Organizational Communication Ethics

Before I read the text, I thought of organizational communication as very rigid and strict. I assumed that it was a communication which existed in an organization such as companies and there were lots of rules going on and was a strict hierarchy based on the positions of people. However, after reading, I realized that organizational communication is not only very interactive, but also not limited by the rules or the hierarchy. One of the most impressive concepts to me was "dwelling place". According to the text book, it says, "dwelling place is the type of communicative home a given organization invites by its communicative practices. It is a gathering of communicative practices and stories that gives an organization a sense of uniqueness, separating a specified organization from others within the same industry (138)." As my understanding, dwelling place is "culture" of an organization that gives a sense of belonging and stability to the members.

The other important key concept is the community of memory. It is a sense of organizational conscience, retaining what a given organization frames its identity and its political life (145). It is something like a tradition in an organization where it has its own practices from the past and is changeable when new insights emerges. In other words, it is an ongoing process of creating meaning of an organization through the past, the present, and the future. For example, in my high school in South Korea, we had a tradition of studying late until midnight, especially during our senior years to prepare the entrance exams for universities. Actually, it was a tradition of Korean education system because most of the high schools, including mine, had to make their students to do so. One time, there was a accident where one of the students in my school was about to be kidnapped when she walked back to home alone after studying. It became a huge issue and since then, many parents ask the school to repeal the system of studying late in school. As a result, our school repealed the system and rather let it be voluntary so that students who want to stay at school late can do so.