Organizational Communication Ethics

One thing that I connected with in this chapter is the idea that organizations base their communication ethics both on the values that it wants to promote and on “the events and practices that it remembers” (148).  I work for an organization that has been around for almost fifty years and it has always prided itself on standing out from other organizations of its type as far as its ability to put the customer first in a way that its competition does not.  For a long time the good that this organization was based on was very different from the goods that the majority of other organizations in the same institution were based.  Eventually, however, my organization realized that in order to be relevant in its field it needed to modify its way of operating in order to stay relevant.

The way that my organization decided to do this is by focus on the “saying” (the common state of successful organizations within my company’s institution) and to let that guide their future decisions more so than the “said” (the values and ideas that have guided them in the past).  One sentence from the chapter that is relevant to this is “Organizations find meaning through their identification as a particular type of institution” (144).  Instead of maintaining a sense of independence in the way they conducted business, my organization decided that the best thing to do was to look to what other organizations within the same institution were doing to guide their actions.  In many instances this is a good idea, but often what makes an organization stand out in a positive way is the way in which they are different from other organizations in their sector.  If a successful organization ignores the “said” in favor of focusing on the “saying” it runs the risk of alienating its members/employees/customers, etc.  This is especially true if this involves making major changes in how the organization is run.

Organizational Response toward racism

Clipper owner banned for life...why do I feel like he is getting off easy?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/clippers-owner-donald-sterling-banned-for-life-from-nba/2014/04/29/dd994f37-3625-4433-8677-2b51fd2c5ae3_story.html?wpmk=MK0000205

And apparently this has occurred in other sport team settings...http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/racist-team-owners

Inferential racism in the U.S.

Saw this article (http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2014/04/minneapolis_air_pollution_is_racist_u_of_m_study_finds.php) and thought about our discussion today concerning inferential racism.

Reflections on difference

I saw this list ( http://m.tickld.com/x/20-weird-things-about-america) of items considered unusual by folks not from the U.S. Interesting to consider what values each embodies. 

Chapter 12

This chapter discusses communication ethics literacy and difference. But what does this mean? Of all the chapters so far this to me was the most ambiguous.The book explains that the focus of the chapter is on "the good of learning the constructive pragmatic response to an era defined by difference."(210.) A topic that is discussed is the pragmatic of dialogue. The pragmatics of dialogue untie learning, discernment, and difference. By uniting these three things we "affirm multiple views of the good, neither ignoring or concurring unreflectively with the new." (211).

This chapter seems to be about using the communication ethics we have learned as a whole in this book and applying them into our lives. On page 213 is says "communication ethics is the call to learn about different views." Everyday we have to navigate through communication with people who are different than ourselves. Everyday in class we learned from each other and realized what communication was acceptable and what communication was not. To be honest the first couple of classes were awkward. A lot of people had not broken out of their comfort zone and at the other end of the spectrum a lot of students seemed not to have a filter. As the semester continued, it became more apparent that the open communication of the class was welcomed and we learned communication ethics literacy to navigate communication in the classroom.

Chapter 12. Are Humans Willing to Learn?

Chapter 12 was one of the most important so far. Some of the language used in this chapter was able to give me better insight on how to look at others while we are in the communication arena. I am convinced that this chapter was embedded in my head while I slept. In the first paragraph I was given the ideas that would stick with me the rest of the chapter.

The first idea was to, “stop using ethics as a weapon towards people” (p.209). This is a very bold statement. It is sometimes very hard to drop every prejudice we have and just listen. We must remember that the people we are conversing with or we are involved with may have a totally  different idea of how communication works and what it actually is. The book continues to say that we must, “embrace the necessity of learning” (p.209).  We need to be able to adjust to different situations and understand how to navigate them, even when we don’t like or approve of the situation or outcome. The text continues in later in the text offering an idea we must embrace. Learning about the other.

This is important because we are able to brush things off much easier and continue the growing process. If we do not learn what the other may want or need how can we ever teach them our views or the  “right” way? I feel that this is the most important part about communication. As a human race we must embrace difference but at the same time try to make all of us interconnect. It is a sticky situation if we just continue to adapt to our own lives while not making room for growth by others.

I am currently looking for more work and it makes my boss very upset. He is worried he will have to work more and does not want to see my point. I am looking for day work so I can be with my little buddy when he is born. I am concerned that the way our restaurant is being ran from our boss may be an issue in the future and I don’t really want to be involved with him anymore. He is aggressive and always worried about himself. I just can’t deal with it much longer. He is never willing to listen or understand people below him on the work chain of command. I actually  told him right before I read this chapter some of the same things that were covered in here.

Chapter 12

This was a great chapter to wrap up our semester in Communication Ethics. The chapter discusses three aspects to Communication Ethics Literacy and Difference, Pragmatic, Crisis Communication, and Communication ethics literacy. The main thing that comes to mind after reading this chapter is our classroom discussions.  Over time we all learned what was acceptable in terms of communication by interacting with each other. The book says, "Keeping conversation going in such an era begins with meeting what we do not know, which permits learning and ironically, sheds more clarity on the ground or position upon which we stand," (pg. 211). As we began the semester no one knew how this class was going to communicate their ideas but we learned from each other establishing certain ground rules and respect for everyones opinions. Everything leading up to this chapter is tied together- common sense, our public/private arenas, and intercultural communication ethics come to mind. We all learned what was right and wrong growing up, but we learned them differently. But that still allowed us to learn and communicate effectively. This chapter shows the importance each of these different steps plays in what you might call successful communication.