comm101-conflict

Deetz describes in an overview in chapter 36, that conflict can be more beneficial than people might think.  It allows people in workplaces to voice their complaints and vent their frustrations.  It could also be applied to media as well.  Let's say for instance that a company wrongfully took money from a client and the client didn't even know until much later.  A good tool for that client to use in such a case is their local news station.  I've seen reports on people who had complaints to file on a particular company and they in turn go to their news station with their story as a result of the accused company taking no action to right the wrong bestowed on the client.  

Another way conflict can work for the benefit of a group or organization is that it can help shape and re-evaluate company procedures and policies.  At my work we have opinion surveys that print out on customer's receipts and we tell them about it.  They basically have the power to grade the entire store on the service and overall experience and add comments or complaints on the store.  

Comm101-shared interpretation

Mead notes that humans act toward eachother on the basis of the meanings they assign to people.  So to make things clear, I guess we can either act civil or just plain mean to people based on the meaning we apply to them.  Where does the meaning come from? It can come from experiences or previous interaction.  The point is that we apply meaning to everything which determines our actions in the future. 

Pearce and Cronens coordinated management of meaning basically tells us that we create meaning socially.  Meaning, that part of our actions towards others can be stemmed or influenced by other people.  We tend to go with what makes us not a target for just about anything.  Have you ever been in a meeting at work and they ask if there is anything that they would like to talk about?  What do you think happens?  Nobody wants to talk.  Even though you know some people want to say something, it's easier to just remain quiet because you don't want to be the minority in the spiral of silence.  But in this case, everyone just wants to get out of the darn meeting early and the person who does want to say something is viewed as the one who ruins their chances of that.

comm101-soical exchange theory

In chapter 36 the theory of social exchange is overviewed.  It states that we hold our relationships based on benefits and costs of keeping them.  Let's take our jobs for instance.  How much can we tolerate from our co-workers and our bosses if they make our job difficult?  The benefit would be to keep the job for financial reasons but then the cost would be our possible sanity.  

Or how about a friend that you had that was so annoying but he always invited you to go to cool places like sports events or concerts.  Our book states that communication is motivated by our basic social need for affiliation, achievement, and control.  If we didn't have any other friends would we continue to keep them as a friend?

Do we look at our current friendships and evaluate them based on what our  needs are?  Do we only call certain friends for certain occasions or ask them certain questions?