Social Capital as Core Competency

I came to my interest in organizational communication by studying the idea of community as a teacher and writing groups as both a writer and teacher of writers. I have always believed very strongly in using writing groups to support the growth and development of writers and my work with the National Writing Project has only intensified that belief. However, my NWP work has also taught me the importance of community to the growth and development of all learners. And since I also believe that all successful organizations are learning organizations it seemed a natural progression to look at how organizations function as a community and learn.

An aspect of organizational communication that particularly fascinates me is the idea of social capital. Social capital is essentially the investment of your time, energy, and knowledge in a specific community and the benefits you derive from that investment. The organization’s purpose binds the community and focuses its energy, but it is social capital that fuels it. Social capital provides advantages to the individuals who possess it, but it also provides advantages to the organizations comprised of members with social capital.

I see social capital as a multiplier. If an organization is a sum of its component parts – or members – then an organization including members possessing social capital is so much more. Social capital gives leverage to do more than a single person could do alone. It is efficiently harnessing the power (time, energy, knowledge, skills) of others for a common purpose. People are willing to give of themselves, to either pay it forward or pay it back, because they can trust they will receive just as they give.

The human capital of an organization is the knowledge and skills that individual members possess, but it is the social capital that connects the human capital and amplifies it. In our information society it no longer holds true that knowledge is power as everyone has access to knowledge – in fact so much access and so much knowledge it is overwhelming, paralyzing. The organization with the most power knows how to manage the constant flow of information and leverage it to the organization’s best advantage. That leverage takes human capital and social capital. And that is why I believe social capital is a core competency for today’s professional in any field.

What Is Organizational Communication Anyway?

I’ve spent a lot of time this summer reading about organizational communication research, theory, and trends in preparation for beginning work on my study of the National Writing Project and the Morehead Writing Project in particular. I am interested in the ways that the Morehead Writing Project reinvented its organization and transformed from an organization in crisis to a successful enterprise. However, the recent changes in national education funding have also forced the National Writing Project to reinvent itself and reorganize. I believe this is an area of research that could be very interesting to pursue.

As I lay the groundwork for this study and plan my future projects, I do want to carefully think about a number of key terms and one of those is organizational communication. What exactly is organizational communication and why do I want to study it?

Organizational communication focuses on the role of communication in organizational life. Communication is essential to all organizations whatever their purpose, size, or goals. Social constructionists believe that communication creates the form and shape of an organization. Certainly communication serves to maintain and sustain relationships within and with the organization and its members and constituencies, but it is complex and in order for organizations and members to survive and succeed it is important to understand the communication process of the organization and that is where organizational communication enters.

Communication helps organize people to effectively live and/or work together. Organizational communication can identify and remove barriers to communication through formal exchange of information as well as more informal interactions. According to Jones, organizations, or groups of individuals working together in a coordinated way in pursuit of specific goals, require communication to plan, communicate, and pursue these goals. Jones argues that organizations do not exist without communication. Te’eni describes organizations as entities engaged in social and economic exchange and agrees that communication is the foundation for organizational action. Te’eni relies on Habermas for the purposes of that communication: reaching understanding, coordinating action, building relationships, and Influencing others. Deetz maintains that communication practices can be used to help coordinate and control the activities of organizational members and relations with external constituencies. Richmond et al describe organizational communication as a dynamic process by which individuals generate, cultivate and/or shape the minds of others in a formal organization. They argue that there are six functions of organizational communication: to inform, regulate, integrate, manage, persuade, and socialize.

Traditionally, organizational communication focused more on business and ways to improve production, but in more recent decades the focus has shifted to study aspects of organizational life that can improve the lives of organizational members as well as the organization. In addition, the types of organizations under study are much more varied. Organizational communication can include the study of how individuals use communication to work out the tension between working within the constraints of pre-existing organizational structures and promoting change within that organization. This is exactly the place where my research interests lie and I can’t wait to embark on my journey of discovery.

Flipping the Switch: Moving from thinking about community to organizational communication

The month of June was all about communities for me: Writing communities, learning communities, how we create them, and why. That’s because as a National Writing Project Site Director I was working with our Summer Institutes (professional learning communities for teachers which include writing communities) as well as summer writing camps for kids – which are essentially writing communities. Ever since joining my first writing group back in 1994, I have believed in the power of a writing community to transform a writer. That is why when I became involved in the National Writing Project it was not a stretch for me to believe in the power of a learning community to change education. And so, it is not surprising that I frequently blog about community and, to be honest, I still have a few more blog posts I want to write about my experiences with writing communities and learning communities during June – including our work with Pat Schneider’s book “Writing Alone and With Others.” Furthermore, I need to start thinking (which will mean writing) about the writing studio program we will pilot this fall (Morehead Writing Project Studio – harnessing the power of English Education students to create writing groups for developmental writing students).

Now I both need and want to set aside my teacher hat for a time and place my research hat firmly in place. I want to think about communities as a rhetorician and technical communicator – this means thinking about organizational communication. It seems that the professional world doesn’t want to refer to groups or collectives as communities but would prefer organizations. You say potato… I am interested in learning more about the ways and means that organizations communicate and how those ways and means impact the formation of an organization and/or induction of new members as well as its operations and effectiveness. I am especially interested in the way organizational communication helps and hinders the activities of the organization. I am fascinated by the way language is used to create different kinds of social structures, such as relationships, teams, and networks as well as the creative potential of communication to construct new possibilities for organizing.

But now I need to spend some thinking and theorizing my next project – and maybe some time reading too.