Chapter 8: Organizational Communication Ethics Blog

Chapter 8 was on the topic of Organizational Communication Ethics.  The main points that are covered in this chapter are 1) Organizational communication, 2) Dwelling place, 3) Organizations and institutions, and 4) Community of memory within organizations.  "Organizational communication is the orchestrating of communicative practices through formal and informal structures of events and persons in a given organization to accomplish a given purpose or purposes," (p. 138).  In essence, this is the form of communication used to reach your particular goal.  It is necessary to have ethics in organizations, in order to know what rules to abide by and accomplish what they are trying to achieve.

The second topic that I found interesting in the chapter was community of memory within organizations.  "The community of memory of an organization is a sense of organizational conscience, retaining what a given organization deems as good," (p. 145).  Basically what I got out of this section was that the community of memory is telling us the things that have and have not worked, and tells us where the organization might be headed in the future.  One quote that I found interesting was that, "Danger lurks whenever a community of memory goes dormant, seemingly hibernating, no longer an active part of everyday decision making," (p.149).  I thought this was interesting because, just as people change, organizations do as well, and they have to be able to undergo necessary change.

The last topic that I will discuss, and the one I found most interesting was Dwelling place.  According to our book,"A dwelling place is a gathering of communicative practices and stories that gives an organization a sense of uniqueness, separating a specified organization from others within the same industry," (p. 138).  I found this part of the chapter interesting when we read about the "saying" and the "said".  "The "saying" refers to the current living practices that manifest a given good; the "said" refers to memories of past and current public practices that form a substrate for future communicative action," (p. 142).  When I was reading over this part, I just kept thinking of the law, and how laws change with time.  "As the demands of a given historical moment shift, an organization must find within itself the resources with which to respond to historical changes and demands, beginning with reflection upon what has been and is valued in an organization (the "said")," (p. 142).  For example, recently the law has been changing in the fact that some states now allow (saying) gay marriage, whereas in the past (the "said") gay marriage was not allowed and rejected amongst many.  I think the "good" in legalizing gay marriage is that of love.  My other thought during this chapter was that on the legalization of marijuana and the law.  In regards to the "saying" and the "said" I thought about marijuana and how once illegal in all states, medical marijuana is now legal in 20 states, and legal in 2 states for recreational use.  It would be interesting to hear other people's thoughts on what they thought of in regards to the "saying" and the "said".