This chapter was interesting because it provided new and
deeper ways of perceiving organizations that I haven’t thought of before. There
are many types of organizations to be included in that “give meaning beyond our
individual selves” (p. 145). Organizational communication ethics have an array
of different understandings of the good, but ultimately “addresses the
practices and functions of communication in organizations that protect and
promote a particular good that defines a dwelling place” (p. 140). Furthermore,
a dwelling place is an area that gives an organization separation from other
organizations by their practices and stories (p. 138).
This leads me to briefly discuss the importance of the community
of memory within an organization. I interpreted this concept as a community of memory
within an organization as being the said practices and understandings that give
an organization its individuality. This can be simplified into what an
organization deems as good. The community of memory reinforces the
organizations past that ultimately engages the present and into the future (p.
147).
In hopes that I am understanding the concepts between
organizations and institutions and regarding the “said” and “saying” correctly,
an example that I can provide that pertains to this chapter is to mention a
popular hotel organization that I am involved in. As this particular hotel is
considered an organization, it is closely linked to a larger institution of the
hotel service industry that ultimately gives the hotel that I work at its identity
and public recognition. The hotel’s community of memory surrounds its mission
to provide exceptional customer service (the said), and creates guidelines that
reinforce this mission (the saying) in order to protect and promote the given
good of this particular organization.
That is how I understood these concepts also. That was a good example. Community of memory stood out to me as well as an important concept for organizations. It is important for organizations to periodically evaluate what is working and what is not working and what improvements can be made (evaluating both the "said" and the "saying."
ReplyDeleteYour summary of the community of memory is a succinct explanation of how the concept applies in a practical setting, but I question the term's usefulness in describing organizational ethics. Every aspect of communication contained within a "community of memory" has been described and defined elsewhere. The "said" is the substantive good. The "saying" is the subordinate good that carries it out. The "said practices and understandings that give an organization its individuality" are the competing goods--the Other--that we're taught to recognize in all forms of communication ethics, not merely organizational. A "community of memory" wants to unify and assimilate this invigorating, life-breathing difference into a single cultural story. Even this cultural story has been described elsewhere--if we consider the organization to be just another speaker, with its own competing good in the public arena, isn't its "community of memory" just the narrative described in Chapter 3?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, attempting to reconcile the diversity of difference in any organization as all part of a single, unerring narrative devalues that difference and downplays the importance of otherness in ethical communication. It's unnecessary to think of organizational communication as supported by a community of memory--all of its foundational underpinnings and reliant concepts have been defined and described elsewhere. Actually, your explanation perfectly illustrates this redundancy by laying out the individual ideas that make up a "community of memory"--ideas that are not unique to organizational communication, and should not be muddied by a term that attempts to paint all this glorious difference as part of an ongoing, infallible, ever-changing story we, apparently, cannot understand or predict.