Overall, I found this chapter to be fairly interesting, especially when I started trying to tie the concepts into organizations that I am involved with. As defined by the book, 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" (138). However, the part that I found particularly intriguing was the concept of the "saying," or "the current living practices," and the "said," or "the memories of past and current public practices that form a substrate for future communicative action" (142). Both of which are used to protect and promote a given good. In class we often talk about ethics being a negotiation. Here we see a negotiation between what an organization has stood for in the past, the "said," and how they are willing to adapt to emergent historical moments, the "saying." I think the success of an organization is often gauged on how well they can navigate between the two and hold true to their overall good in the process.
Now, I thought that I was going to be original in saying this, but looking through some of the earlier blogs I'm not the first. However, the first thing that came to mind while reading this was the church, whether it be the Catholic church, a protestant one or a non-denominational one. The "said" would be something along the lines of that the gospel be proclaimed and that the church works for justice and peace by loving God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, and loving their neighbors as themselves. Feel free to debate that, and I understand that with each church there will be minor doctrinal differences that influence how they might define "the good," but let's roll with this for now. The problem that many people have with some churches today is that they're not all saying what they have previously said. Some are corrupt. Some preach a legalistic doctrine resembling a Pharisaic approach, that you have to this, this, this and the other thing to earn a proper standing with God. Some are exclusive, not allowing certain demographics. The list goes on, and so it's understandable why so many people resent Christianity. It's understandable when you hear the church being associated with words like hypocritical. It seems as if some churches, again not all, have let the historical moments get the best of them instead of holding true to their their foundation like the fraternity and sorority example in the book when they held true to their values while adapting to the new hazing rules. It all starts with the participants in a given organization, in this case the Christians within the church to not just preach, but live, and not in light of legalism and begrudging submission, but love and grace. And to let it go unsaid will only lead to problems which are quite evident today because "Disaster rests with the inarticulate, a failure to make the organizational mission and purpose explicit in day-to-day life" (141-142).
Just going off your ties to Christianity and the Church. I pictured that the "said" is the Old Testament and the "Saying" is the New Testament in a way. While the "said" has been said it still retains the breathe of God, therefore it is also still the saying; and as an organization, The Church, communicates differently and comes to agreements on how they want to interpret certain books of the Bible that are quite harsh and most of the time really confusing.
ReplyDeleteI just think (I also mentioned this in my post) that you can't have one without the other, an institution without and organization or an organization without an institution. Same goes for the "said" and the "saying" when Jesus gave his new commandments which incorporate the original Ten Commandments. Just some thought. I am still currently dwelling on the thoughts to tie it into Organizational Communications. Mainly because of all the different denominations of the Church and how within themselves they dispute how to look at salvation and sin.