The Four Flows Constituting Organization
Introduction
Four flows constitute an organization. These four flows encompass membership negotiation for a particular organization, organizational self-structuring, organizational positioning and organizational activity coordination. The four flows encompass the four divergent descriptions of organizational processes. First, membership negotiation covers the individuals striving to master or influence their statuses and roles with respect to the organization. On the contrary, organizational self-structuring encompasses stipulating how an organization designs and implements strategies as well handles arising control issues. Activity coordination on the other hand stipulates on the day to day activities and coordination between the members of a particular organization. Lastly, institutional positioning describes how an organization socially relates with other organizations.
Discussion
An example of a message that would represent each of the four flows constituting organization entails an organization constitution. In this case, it is ascertained that a constitution encompasses the fundamental principles and procedures which stipulate on an organization’s structure (Putnam & Nicotera, 2010). As such, it covers all the necessary guidelines on how the members of an organization deal with each other, how the company deals with other companies, and how it deals with the community. With respect to the four flows constituting an organization, it is noted that an organization’s constitution represents each of the four messages (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009).
First, the constitution outlines guidelines on membership negotiation. That is, the constitution stipulates on how members should be drafted into an organization, how the members should interact with different levels of management, as well as guidelines on why and how to terminate membership. An example of a member constitution is member recruitment and socialization (Putnam & Nicotera, 2010). Secondly, an organization’s constitution stipulates on the organization’s self-structuring. In this case, a constitution stipulates on how a company should be organized, it’s constituting departments, and its scalability, as well as how management will be carried out. Moreover, the constitution stipulates the types of official documents to be used for the organization. In essence, these documents help in an organization laying down its structure on paper for both its employees and its relevant partners.
Thirdly, an organization’s constitution stipulates on activity coordination. This part stipulates on the core processes which are to be carried out by an organization. The processes encompass day to day activities, short term activities and long term activities. An example of activity coordination encompass departmental activity coordination which stipulate on how individuals interact with each other and the activities that they are supposed to be implementing. Lastly, an organization constitution stipulates on its institutional positioning. In this case, the constitution features guidelines on how a company should relate with its peers and with the rest of the society (Putnam & Nicotera, 2010). In this case, the company has to relate either in a competitive or in a collaborative manner so as to ensure that its interest are preserved and that it is able to accomplish its objectives in the market that it serves. Moreover, institutional positioning allows an organization to position itself with respect to the services or products it offers and the prospective consumers which it targets. This allows an organization to effectively relate with both loyal and prospective consumers (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009). Some of the examples of institutional positioning encompass an organization’s communication policy, its social policies, as well as its corporate social responsibility guidelines.
References
Ashcraft, K. L., Kuhn, T. R., & Cooren, F. (2009). 1 Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication. Academy of Management annals, 3(1), 1-64.
Putnam, L. L., & Maydan Nicotera, A. (2010). Communicative constitution of organization is a question: Critical issues for addressing it. Management Communication Quarterly, 24(1), 158-165.