《数字时代的信息搜索 中美企业员工新媒体使用研究》居然著|(epub+azw3+mobi+pdf)电子书下载

图书名称：《数字时代的信息搜索 中美企业员工新媒体使用研究》

【作　者】居然著

【页 数】 142

【出版社】 杭州：浙江工商大学出版社 , 2014.07

【ISBN号】978-7-5178-0516-8

【价 格】36.00

【分 类】企业情报-信息传递-对比研究-中国、美国

【参考文献】 居然著. 数字时代的信息搜索 中美企业员工新媒体使用研究. 杭州：浙江工商大学出版社, 2014.07.

图书封面：

图书目录：

《数字时代的信息搜索 中美企业员工新媒体使用研究》内容提要：

本书用调查问卷的形式对若干名中国企业员工与美国企业员工在组织内运用新媒体进行有效数据检索的情况进行了采集，旨在研究个人在组织内的社会化过程。社会化过程指的是个体在融入该组织时通过交流与沟通学习该社会组织的规章制度、组织成员之间的互动模式，以及该组织特有的组织文化的一个过程。本书主要研究在中美这两个完全不同的文化背景下的不同组织中，新媒体在此社会化过程中起到的作用。

《数字时代的信息搜索 中美企业员工新媒体使用研究》内容试读

Chapter 1

Plurality of Innovations in Practice

"The new technology applied in production and commerce resultedin a social revolution.The local communities without intent or forecastfounded their affairs conditioned by remote and invisible organizations.

The scope of the latter's activities was so vast and their impact uponface-to-face associations so pervasive and unremitting that it is no exaggerationto speak of a‘new age of human relations..,”

-Dewey(1927,p.98)

Technology has largely been associated with social change.The developmentof technology does not only bring changes to industry and commerce,it alsobrings changes to societies and human beings in what Dewey (1927)described as a"new age of human relations"(p.98).Historically,the advent of steam andelectricity has changed the way people associated with each other dramatically(Dewey,1927).With these technologies,individuals were brought together tocreate "The Great Society"(Dewey,1927,p.98),characterized by mechanicalmodels of combined human behaviors.Some manifestations of this great societyinclude that individuals flocked together to massively produce goods and live inlarge cities.Later on,inventions in transportation (i.e.trains,cars)andcommunication (i.e.telephones,fax machines)have made long distance travellingpossible,which facilitated the flow of goods and connected people in ways neverpreviously imaginable.

Technological innovation is a continuous process;we need not reflect oninventions from the last century but merely look around at our current state ofinnovation.Today,although the inventions of steam machines and electricity are

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no longer novel to societies,developments in information technology keep bringingopportunities for social change.Such changes,from a pragmatic point of view,trigger inquiry and therefore merit scholars'attention.

These social changes,however,are not as deterministically linked to technologyas Dewey (1927)insinuated above.Dewey acknowledged that every technologicalinnovation results in social change,but he neglected to explicitly recognize humanbeings'agency (Giddens,1986)in socially constructing the uses of technology andmaking sense of these technologies.In other words,the argument above fails torecognize the mutual influence between technology and human beings.Technologicalinnovation provides opportunities for social change by arming humans with newtools that they may use in their daily work,interactions with others,physicalnavigation,and so on,and yet the changes to society come not with the toolsthemselves but with the meanings that users ascribe to them in dictating theirfunctions and meanings.We,as a society,negotiate the changes facilitated by ourever-changing technological toolbox.

Berger and Luckmann (1967)argued that all reality is derived from andmaintained by social interactions.Social actors create a shared perspective,whichlater becomes common sense.When individuals interact with others,they followtheir respective understanding of reality and through this interaction in specificsocial groups they reinforce,negotiate or reconstruct their understanding.As aresult,social groups create a shared perspective,which becomes common sense ofreality.This means then that reality,grounded in social interaction and meaningmaking,takes different shapes and forms from group to group.

This philosophy of social constructionism(Berger &Luckmann,1967)suggeststhat different social groups may have different collective understandings of thesame social phenomena.Therefore,culture-the set of norms,rules and valuesshared by members of a certain community,organization,and/or social group(Hall,1976)-plays an important role in this sense-making process.The norms,rules or values of the group may be reflected in the unique meanings constructed.

Take technology as an example.Different cultures have different understandingsof the uses of certain technological innovations.In the United States,the nationaltrain system is considered as a means mainly for transporting goods and products.

However,in China,the national train system is considered as a mode of publictransportation for people to travel (Zhao,2010).In these two cultures the same

Chapter 1 Plurality of Innovations in Practice 003

technology is perceived and made sense of very differently.From a social constructionperspective,then,we must acknowledge Dewey's (1927)social revolution notmerely as the product of technology but also as the impetus for technologicalinnovation.

When examining changes associated with technological innovation,on the onehand,the impact of the changes on society surely need to be recognized.However,onthe other hand,the ability that people have to make sense of the change shouldalso be acknowledged.Both pragmatism and social constructionism recognize thattechnological innovations can lead to changes and human beings have the ultimatecontrol over that change.Social constructionism holds the idea that reality issocially constructed and this reality is created in response to the social environmentrather than a by-product of any inherent quality that it possesses in itself (Berger&Luckmann,1967).This notion is similar to the philosophy of pragmatism,which is against absolutism and emphasizes the importance of time,space,andperspective (or social environment)(Dewey,1927;James,1991).Therefore,whenexploring social changes and technological innovations.social context is of theutmost importance.This study explores the intersection of culture,communication andsocial change by investigating,from a pragmatic perspective,the reliance on newmedia in oriental and Western organizations.More specifically,social changes areexplored by way of updating current understandings of organizational socializationas an ongoing sense-making process that occurs to reduce environmental uncertaintiesvia socially constructed technological innovations.This chapter first uses pragmatismas a meta-theoretical framework to argue why such exploration is necessary.Then,it presents the plural nature of new media,which is the essence of pragmatism,tofurther make the argument.At last,this chapter ends with narrowing down theexploration to the context of the organizational setting.

1.Pragmatism

Social construction occurs through communication,situating reality in socialcontexts.Therefore,social construction and pragmatism are complementary philosophiesthat address how and why social groups collectively create their respective realities.

Pragmatism is a philosophy that claims that an ideology or a proposition is true ifit works satisfactorily and that meaning is embedded in practical consequences(Dewey,1927;James,1991).Pragmatism therefore rejects any idea that is not

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practical.Pragmatism concerns the problems of pluralism and incommensurability,which suggest that inherent differences exist across different entities and thesedifferences cannot be unified.But acknowledging difference is not the end ofpragmatism.On the contrary,pragmatism strives to find a way for this pluralisticworld to work together.Culture,defined as "the collective programming of themind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another"(Hofstede,1991,p.5),contributes to the diversity of the world.Members ofdifferent social groups think and act in different ways and thus make the worldplural.The notion of pluralism highlights the critical influence of culture in thesense-making process grounding any social change.

2.Shared Perspectives:Pragmatism and Culture

Pragmatists believe that there is no absolute truth in this world Carey,2005).One thing that works in one culture may not work at all in anotherculture.Therefore,pragmatic inquiry should be situated in context.That is tosay,social context,explored here as culture,should be treated as a vital component inthe inquiry process.Time and space,which are the two manifestations of socialcontext,are two essential parts of the inquiry (Dewey,1927;2004;James,1991).Time means the differences in social environment due to temporal changesof eras,and space indicates the differences in social environment due to physicaldifferences in location.

Recent innovations in information and communication technology have led totrends in globalization (Christians,2011).Technologies (such as the Internet)break the boundary of time and space to connect people all around the worldtogether,making cross-national or multi-national organizations possible with thelow cost of communication(Simons &De Ridder,2004).These changes contribute tothe phenomenon of globalization,which emphasizes unified norms governinghuman beings'interactions at the expense of more local norms.This emphasis isagainst the essence of pragmatism.Pragmatism believes that there is no guaranteethat everything works the same for everyone James,1991).In this specificcontext,the use of technologies is not the same in every culture.Pragmatismacknowledges that there is an increasingly shared reality across the world but italso acknowledges inherent differences that cannot be unified.As James (1991)stated,"...the world is one just so far as its parts hang together by any definite

Chapter 1 Plurality of Innovations in Practice 005

connexion.It is many just so far as any definite connexion fail to obtain"(p.70).

Globalization is that the one world and local cultures make the different smallworlds.Therefore,from a pragmatic point of view,it is important to situatesense-making processes (Berger &Luckmann,1976)at the local culture level.

Human beings'behaviors are governed by norms(Giddens,1986)and thesenorms are different across different cultures (Hall,1976).Although commonsense knowledge may provide general norms for understanding individuals'use oftechnology(Berger &Luckmann,1967),there are still differences as to howindividuals use technologies across different cultures.The aforementioned example ofthe railway systems in China and the U.S.illustrates this notion well.In divergentcultures,meanings attributed to the innovation have surfaced through communication,resulting in a shared understanding of the benefits,uses,and meanings.Communicationis the vehicle through which technology is constructed differently in differentsocial contexts.

3.Pragmatism and Communication

Communication can be defined as a symbolic process within which reality isconstituted,maintained,reinforced,and altered (Carey,1989).Geertz (1983)suggested that through communication,the inner world and the outer world arereciprocally constituted.In other words,communication helps to link individualsto the outer world and simultaneously internalizes that outer one into the inner oneof the individual.Since the outer world is the collection of members within (i.e.the social environment),communication connects social actors in their creation oftheir situated reality,which then becomes their internal perspective.In this way,the external and the internal integrate.And from a pragmatic point of view,theintegration has practical implications for these social actors.

Pragmatism may be thought of as a perspective for communication theoristsseeking to resolve its core problem of plurality (Craig,2006).It concerns theproblem of incommensurability (how to understand inherent differences amongindividuals),pluralism (how to reconcile inherent differences),and nonparticipation(how to make people realize inherent differences)(Craig,2006).The vocabularyfor pragmatism is community,diversity,negotiation,and pluralism Craig,2006).This perspective brings the notion that there are certain truths/realities orcommon sense in the world that will not change,but there are certain differences

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among people that cannot be unified.

In conclusion,pragmatism grounds inquiry in social context.It believes thatsense-making is a communal process,which is historically embedded in a constantlychanging world (Dewey,1927).Thus,culture is a critical consideration in pragmaticinquiry since norms influence any communal process.Moreover,pragmatism perfectlyaligns with communication studies since they both seek to uncover ways to makedifferent minds work together.

An antithesis of rationalism,pragmatism denies absolute truth,insisting thatknowledge is not determinate and static (James,1991).Therefore,inquiry shouldnever stop.As Dewey (1927)suggested,"..inquiry must be as nearly ascontemporaneous as possible,otherwise,it is only of antiquarian interest"(p.179)and James (1991)proposed,"..our knowledge is incomplete at present andsubject to addition"(p.74).While the pursuit of truth should never stop forpragmatists,an important ontological question arises:When should pragmatistsupdate their understanding of truth?

4.Changes as Pragmatic Opportunities

James (1991)suggested that any change becomes an opportunity to updatehuman beings'existing understanding of the world.Dewey (2004)agreed,but healso argued that defining change is problematic.Borrowing from Darwinian

Theory,organisms and the surroundings can mutually influence each other;andyet human beings are in the unique position to not only be able to adapt to theenvironment but also have the ability to change it.When the environment changesand human beings need to make changes to adapt to and influence the newenvironment,it is time to ask questions and thus update understandings of reality.

Dewey (2004)further argued that the undetermined situation is a vitalcontext for inquiry.When people step into a new environment,they are not surewhat kind of actions they need to enact and they are not sure what is consideredappropriate.Therefore,this situation is undetermined,and the actor is wroughtwith uncertainty.The first step of pragmatic inquiry is to set a problem,which isan undetermined situation.Then,think about how to act in such a situation andtake measures to deal with the problem.

While change creates opportunities for pragmatic inquiry,not every changedeserves inquiry (Dewey,2004).James (1991)insisted that only changes that can

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