Challenges to Organizations Identity

There are three different challenges to organization identity(118-122) according to the book. There are many more struggles than just these three but I felt that these three challenges also related to the challenges we went through as organizations/corporations in class.

1. Struggling just to be heard- the quantity of messages around us, corporations struggling to stand out and be heard. I relate this struggle to the trade fair and how there were so many different corporations and products that each corporation was trying to be heard by all of the students. Also at the trade fair each corporation was trying to fight to talk to all of the student that walked. There was a big amount of student in attendance at the trade fair but every corporation was still trying to go out of their way to talk to each and every person because the more student they talked to the more potential buyers they had. It was also hard to be heard because the corporations have to convince the buyers and if they are not convinced by their product they will just move on to the next corporation.
   
2. Blurred Boundaries- merges make the name of the company have blurred boundaries, partnerships, alliances, and even creating closer relationships with stakeholders. Although we did not have blurred boundaries between the corporations there was definitely blurred boundaries within the corporations and between what each persons duties were. For example our corporation's Public Relationship Officer did not cover all of her duties. I, the sales manager had to do the advertisement for the newspaper and the brochure which was not part of my duties. The boundaries were blurred between individuals during the first cycle especially because we were unsure of exactly what we were doing and we were overwhelmed by all of the information that each position was supposed to be presenting on and accomplishing.



3. Growing Stakeholder Scrutiny- interest groups, growing media attention to scandals and hypocrisy, and new demands for so called "political consumers" challenge identity of organizations. I relate the scrutiny of the stakeholders to the scrutiny each corporation has on each other. Although their thoughts may not be vocalized outside of their corporation each corporation has opinions of each other. I also relate scrutiny to the rankings because scrutiny is a type of judging and so is ranking. No one wants to be judged,scrutinized, or ranked but that is part of this class and the competitiveness of it. As the GCB I am one of the people doing the rankings or the scrutinizing this cycle and although some people may not agree with their ranking it is not their actually grade so I believe that is why there is not so much drama with it.

Cheney, G, Christensen, LT, Zorn, T, & Ganesh, S. (2004). Organizational communication in an age of globalization . Prospect Heights: Waveland Press Inc.