Schoeneborn Alternatives Considered But Not Disclosed

The Ambiguous Role of PowerPoint in Cross-Project Learning
2008
ISBN: 978-3-8350-5528-5
Verlag: Deutscher Universitätsverlag
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 184 Seiten, eBook

Despite the increased use of Microsoft PowerPoint on all levels of business and educational communication, slideware ranks among the least explored media in communication studies. This study investigates PowerPoint´s role in organizational communication, particularly in terms of a functional dilemma between its application for documentation as opposed to presentation purposes.

Dr. Dennis Schoeneborn holds a doctoral degree in media management from Bauhaus University Weimar (Germany). In his current research, he concentrates on the communicative constitution of organizations.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schoeneborn, Dennis

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Foreword ;6
2;Preface ;8
3;Table of Contents ;9
4;Table of Figures ;12
5;Table of Abbreviations ;13
6;1 Introduction ;14
7;2 Paradigmatic Perspective: Organizations as Communications ;25
8;3 Theoretical Analysis: The (In )Visibility of Decision Contingency in Organizational Communication ;42
9;4 Methodology: How to Investigate the (In )Visibility of Decision Contingency in the Practice of Project Documentation ;92
10;5 Empirical Analysis: Exploring the (In )Visibility of Decision Contingency in the Practice of Project Documentation ;113
11;6 Conclusion and Outlook ;162
12;References ;174

Paradigmatic Perspective: Organizations as Communications.- Theoretical Analysis: The (In-)Visibility of Decision Contingency in Organizational Communication.- Methodology: How to Investigate the (In-)Visibility of Decision Contingency in the Practice of Project Documentation.- Empirical Analysis: Exploring the (In-)Visibility of Decision Contingency in the Practice of Project Documentation.- Conclusion and Outlook.

Leseproben

"1 Introduction (p. 17)

1.1 Scope of the Study

Imagine the following situation: You start working in a new job and you have to deal with a task unfamiliar to you. It is known to you that there have been projects before which had dealt with the same kind of issues. However, the employees involved in these projects have already left the firm and you cannot get hold of them anymore.

The only means to make sense of their work are some written documents, the communicative tra ces they have left behind. By browsing through the documents, you are impressed by their achievements, they have left extensive documentation of their success in fulfilling the particular tasks you are supposed to do from now on.

However, the documents come short on any information regarding the processes and methodology behind their success. The pres entation of results does not allow you to get an idea of decisive situations the project team was facing, what alternatives they had considered, and why they had chosen the way they proceeded in the end. In other words, the documents lack any information of the contingency of the project process.

Let us take a closer look on the concept of contingency before we will return to the described situation. The concept of contingency, despite its fundamentality and importance in modern and post modern philosophy (cf. Sartre, 1956, Luhmann, 1984, Rorty, 1989, Bauman, 1991, Derrida, 2002), is not very common to use in everyday language.

In its philosophi cal meaning, which links back to ancient philosopher Aristotle (Beyes, 2003: 10), the term contingency negates both necessity and impossibility (Luhmann, 1988: 183). In this sense, contingency describes a state of the world which is as it is – but which could have been different (Luhmann: 1984: 152).

Framed this way, contingency relates to the alternatives inher ent to a given situation. Instances of contingency are specified by large degrees of freedom. Accordingly, looking into the world’s contingency means to expose its complexity. Not surprisingly, Luhmann suggests to grasp an increasing contingency as the defining attribute of the modern age (Luhmann, 1998: 67).

One of the most powerful resources to cope with the modern soci ety’s inherent complexity is the organization. As Parsons puts it, organiza tions are ""the principle mechanism by which, in a highly differentiated society, it is possible to ‘get things done’, to achieve goals beyond the reach of the individual"" (Parsons, 1960: 41).

How do organizations achie ve this quality? Authors in the tradition of administrative behavior theo ry (cf. March &, Simon, 1958), one prominent stream in organization stud ies, argue that decisions can be grasped as the constitutive element of or ganizations. It is assumed here that organizations are able to reproduce themselves by interconnecting one decision to the next.

By means of this, they become ""nested hierarchies of decisions"" (Scott, 1998: 51). In recent work on organizations as decision systems, the communicative character of decisions is emphasized by defining organizations as essentially con sisting of interconnected episodes of decision communication (Luhmann, 2000: 46). "

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Dennis Schoeneborn holds a doctoral degree in media management from Bauhaus University Weimar (Germany). In his current research, he concentrates on the communicative constitution of organizations.