Workplace Humor and Status Differences

Humor can also play an important role between people who have status differences in the workplace.  For example, a manager might make a joke out of telling a subordinate what to do.  One reason for this might be to minimize the status difference, becoming “one of you.”  If the manager gave orders all of the [...]

Workplace Humor–You Have to Think

I think there is a lesson to be learned when it comes to using humor at work.  The biggest thing is to think!  Not just think, “will this be funny,” but also, “will everyone think this is funny?”  In the classes that I teach, I always invite students to share “bad jokes” on Friday.  Early [...]

Workplace Humor–Uniting and Dividing

One of the most interesting ideas to me in organizational communication is the use of humor.  Part of my interest is because I think I’m a pretty funny guy, but more than that, I think it is interesting that humor can both bring people together and also be so divisive (see Meyer, 1997 for more [...]

Open Door Policies–How to Make Them Work

One response to the idea of managers accepting dissent might be to initiate an “open door” policy.  Yet some research implies that open door policies may often be ineffective (Harlos, 2001)—the idea that “the open door leads straight to a push out the open window.”  Harlos argued that, for open door policies to work, employees [...]

In Spite of Benefits, Some People Still Don’t Want to Hear Dissent

I mentioned in a previous post that conflict has many benefits to organizations such as getting ideas on the table and that hearing opposing positions has benefits to us personally. In spite of these benefits, some managers prefer that everyone agree with them, that no one “rocks the boat.” How can managers be convinced that [...]

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is a tricky thing.  We can have all of the things like pay and benefits, but still not be satisfied.  On the other hand, we can have challenging task that fulfill us while not being properly compensated.  You might think that being more satisfied would make you more productive at work.  Actually, research [...]

Conflict With Your Supervisor

One thing that separates conflict in organizations apart from other types of conflict is the idea of status.  By definition, there are some people in organizations that have a higher status than other people.  Most often this is set up by the organization’s hierarchy, where managers and supervisors have more status than the people they [...]

Getting to Yes–Great Book for Conflict Negotiation

Part of any expressed conflict is the idea of negotiation.  One of the best books on negotiation is Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes.  This book is packed with practical ideas for managing conflicts and negotiations.  Among other things, the authors talk about identifying the interests of the other person, what really drives him or [...]

Scientific Management

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of scholars were researching how organizations could be more efficient.  One of the foremost of these scholars, Fredrick Taylor, developed a theory of “Scientific Management,” which focused on ways that employers could get the most out of their employees (Taylor, 1911).  Employees were treated in ways [...]

Ingratiation

I think that ingratiation may be the most effective way of communicating something with which people are likely to disagree.  Let me be clear—appropriate ingratiation may be effective persuading people to listen to your ideas.  Ingratiation involves praising the other person or helping the other person to feel as if your solutions were his or [...]