstabbing gossip and derogatory talk about other employees are
examples of employee-abusive communication.
(b) Sexual harassment which is any unwelcome sexual advance or conduct on
the job that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working
environment
4. Surveillance in an Organization
(a) Workers accept that it is legitimate for an organization to keep an eye on
what its workers do and to carry out other practices related to ensuring the
efficient completion of work.
(b) There is a certain boundary within which people will tolerate intrusions by
an employer as long as this is done with one’s express or implicit
permission.
(c) The nature of the relationship between the employer and employee changes
when lines are crossed without permission.
5. Friendship with the Boss
(a) It can create problems if one person is promoted over the other to a higher
level.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
(b) Knowledge of the friendship with the boss can have an adverse effect on
the other members of the same team.