Web Lecture- Pervasive Communication Environment

One of the key points made in the web lecture on Pervasive Communication Environment is that "time and place no longer constrain a group's activities." This is particularly important to me, because of the activism that I take part in. For example, we have organized rallies across the state with one meeting, and many e-mails, text messages, phone calls. Another example of this is President Obama's campaign; he used all of these mediums to gain supporters and volunteers for his campaign. For the first time it was as easy as checking e-mail to advocate for a particular candidate.

It is also important to note that we need be careful not to lose the physical interaction part of communication. In my opinion, this is very important and imperative to developing a healthy sensitive society.

Fragmentation (Lecture)

When I read the definition of Fragmentation it made me think of how politicians tend to have this practice. In fragmentation meanings change depending on the circumstances or issues at hand. This is also possible withing an organization. It can work in a positive or negative manner. I keep thinking of a time when I volunteered for a political campaign ; and I think this would be the kind of setting where people would have to practice the fragmentation ideals. You have to be flexible with what is going on in the campaign and many times there are several issues you have to look at before you can make a decision, but these are all factors.

Organizational Assimilation (Chapter 5)

The concept of organizational assimilation is one that most of us have encountered. As the reading describes it it is when we begin a new job and we are welcomed with open arms by the CEO or top management and they speak on how they have an open door policy. Then you seem to never be able to get hold of them or when you do they are not helpful. But, then you reach a level of familiarity with the different dynamics of the company and you feel much more at ease.
In my experience it depends on a person's personality as well. For example, I hired two new interns at around the same time and one of them is much more outgoing than the other. She had an easier time adapting to the culture of the organiztion than the other one. They both do outstanding work, but I can tell that one of them feels much more confortable than the other one at the office.

Manufactured Consent (Chapter 6)

Manufactured Consent is when an employee willingly accepts and enforces the legitimate power of the organization, society and capitalism. The reading speaks of how when this power is not recognized its power just expands. I believe that this conditioning of workforce happens before an employee becomes a part of an organization. This process begins occurring at our public educational institutions. Young children and youth are conditioned to not question authority and follow directions. In some cases it is more noticeable than others, but I'm certain that we can all think of an instance when we knew the right answer but we were afraid of saying it because we didn't want to make our superior's look bad.

Bias for Action (Chapter 5)

When I read about Bias for Action and how top-performing companies are not characterized for taking a long time for making decisions, it reminded me of an organization I used to be a part of. This activist organization would take, what seemed like light years to make decisions. I felt that we needed to make decisions quickly enough to take action right away. I value everyone's opinion in a group, but I feel that when we take long to make decisions we will never catch up to the competition. Finally, I decided that this organization wasn't for me and I moved on. But, it left me thinking about how social justice organizations need to take more of a business approach to organizing.

Systems

I've never been a fan of systems. While working with monolingual Spanish speakers I have become less of a fan of systems. It is very challenging in trying to explain a new system (in my case the educational system) to someone who grew up in another country with a different set of systems. I also see that all of the different systems have left many English learners without as many opportunities as English speakers. Specially in the region that we live in where there are so many people that are from all over the world!
We can look at companies as little cities or worlds even here in the Silicon Valley. Each with a social, economic, environmental and even political system. We can really examine what all of these little systems say about the larger perspective of our role in the world as one of the largest economies here in California.

Chapter 4

Feedback is one of the most effective ways I use to become better at my communication skills and also at any task completed. Not everyone finds it productive to receive or give feedback, but regardless it is important to be able to be able to analyze one another's work. Giving feedback in my opinion is also an art, because many times you could come across as too critical and may loose a connection with a coworker or teammate. It is important to learn how to receive feedback and use it to one’s advantage to grow as a professional and teammate.

A couple of years ago I was helping organize a conference for women in the community college system. It was a great experience and this was a situation where I remember thinking about how useful it would have been if we had received information of the previous years' planning committee for this conference. We would have learned what our audience wanted and how they felt about the message the organization wanted to portray through the conference. In general we can say that students, professionals and everyone can benefit from feedback.