News/ Media

Use concepts from class to discuss a news story or other item shown in the media.



I watched a recent episode of NBC’s The Office and applied relevant organizational communication concepts to what I saw. The episode was titled Fun Run and it originally aired on September 27, 2007. While the plot of this particular episode was humorous and enjoyable, there were plenty of organizational concepts discussed.

The basic plot of the episode was that the company’s boss, Michael Scott, hit an employee with his car in the parking lot. The employee’s injuries were minor but she was hospitalized for a pelvis fracture. Though the injury was not a positive event, the injured woman was able to get a necessary rabies vaccine while she was in the hospital. She needed it because a raccoon and other animals bit her previously. This made the hospitalization not such a bad thing because if she were not hospitalized, she would end up with rabies from the animal bites she experienced.

Some important concepts present in the series, The Office, are informal organizations and teamwork in the office. The entire office dresses business casual when they come to work. Employees look comfortable, while still professional enough for the workplace. The overall environment of the office that they work in is very informal. One reason for this comfort in both their attire and their attitudes is the teamwork that occurs between the entire staff. Michael Scott is the boss of the office though he is always willing to listen to his employees. They work together more as an entire team rather then having a boss with lower level employees. This informality of the office allows for better communication between all of the employees.

In addition to enjoying the causal atmosphere, many of the employees work together on separate committees. For example, in this episode the party planning committee is discussed when all of the office goes to visit the injured worker in the hospital. The party planning committee takes care of all the social events that occur in the office. A party planning committee is very important in the office for many reasons. It allows the employees to enjoy their office more than if they were working all of the time. The short amount of social time encourages worker communication and friendship. When friendships are present in an office environment, the teamwork model works very well.

The show The Office exhibits a workplace democracy as well as an informal work environment. The teams are a part of this democracy. In addition, quality information is distributed to all of the employees. This was evident when Michael first hit the woman in the parking lot and he came inside to tell all of the other employees. Information is shared between everyone in the office. Though Michael is the boss of the office, all of the employees are treated fairly. They seem to focus on having a solid base structure rather then working from the top-down. Also, the employees vote many of the events that happen in the office. This further encourages worker participation and involvement. The Office represents this workplace democracy very well.

Worker relationships are very important in the show as well. A few of the employees are actually dating each other. This allows for a very interesting workplace environment. However, friendly relationships are encouraged for all of the workers. One way that Michael Scott tries to encourage positive relationships is by having mid-day meetings with his employees. If something is not going well in the company, he will sit everyone down to discuss it. In addition, if he is very excited or happy about something else, he will also have a meeting to discuss it. These spontaneous meetings allow all of the employees to be a part of the decisions and activity of the company.

A final noteworthy point in this episode is that Dunder-Mifflin is concerned with its public image. After Michael Scott hit his employee, she ended up in the hospital. Though her pelvis was fine, doctors were concerned about her recent animal bites. They gave her rabies shots and Michael felt the company should support her battle with rabies. He planned a 5K run for all of the employees to participate in with the money going to charity. Though many of the employees decided not to attend the run, he was still interested in the company’s philanthropic endeavors.

This episode of The Office covered many of the topics that have been discussed in Organizational Communication. I believe that the most important points are the company’s informal atmosphere, worker involvement, workplace democracy, and the communication and relationships between employees. The episode was extremely entertaining and humorous and it represented many of the key features of successful companies.



Please refer to the Additional Information label on the right hand side of the screen for links about NBC's The Office.

Organizational Policies and Procedures for Worker Involvement

Discuss the chart on page 238 and draw a line where worker involvement is impractical or improper. Then, discuss your views for establishing participatory and democratic workplaces.

The chart on page 238 of Organizational Communication by Eisenberg, Goodall, and Trethewey shows the empowerment continuum of work teams. The X-axis is the percentage of responsibility and authority of the team and the Y-axis is the degree of empowerment. The greater the percentage of responsibility and authority a team has, the greater the degree of empowerment.

Lower points on the chart are activities such as housekeeping, training one another, quality responsibilities, managing suppliers, and many other tasks. A team of workers can easily accomplish these tasks. A head manager does not need to be in charge of these smaller responsibilities. In addition, there are higher levels of work team responsibility and authority. These tasks are things such as making compensation decisions, disciplinary process, budgeting, and equipment purchase. Some companies allow teams to manage these high responsibility tasks in addition to the lower level responsibility tasks. However, worker involvement is not always the most efficient, fair, or practical way to run a business.

An imaginary line is present on the chart where worker involvement is no longer proper. At a certain point, too much team responsibility makes the company impractical. The division point between team decisions and a boss’s decisions needs to be between vacation scheduling and choosing team leaders. After choosing team leaders, one or two powerful people need to make the decisions rather then an entire team. Having one leader makes for a more efficient workplace.

If all employees of a company were in charge of making disciplinary decisions, imagine how chaotic it would be to have everyone disciplining one of their coworkers. What if everyone was able to make compensation decisions, or buy whatever new equipment they wanted? The company would spend more time having its workers make these decisions then time they were actually working. A manager, supervisor, or boss needs to present to take care of the higher responsibility jobs and allow the teams to make smaller decisions.

The reason that workers cannot always make decisions in the team structure is that when there are lots of people on a team, people work unequal amounts. For example, if there were twenty employees on a team, they would not all put in exactly the same amount of effort into their decisions. A leader that was more dedicated to the company would have to be present to take over the workers that do not want to put in any effort. This is not fair for the entire team.

In addition to workers putting unequal amounts of effort into their job, only one individual should do some tasks. When a boss makes the decision to discipline an employee for their actions, it is simple and does not involve all the employees. It is just more efficient to have one decision maker for the higher levels of responsibility. If workers are afraid that having one boss make important decisions will exclude them from the team worker environment, perhaps the employees could help in other ways. It would be possible for employees to help create the disciplinary handbook or help with the budget in advance. That way when a situation comes up and the boss needs to consult the handbook, or whatever other decisions might be necessary, the employees had helped make those rules.

Workplace democracy focuses on employee participation in decision making for an improved outcome. A company can do this by making everyone an owner, making the management integrated into the workplace, having quality information widely distributed, and making the structure solid from the bottom up. By having these four qualities, worker participation increases as well. However, this is not always a practical way of viewing a company.

When worker participation and worker democracy are the main goal of a company, it leads to inefficiency and the wasting of time. This inefficiency can occur when too many employees are trying to make decisions on the same thing. Sometimes it is better to have a select few, or even one, employee make difficult decisions. This way the other employees can focus on accomplishing other tasks. Another reason that worker participation does not always work is that it looses its appeal. Initially the idea of being completely involved in the decision making process might seem ideal, but over time the spontaneity is gone and workers no longer like the involvement.

Though the idea of worker involvement and a workplace democracy is good, carrying out these plans in an efficient, spontaneous, passionate way is often difficult. The terms worker and involvement and workplace democracy are oftentimes unrealistic goals of a company. A better plan is to have employees help to make the handbooks, vote on new machinery, and work on the budget so that they are involved. After their input and voting occurs, one manager of boss takes care of the details of these ideas. This way everyone can be efficient in his or her own realm of the work environment.

Human Relations and Human Resource Approach

Discuss the differences between the human relations and human resource approaches to management. Pay particular attention to how they approach the issue of worker participation.

The human relations approach differs from early views of management because it considers the needs of individuals. It focuses on the fact that people want to feel unified, part of a team, like they are making a difference, and they are a significant part of life. In addition, the human relations approach believes that creativity and dedication will come naturally when an employee is empowered in the workplace.

Elton Mayo studied humans and their working environments and came up with some definitive observations. He saw that people were part of a group, and not just an individual. People are influenced by the group and do not act according to their own self-interest. Finally, he found that decisions are based on emotions. Throughout his studies he concluded that the environment of work did not matter as much as the human interaction available to the employees. The basis for the Hawthorne effect is that increased attention equals increased productivity. This approach concludes that human relationships allow business to run smoothly. Open communication is honored and any differences are negotiated through negotiation. This is very different from classical management that held very different expectations from its employees.

Classical management thought that a stable company would come from strict adherence to policies and order. Human relations approach encouraged personal happiness through communication. A negative side of classical management is that it is too constraining and employees must participate in thoughtless routinized practices. The downside of human relations is that with encouraged communication comes possible deception and dishonesty. Also, if the employee is not happy, they will not be productive. Both the classical management approach and the human relations approach have positive and negative sides. However, the human relations approach differs from the human resources approach in many ways that will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

The human resources approach is concerned with the “total organizational climate as well as with how an organization can encourage employee participation and dialogue” (Eisenberg, 87). Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs refers to the needs that every human has before they can reach their potential. This means that if someone is satisfied, his or her self-actualization will continue to inspire productivity. However, if basic needs such as food or shelter are not provided, then having these needs will encourage more productivity then initially available. Another way to explain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is to discuss them as an upward pointing arrow. At the bottom of the arrow are necessary physiological needs such as food and clothing. After this is safety needs such as shelter, security and employment. Next is love and a sense of belonging, respect from others, and affection. The penultimate need is self-esteem and this includes salary, status, opportunities and responsibilities. Finally, self-actualization will occur. However, not everyone can achieve self-actualization.

Employees such as the maintenance workers or people that remain in very monotonous jobs may not ever achieve self-actualization. This is because they are separated by class and cannot reach their full potential. This is where human resources and human relations approaches differ. Human resources gives people the chance to feel needed and achieve greatness. However, there are still people that cannot get to this level. Contrastingly, in human relations, everyone is able to communicate and express their needs. Every worker can convey their feelings to even though there is division of labor; they are able to remain productive. This is not possible for the human resources approach because some jobs are not designed to express the hierarchy of needs.

The human relations approach and the human resource approach also differ in that human relations is more superficial then human resource. Human relations wants positive and happy employees. It focuses more on the psychological factors and tries to make everyone happy. One example of this would be painting the office walls to be a warmer color. Though it might make the room look better, it's not really going to change an employees opinion about the company. This causes it to be more superficial then the other human resource approach. Human resource approach uses teams rather then a hierarchy approach. The entire organization is questioned and challenged, making it more substantial. Workers tend to be more satified in this approach because their input is used to benefit the company. Participation is increased by rearranging the work structure to be more democratic and focused on worker empowerment. This approach increases worker satisfaction by avoiding the superficial tendencies of the human relations approach. Though the human relations and human resources approaches are very different, but both strive to have workers be as productive as possible.

Elton Mayo