Please share your opinion on the attached journal article summary from another student. **First person writing.
Example:
“Hi Taylor
Very interesting article on understanding communication among deaf students. For some reason while reading this article and your journal article review made me remember a similar situation involving a negotiation. During the negotiation one of the employees on the other team was deaf/mute and had to have sign language provided to him as discussions were going on. I remember thinking how is this person understanding what is being said and are they keeping up with the negotiation. However, it was very interesting that they were able to understand what was going on and even communicated thru the sign language interpreter. I was amazed they could ask such detailed questions involving the negotiation. One thing I found very interesting was the deaf person said thru the interpreter was the struggle with comprehension and how the deaf person used a phonics type repeating of the word not out loud but silently. In other words they would phonetically sound out the sign language words and say what they were seeing thru sign language but silently. This is the way they would better comprehend the negotiations. In your personal analysis you stated it was found that the results concluded the possibility that many deaf students have developed lower criteria for comprehension, and related challenges for in communication. My wife who is a first grade teacher often tells me that she can tell a reading comprehension difference in students that have phonics versus ones that are unable to sound out words. Is this the reason that deaf students struggle in comprehension. Maybe this would be an interesting follow on study.”
Title of the Article: Where Has the Time Gone? Addressing Collaboration Overload in a Networked Economy
Authors: Rob Cross and Peter Gray
Title of the Journal: California Management Review
Date of Publication: Fall 2013
Volume and Issue Numbers: Vol. 56, Issue 1
Article Synopsis
Time spent collaborating via phone/virtual/face-to face consumes the vast majority of time spent working for white collar employees, increases with increased job responsibility, and results in collaboration overload. At times this amount of collaboration can negatively impact the organization’s ability to remain competitive with its peers and places an undue burden on employees who have to spend “off hours” catching up on their own work. This burden to the employees can perpetuate work-life balance issues, contribute to health issues from chronic stress to suicide, and strain the organizational fabric of an institution. The increased need for information turnover and innovation, in addition to the promulgation of numerous technological forums meant to support decision making but, due to lack of training and/or proper assessment of when collaboration is required, are relegated, often unwittingly, to “productivity-draining interactions” (Cross & Gray, 2013).
The information and graphs presented in this article rely on information derived from the utilization of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), also known as Social Network Analysis. ONA is a method of conducting both quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyze “patterns of interpersonal interactions to understand the structure of collaboration within a group or organization” (Cross & Gray, 2013). The article shows how traditional collaboration structures can cause inefficiencies, such as those mentioned above, and provides two strategies to reduce these shortfalls: “delayering network overload points, and streamlining decision and information networks” (Cross & Gray, 2013). The following are two summarized examples of these strategies in action. First, using ONA or a similar metric, leaders should identify the “3% to 5% of the people in an organization (who) commonly account for 20% to 35% of the value-added collaborations” (Cross & Gray, 2013). This provides leaders of an organization the ability to identify whether a structure rebalance or job-role revision is necessary. Second, the article posits that corporate culture can impact the streamline of information by contrasting necessary and unnecessary employee involvement in meetings. For example, employees who attend a meeting they may not necessarily need to attend because the manager views every topic as fair game for discussion and the employees do not want to miss out on any pertinent information, compared to a more efficient, structured meeting where the manager keeps to a specific agenda and only expects those to whom the topic pertains to attend.
The article takes into account how organizational structuring can play a significant role in workplace efficiency with specific focus on the time and access of employees to managers/subject matter experts (SME) in both formal and informal collaboration settings. It also stresses how the use of enterprise technology-based collaboration can help or hinder an organization if it is not properly implemented, providing the following example. A SME could quickly become overburdened and burnt-out due to the other employees ease of access to them, or by creating a group forum, where they include potentially underutilized but just as knowledgeable employees and SMEs to redirect queries, they better balance the workload and in the process create a searchable data repository for future inquiries.
Article Critique
I chose this article because of how it correlates to the section on communication overload and ways to improve communication, such as regulating information flow, face-to-face communication, and effective timing in Chapter 13, Communicating Effectively. As I am sure many of my peers can relate, I constantly find myself inundated with information from multiple outlets, and attending a meeting to prepare for another meeting. Although the purpose of the constant flow of information and meetings are to ensure everyone is communicating and collaborating, I can’t help but laugh at the quagmire we have placed ourselves into that prevents us from being effective communicators. I believe it is fairly well known that every organization has its own go-to workhorses and SMEs who you can turn to for practically anything. I had never thought about analyzing efficiency via the ONA method until I read this article. The article is concise in its methods and examples, and overall does a good job explaining why viewing an organization from the ONA perspective can benefit both the organization and the employees. My only criticism is that the information that article presents at the end of the article in the annex should have been included in the beginning to give those who are unfamiliar with ONA a better understanding of the five W’s about the research and its significance. Additionally, and it may just be a generational conundrum, but I did not appreciate that the article refers to social media while alluding to “people-to-people collaborations and people-to-content connections” (Cross & Gray, 2013) vice the colloquial usage of the terms to mean forums such as Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snap Chat, etc.
I pose the following questions to my peers.
-What does effective collaboration in your organization (supposed to) look like?
-When is collaboration a hindrance to you?
-Do you spend more time communicating face-to-face or virtually (for those that do not telework)?
-How do the advances in technology help or hinder your ability to communicate and collaborate effectively?
-If your work conducted Organizational Network Analysis would you find the results interesting and what changes would your organization make as a result of the data, if any?
References
Cross, R., & Gray, P. (2013). Where Has the Time Gone? Addressing Collaboration Overload in a Networked Economy. Retrieved from EBSCOhost: https://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=43e813b5-9505-4b50-af98-ace5778c9fd5%40sessionmgr102
Konopaske, R., Ivancevich, J. I., & Mattson, M. T. (2018). Organizational Behavior and Management. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
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