Symbolic Behavior Perspective Viewpoints
Symbolic behavior perspective proposes that individuals are faced with uncertainty when introduced to an organization. This uncertainty creates a reliance on symbolic messages so individuals can make sense of their environment (Brown, 1986). In order to reduce uncertainty, organizations create sets of standardized meanings depicted by symbols. As symbolic messages are interpreted by individuals, they react collectively within the organizational culture. As organizational cultures are learned, shared, and transmitted a collective social reality emerges (Harris & Nelson, 2008, p. 225). Organizational cultures are created and maintained by symbolic behavior, giving managers an opportunity to create, articulate, and sustain the organization’s values as individuals focus on (Colvin, 2000, p. F-9). The symbolic nature of shared values can also reduce ambiguity and tension within an organization (Harris & Nelson, 2008, p. 233). According to Mead's theory, a social act involves a three-part relationship: an initial gesture from one person, a response to that gesture by another, and a result. The result is what the act means for the communicator (Littlejohn & Foss, p. 160).
Read more about this topic: Symbolic Behavior
Famous quotes containing the words symbolic, behavior and/or perspective:
“I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men—on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn’t be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)