Deck 5: Communication, Culture, and Organizing

Question 1

The relationship Donald Roy (1953) had to his co-workers in his famous ethnography of a manufacturing company can be described as ______.

A) complete observer
B) participant-as-observer
C) complete participant
D) observer researcher

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Geertz's "webs of significance" best relates to ______.

A) bureaucratic structures that keep organizational culture running correctly
B) ways in which people "spin" their cultures as they go about their daily lives
C) systematic thinking about how we organize
D) culture as an interpretive, holistic endeavor

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Which of the following best describes the conditions in which the cultural approach to organizational communication emerged?

A) People were becoming more culturally sensitive in a post-Civil Rights United States.
B) The Vietnam War protests in the 1970's made organizational researchers look more closely at culture.
C) Economic instability, oil crises, labor strikes, and global competition started to show the cracks in bureaucracy.
D) Narratives of "the American dream" clashed with stories of working class identity and caused dissonance among workers.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Mark Zuckerberg's apology for Facebook's data breach scandals is best described as a rite of ______.

A) enhancement
B) passage
C) degradation
D) circumstance

Question 5

Robert takes a pragmatist approach to organizational culture, while Bryanne takes a purist approach to organizational culture. They might disagree about ______.

A) culture as a way of making meaning
B) culture as communicative and filled with sense-making
C) culture as a variable correlated to changed cultural outcomes
D) culture as a manipulated organizational form

Question 6

"'This is not magic,' the artist reminds them, as she teaches students about a structural quality of the art material or art process they are learning. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of one of the light-filled classrooms in the school building listening to the artist recite a poem about the morning sun to students, I soak up the artist's lesson on the poet's use of the word 'crotchety,' a word new to third-graders. She teaches them about paste-painting and its thick, pudding-like consistency that will slide through their fingers as they make paintings of morning and light." As part of a research report, the preceding passage could be an example of ______.

A) the machine metaphor in teaching and art-making settings
B) data for a quantitative study of research as a variable in classroom culture
C) thick description as part of an interpretive study of classroom culture
D) evidence for laws of student and teacher behavior education and art-making

Question 7

The management at the restaurant where Robin works has long used the phrase "team" in order to describe how everyone at the restaurant needed to pull his or her weight for a collective success. Instead of "shift managers," there were "shift coaches," and instead of "good employees," there were "team players." Recently, a new manager came in to the restaurant and is referring herself as the "director" and all of the staff as "cast members." After two weeks, tensions between staff and management reached a boiling point. How might we best describe what is going on?

A) The new manager didn't thoroughly learn the existing culture in order to manage it well.
B) The new manager didn't have the right vocabulary to describe the staff at the restaurant.
C) The new manager didn't understand the rites of passage she needed to go through before becoming a leader.
D) The new manager is using a different root metaphor to understand how the staff works with management and each other.

Question 8

An organizational scholar taking a purist approach might critique the pragmatic approach to organizational culture because managing culture ______.

A) controls formal and informal communication
B) becomes an indicator of employee feelings and satisfaction
C) is an imprecise endeavor
D) is an unstable measure for organizational success

Question 9

The leadership team of a small non-profit organization has a team-building and goal-setting retreat each time a person joins or leaves the team, because the director of the non-profit believes that every time a person joins or leaves, they have an entirely new team. His approach most readily reflects which of the following ideas about organizational culture?

A) Culture is something that can be treated as a variable to manage outcomes.
B) Culture is something that the organization has and must be taught to new members.
C) Organizational culture emerges from the participation of the people present.
D) Organizational culture is a single, unitary culture that all members share.

Question 10

The existence of "culture boot camps" or intensive "cultural training" programs at workplaces attempt to ensure that a workplace has a single, unitary culture. Which form(s) of control are we most likely to see in this approach to organizing?

A) direct
B) bureaucratic
C) technological
D) ideological

Question 11

Kelly and her 30-something friends occasionally use the phrase, "That's so college." Typically, they use this phrase to refer to something that only occurred during their four years at university: partying late into the evening, cramming all night for exams, stressing about grade point averages, and painting their faces and screaming obnoxiously at every home football game. Which of the following symbolic forms best refers to their sense that these things are "so college" and not a regular part of the culture of their post-college adult lives?

A) relevant constructs
B) rites and rituals
C) vocabulary
D) stories

Question 12

In the book Let My People Go Surfing, CEO of the adventure equipment company Patagonia Yvon Chouinard (2005) writes that the company takes a very slow approach to hiring because they want to ensure that any new organizational members embody the same philosophical beliefs of the organization. By taking their time to hire people who "truly believe" in the philosophy of the company, Patagonia reduces turnover and internal conflict. Which of the following functions of pragmatist approaches to culture best describes their hiring policy/practice?

A) creating a shared identity among organizational members
B) cultural reengineering of new employees
C) enacting quality control standards
D) operationalizing a work-life balance for employee

Question 13

Joie's room overlooks a city park where local guys gather every evening to play pick-up basketball. Most afternoons, he watches the guys negotiate who gets to play, the rules of the game, and their rituals of picking team members, celebrating wins, and the occasional fight. Eventually, Joie starts to play with the guys. Now, he is able to pick out who the "new" guys are because they don't seem to know the rules or rituals, "how things work." Over time, the new guys learn the rules and bring new things to the court. Which of the following best describes how Joie has come to understand this culture?

A) Culture is semiotic - shared rituals create meanings and social reality.
B) Culture is "exotic" - it can only be understood if you maintain distance from it.
C) Culture is static - people have to learn the rules, and culture doesn't change.
D) Culture is a metaphor - it really only exists in the player's heads.

Question 14

The emergence of the cultural approach was significant because scholars began to take seriously the idea that organizations ______.

A) are communicative phenomena
B) work best using clock time
C) use chaos and change for good
D) increase productivity by incorporating technology

Question 15

Mabel teaches middle school and tries to instill social consciousness in her students by questioning their use of common and derogatory slang such as "retarded" to describe things or people that they think are dumb or silly. After a lesson on using "the r-word" and its negative impact on people, she was pleased that students dropped it from their daily conversation in her classes. Around the same time, however, she notices that the kids are talking about Pop-tarts all of the time. The cafeteria serves Pop-tarts for breakfast a lot; she assumes that the kids just like this breakfast treat. Later in the semester, she discovers that the kids use the word "Pop-tart" to refer to things that they think are dumb or silly. This is an example of ______.

A) rites and rituals in the culture of schooling
B) everyday practices that enact a culture
C) vocabulary that defines insiders and outsiders
D) stories that serve as moral directives

Question 16

Professor Snow has assigned a research project that asks you to study an organizational culture (from a purist point of view). Which of these projects do you imagine would best fulfill her expectations?

A) An Internet survey of managers' attitudes toward their employees at a large American automobile manufacturer.
B) An ethnographic study of storytelling at a farmers' market where you are a frequent volunteer.
C) An interview study that replicates the Hawthorne Studies' interview study to see if Mayo's results are replicable in a 21st-century workplace.
D) A literature review of managerial textbooks offered in courses required for MBAs in organizational leadership at a top-tier university.

Question 17

At Danielle's undergraduate university, there was a gazebo on campus where, the story went, if a couple kissed, they would become engaged before they graduated from college. Danielle was secretly delighted when she and her partner kissed in the gazebo one afternoon; they became engaged right before graduation. To Danielle's surprise, when they moved across the country to pursue graduate work, the university that they attended had a similar story - except the "kissing" spot was on the seal of the university. Which of the following might describe this "strange" occurrence?

A) the "uniqueness paradox" of organizational stories
B) rites and rituals of organizational culture
C) effective stories shape organizational culture
D) stories provide us organizing scripts to pay attention to

Question 18

When studying organizational culture, we might call the "social knowledge" held by organizational members that enable them to successfully navigate the culture ______.

A) stories
B) facts
C) vocabulary
D) practices

Question 19

Purist studies of organizational culture could be best described by which of the following research perspectives?

A) positivism
B) interpretivism
C) the critical perspective
D) postmodernism

Question 20

Professor Kimble thinks that her students lack enthusiasm and dedication to the class that she is teaching, so she decides to create a more competitive atmosphere so that students will engage and work harder. She decides to institute a classroom talent show, holds a class t-shirt design contest, and gives rewards for perfect attendance. In her attempts to manage her classroom's culture, we might say that Professor Kimble has a ______ understanding of organizational culture.

A) pragmatic
B) purist
C) mechanistic
D) organism

Question 21

Studying culture is an experimental science.

Question 22

In order to be good anthropologists, cultural scholars of organizations must be sure to find exotic and strange cultures to study.

Question 23

When Mary Kay consultants earn pink Cadillacs for reaching certain sales goals, they go through a rite of ______.

Question 24

A pragmatic view of organizational culture treats culture as a ______ that can be manipulated to generate particular outcomes.

Question 25

The "metaphor" for organizational culture is the organism.

Question 26

Cultural studies of organizations offered managers exciting ways to motivate employees and to reinvigorate ______.

Question 27

The pragmatist approach to organizational culture has a strong descriptive orientation.

Question 28

______ metaphors provide powerful frames for organizational life.

Question 29

Cultural purists have a broader definition of "organizations" than cultural ______ do.

Question 30

The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s stayed outside of organization; young people were willing to adapt to the "old ways" or organization life at their workplaces.

Question 31

From a ______ perspective of organizational culture, organizations only exist insofar as organization members engage in communication activities.

Question 32

______ refers to jargon, or the special language that has particular meaning within organizations.

Question 33

Organizational scholars studying organizational culture pay a lot of attention to cultural expressions; purists tend to see cultural expressions as the means by which culture is made, whereas pragmatists tend to see cultural expressions as outward evidence of an objective and quantifiable culture.

Question 34

Hippies, flower-power, and the Woodstock generation believed that meaningful work was just as important as ______ rewards.

Question 35

Organizational life is made up of a set of ongoing practices that members must engage in to accomplish organizing.

Question 36

For a researcher taking a purist approach to organizational culture, it becomes very important to maintain distance and separation from those who she researches.

Question 37

Purist and pragmatist approaches to organizational culture give us a theory of power to understand difference and control.

Question 38

White-collar work can be just as dehumanizing as ______ work.

Question 39

______ research is the term that organizational scholars use to describe the kinds of research they engage when studying culture.

Question 40

Luis is fascinated by the ways in which pick-up basketball games are organized in the city park that his room overlooks - soon, he starts to play pickup basketball with the guys in his neighborhood. According to cultural anthropologists, Luis could simultaneously be studying this culture even while playing basketball.