ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSESSMENT

I picture an organization member asking me, What does ethnography have to do with us? or What good will something called narrative analysis do when I just want to improve our communication here? I have not heard these exact questions, but I have heard their sentiment from organization members. Even many who are fairly sophisticated about and interested in communication look for the nuts-and-bolts kind of quantified data on communication flow and satisfaction that are typical and important parts of organizational assessments. Alternative methods of study such as narrative or metaphor analysis generate ambivalence; such methods take more time, effort, and expenditure than practical-minded organization members may have patience. However, eliciting the symbols that make up the day-to-day life world of communicators in organizations is crucial for assessment because they represent the key sense-making actions of organizational members. Organizational symbols must be uncovered and explored, and there are practical, efficient ways to do so. Early on, Putnam (1982) suggested alternative methodologies to consider when assessing organizations: Stories, myths, rituals, ceremonies, and nonverbal objects of the organizational culture (p. 199) will illuminate other, more objective indicators of organization structure. At a practical level, assessors seek to find out the facts about the organizations communication structure. To a crucial depth to such assessments, some interpretive methods that have not been extensively used could be quite effective. Moving beyond attitude surveys and assessments of information flow, researchers using interpretive methods illuminate key themes and behaviors that have meaning for an organization. In communication assessments of child care centers, I have observed that such methods provide wide-ranging results that are useful for assessing organizations as well as deciding how communication within them should proceed. As organization members participated in and received results from observations and descriptions of their communication at work, they not only received an assessment of their existing communication strategies but also were motivated to reassess and change them. Even after an hour of discussing the results of such an assessment, members agreed to extend an already-long staff meeting to explore another story that emerged from interpretive assessment methods used at their child care center. Such methods clearly incited interest and were found useful. Interpretive methods can supplement and even replace standard positivistic methods in some organizational assessments. Combining interpretive methods with more common survey methods offers a forceful and effective triangulation of results.