Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Unit 3
In Chapter 16, Organizational Culture they speak about rituals. Rituals as defined by our textbook are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization. When I was 18, coming back from college for the summer I found a summer job at Thomson Book Company now known as Cengage. I had to be at work at 6 in the morning (not really my idea of a summer vacation). However, every morning after we would clock in, our department would get together and talk about what we needed to get done for the day ahead, then we would engage in a ritual of our own. We sang a song and did kind of a dance/stretch. This definitely woke me and my coworkers up. We weren't afraid to be silly and embarrass ourselves. This ritual as ridiculous as it was was a great idea. It boosted our morale as workers and were excited to get started. Not only did it wake us up but being silly opened us up to each other and we were able to form great work relationships. These kind of rituals are a great way to start off the work day.
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I agree with having a ritual to get the employees motivated is a great idea. I don't know about singing and dancing though.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, rituals can sometimes be misconstrued as habits. At work we have a ritual that every time an employee his hired or leaves the office we give them a party! But then on the other hand at my other job we have a tendency to clap for new Apple computer owners. I'd say in daily routine we have habits where as in groups settings we are more likely to have rituals. Of course there are the extreme cases though.
ReplyDeleteI think rituals are a great way to ehance communciation and interpersonal relationships among individuals in a work group. In another class that I'm taking we just took a test that involved the difference between rituals and ceremonies...ceremonies being formal and planned by management(as in an award ceremony for employees,etc.) and rituals are the informal celebrations like grabbing a drink after work on Fridays. If you look at rituals from that perspective I have to agree that rituals are an integral part of organizational life.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that your job cared enough about its workers to make sure they were awake every morning. This kind of behavior surely made for a better relationship between employees and managers. But, I probably wouldn't like the dance/stretch thing myself though...I'm not a morning person.
ReplyDeleteDear Erika:
ReplyDeleteYour blog of your previous work experience sounded so fun! Many office personnel get together before the work day begin, but they don't do anything fun, they mostly complain. I feel a lot more of this kind of working experiences should occur on the job. It helps everyone get into a positive work mode and it helps people get along better through out the work day.
Thanks!