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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Data Gathering (Ch 15)
As the authors discussed, there are several ways people can gather data. I would like to add one thing, specifically in the case of surveys or interviews. In order to get valid, accurate and complete data, the person taking the survey or being interviewed must be willing to share information. In my career I have noticed, too often I'm afraid, that data gathering is a way for upper management to say "we care about what you think" but in reality they don't. Most of the times, I never heard anything about the surveys, the actions taken or lesson that were learned. It was as if the survey never happened. So slowly these exercises became worthless and as a consequences the employees less willing to provide accurate and complete data when going through a survey or being interviewed.
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3 comments:
You've highlighted a major roadblock in organizational communication research. Top management must approach studies when you want to gather data in a specific organization, and even with the strongest assurances, employees can be suspicious (and often rightly so). It's not that researchers want to support management's view, but researchers do depend on those gatekeepers to allow them access to the organization. And certainly when organizations collect data on themselves, the risk for employees increases.
Indeed survey is one of the most common ways to gather data within organizations. You pointed out that “the person taking the survey must be willing to share information.” Unfortunately this does not always happen, due to the fact that people do not trust this channel of communication. They might fill out the survey form, but deep inside they do not have expectations to receive feedback, or even to see any improvement on that matter.
In one of the companies I worked for, the meal served at the cafeteria was horrible. Because the employees complained so much about it, the Human Resources Department conduct a survey to find out what people would like to see in the menu. Although HR read all the forms, no action was taken to improve the food served to the employees. I did not feel motivated to fill out any other survey after this experience, because I knew I would only waste my time.
I think this may be true in case of organizations but i think at the university level they do take measures and surveys that they conduct about the professors in the class do matter to them. Last semester i took a course and the professor was not the kind he should have been. And all the students who took that course gave him bad in both the sections and he is no longer a teacher in San Jose State University. The course is taken by some other professor.
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