ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATES

Think about an organization with which you’re currently involved, as a paid worker, volunteer, or member. How would you describe the overall emotional tone of the place—that is, the way it feels to be there? Is it supportive, warm, and welcoming? detached, cool, and unfriendly? somewhere in between? This overarching emotional quality of a workplace is known as its organizational climate (Kreps, 1990). Organizational climate is created primarily through interpersonal communication—the amount of trust, openness, listening, and supportiveness present in the interactions between organizational members (Mohammed & Hussein, 2008).

Two types of organizational climates exist (Kreps, 1990). In a defensive climate, the environment is unfriendly, rigid, and unsupportive of workers’ professional and personal needs. For example, supervisors may use communication as a way to strategically control others and to strictly enforce company hierarchy. Employees may resist change, be closed-minded toward new ideas or outside input, and negatively perceive any dissent. In contrast, workers in a supportive climate describe the workplace as warm, open, and supportive. Workers communicate honestly, collaborate to solve problems, share credit, practice empathy, and encourage people to treat one another with respect, despite any imbalance in power.

Organizational climates are rarely purely defensive or supportive. Instead, most fall somewhere in between. In addition, organizations may have different climates within different units, depending on workers’ personalities, job demands, and supervisor communication styles (Elçi & Alpkan, 2009).

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As just one person in your organization, you obviously don’t have sole control over the climate. Nevertheless, organizational climate is built from the ground up: it is the sum total of individuals’ interpersonal behavior in the workplace. Consequently, everything you say and do in your workplace contributes to its climate. See Table A.1 for tips on how to encourage a supportive organizational climate.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE WORKPLACE

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The use of computer-based communication technologies is now standard within workplaces; everyone from executives to maintenance workers uses texting, Twitter, and instant-messaging to coordinate professional activities (Berry, 2006). E-mail has largely replaced written memos and much of telephone and face-to-face interactions. In many corporate workplaces, e-mail is the primary communication medium; daily business could not occur without it (Waldvogel, 2007).

Computer-mediated communication in the workplace provides substantial advantages over face-to-face and phone interactions, especially when complex decision making requires input from multiple employees, some of whom may be long-distance (Berry, 2006). For example, hosting meetings online through live chat or posting to a common site ensures more active and equal participation than usually takes place at face-to-face meetings. People can contribute to the interaction without concern for interrupting or talking over others. The conversations are also more democratic: people in authority can’t “stare down” those with whom they disagree, suppressing their input; and those who suffer from shyness feel more comfortable contributing. In addition, online discussions provide participants with freedom from time and geographic constraints. People can chime in on the conversation whenever they like over a period of days or even weeks, and participants can join or leave the discussion without having to physically move—an enormous benefit to those who are geographically distant. Online discussions are often more informative, detailed, and factual than face-to-face conversations, as participants have the opportunity to fact-check the information in each of their comments before they post them. Keep these advantages in mind if you’re in a position to guide such decision-making discussions.

But the biggest advantage of communication technologies within the workplace is that they connect workers in a relational fashion. Online chat has usurped gossiping in the break room or talking on the telephone as the leading way employees build and bolster interpersonal ties (Riedy & Wen, 2010). Technologies allow workers to form and maintain friendships with coworkers they previously would not have been able to, including workers in other divisions of the company or other parts of the country or world (Quan-Haase, Cothrel, & Wellman, 2005).

As with anything, the benefits of workplace technologies are accompanied by certain disadvantages, the most pronounced of which is the near-constant distraction provided by online games, apps, and social networking sites. Workers in the United States now spend almost two hours a day cyberslacking: using their work computers to game, Web surf, update Facebook, e-mail, and instant-message about personal interests and activities, when they should be focused on work tasks (Garrett & Danziger, 2008). Employees higher in organizational status, male, and under the age of 30 are most likely to cyberslack (Garrett & Danziger, 2008). The lost productivity costs of cyberslacking are enormous. As just one example, companies lose an estimated $1 billion annually each March, as a result of people tracking results of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament while at work (Garrett & Danziger, 2008).

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Companies combat cyberslacking by using programs that track employee computer use—often without employees’ knowledge. Tracking programs monitor what sites employees visit, screen e-mail for potentially inappropriate messages, and record images of employees’ screens at periodic intervals (Riedy & Wen, 2010). Importantly, you’re not protected by using a personal account rather than a company account while cyberslacking. Court cases in which employees have sued employers for violation of privacy have upheld the right of companies to access private employee accounts, arguing that employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when using the employer’s computer and Internet access (Riedy & Wen, 2010). When you’re at work, remember this simple rule: everything and anything you do on a company computer is considered company property—and you will be held accountable for it.