Proven wrong!

For once in class I thought I knew it all. I saw in the description for Chapter 9 that Thompkins was going to try to correlate organizational communications and Spiderman. Now first, you're listening to one of the biggest comic book geeks around; I did stand in line for 8 hours to see Batman Begins, have been spotted at national comic book conventions, and could explain the works of Loeb, Miller, and Quesada much more than I could Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, or Twain. So I'm reading through Chapter 9 and it gets to the much anticipated portion dealing with Spiderman, the movie.


How surprised was I when the chapter cited the actions of one Norman Osborne! I'm not trying to belittle the knowledge garnered from this example. It is a simple and clear demonstration how government pressure can lead to a shift in organizational culture; from creation, invention, and most importantly safety to schedules, deadlines, and ultimately bureaucracy. Here we see the absence of such crucial organizational concepts such as automatic responsibility, penetration, and Monday notes. It drove its well-intentioned leader and CEO to take radical action and inject himself with a poisonous syrum just to please his employers. Just like with NASA, we see that organizational communications can have disasterous results as he transforms into the Green Goblin and reaks terror to New York City.


Now that whole anecdote may be all well and good, but how could Tompkin be so blind? He must not have watched the whole film nor seen its succesful sequel, because he clearly forgot to mention the film's most famous (and in this case extremely relevant) quote from good ol' Uncle Ben; "With great power comes great responsibility." We can see how this anecdote applies to organizational communications. With Tompkin's discussion of Enron, Wal-Mart, Tyco, and the McWane corporation, he revealed the importance of speaking truth to power and individual accountability. The question of if these corporations are just a few "bad apples" or if its becoming a cultural issue shows the need for these concepts in today's organizational leaders. If these people can recognize the power they yield and respect the responsibility that they have, perhaps we wouldn't bear witness to so many organizational transgressions and corporate scandals. I believe this anecdote by ol' Uncle Ben is much more relevant and forecasting to organizational communications than the events of Norman Osborne. Maybe it's me trying to prove I should have been right but I thought bringing this up with a current Spiderman-mindset may be helpful to you all. Hope this helps.

Calling All Successful Corporate Bloggers! Invitation to Participate in Academic-Industry Research Collaboration

The Advanced Organizational Communication class at Northeastern University is collaborating with John Cass from Backbone Media to better understand the reasons, conditions and factors it takes to make a successful blog, and in the process help a company to determine if they should blog and how they should blog. To this end students will interview several corporate bloggers with a view to determining how the blogger's company started blogging and what makes their blogs successful.

If you are interested in participating in the project contact John Cass at Backbone Media (his email is john AT backbonemedia DOT com) or you can contact Dr. Walter Carl (my email is w.carl AT neu DOT edu). When the students have transcribed the blogger interviews, Backbone Media will analyze the student interviews and publish edited highlights for inclusion in the study results. The students will learn from conducting the interviews and also publish posts about the interviews on our course blog.

Please note that there will be some initial qualifying questions to determine if the blogger will be included in the case studies.

The stamp above indicates this research project has been approved by Northeastern University's Division of Research Integrity.

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corporate blogging research

Torino Conversations: How Coca-Cola Is Working With Blogs

For students who are wondering how some companies are using blogs, or more accurately in the case of Coca-Cola, enabling blogging, learn about the Torino Conversations project. Coca-Cola invited six communication studies students from different countries to blog about their experiences at the Olympics (anyone jealous?).

Be sure to click on the "About This Project" link on the home page to learn how Coca-Cola describes the purpose of the project and why they are funding it. In your opinion, what benefit does Coca-Cola get from this?

Hat tip to Customer World

Personal Blog or Corporate Exploitation?

We've had such an interesting discussion of the difference between personal blogging vs. corporate blogging that I had to bring up something I saw the other day. Being the professional wrestling fan that I am, I was surfing the World Wrestling Entertainment website and saw that hardcore legend Mick Foley had his own blog. It's an interesting read, especially if you're one of his millions of fans. But after reading it, I had to ask myself, why is it here? Their's no question that this is a personal blog; Foley talks about meeting WWE diva Stacey Kiebler and his trip to Afghanistan to visit the troops. Why would WWE host this blog instead of Foley posting it on either his own website or some public domain? As a major corporation, WWE would have to have some type of motivation for putting this content on its site.
I decided to take a closer look at entertainment companies that utilize blogs and had some interesting results. I found that both the NHL and the NBA have a spot on their website just for blogs. Some of these blogs focus on predictions, thoughts on the games, trends in the sport, etc.
So what's the point? I think what we have here are two very different types of marketing to entertainment fans. As a retired wrestler, Foley isn't in the spotlight much anymore. His blog offers the WWE fans a bit of nostalgia and up-to-date information on one of the sport's biggest superstars. On the otherside, the NHL and NBA blogs offer a great breadth of commentary on what's happening in the sports world. These blogs are almost like written transcripts of what you see when you turn on ESPN; the thoughts on happenings in the league by some of the biggest experts in the field.
I couldn't really find any other examples of utilizing personal blogs by corporations. I just found it interesting that an entertainment corporation like the WWE would put a personal blog up so much. Here's some food for thought; is Foley being exploited? Is he unwillingly being used as a marketing ploy or do you think he's doing it for the notoriety? Should corporations use their spokesperson's blogs as a marketing tool or just stick to the tried and true, boring endorsements? Maybe this is the next level of celebrity marketing. What do you think?

Let the Postings Begin for Spring 2006!

It's time for another term of Advanced Organizational Communication! We have met in class for a few weeks now and students should begin their postings soon. We really appreciate the excellent response we had last year from the blogosphere and hope we can continue the dialogue this "Spring" term as well (I use the scare quotes because it is nowhere near Spring yet but we like to be optimistic here at Northeastern rather than saying "Winter" term).

In class now we are reading Phil Tompkins' book Apollo, Challenger, Columbia: The Decline of the Space Program -- A Study in Organizational Communication. Our focus is on what organizations must do in order to main an ethical and effective system of communication for both internal and external stakeholders.

We'll also have a great project on corporate blogging starting in a few weeks. We'll be partnering with John Cass of Backbone Media. Details to come!