Acercamiento teórico sobre la variable de género y los medios de comunicación

to the occurrence of the Deaf Effect.

The decision maker does not operate in a vacuum. There are organizational forces surrounding the decision maker that have an effect on whether he/she receives the message or that cause him/her to act differently that he/she would otherwise choose to act. I organize these forces into three categories: attenuation, distortion and obscuration.

5.2.1 Attenuation

In this situation, organizational factors may cause the salience of a report of bad news to be lowered (attenuated) within the organization. For example, managers may establish systems to ensure that they only receive a certain kind of information (Tourish and Robson 2006). They may not establish formal upward feedback mechanisms and encourage, consciously or unconsciously, subordinates to filter out unwelcome

messages before they reach the leaders (Morrison and Milliken 2000). Manager reaction to bad news reports can lead to the occurrence of the Mum Effect, but it can also cause reporters of bad news to “turn down the volume” on a report of bad news to the extent that it loses salience.

In other literatures, we see that the existence of groupthink, when a group of people share opinions and assess situations in the same manner (Wissema 2002), can be an organizational characteristic that could cause organizational deafness. Groupthink forms when a homogenous team is unchanged for a long period (Hambrick and Mason 1984; Wissema 2002). Groupthink tends to cause rigidity of response which is acceptable for routine problems but leads to difficulties when the decision making team encounter novel or ill-defined problems (Filley, et al. 1976; Janis 1972). Groupthink may also be

exacerbated by the presence of “yes-men.” Managers might surround themselves with those who agree with them. The “yes-men” filter out messages that disagree with the situation as perceived by the managers thus preventing the message from reaching the decision makers with the consequence that bad news reports are not acted on (Dunbar and Goldberg 1978). This not only reinforces the groupthink, but also leads to the situation in which management perceives the situation much differently from those at a lower level in the organization.

Additionally, appropriate information may not be available to identify whether a crisis is occurring either through lack of information systems or organizational silence (Tourish and Robson 2006; Wissema 2002). Bureaucratic organizations in general suppress the effectiveness of whistle-blowing unless there are formal mechanisms to encourage internal whistle-blowing that operate as described. Thus a low bureaucracy organization or a bureaucratic organization with a formal whistle blowing mechanism will tend to respond more favorably to whistle blowing than a bureaucratic organization with no formal mechanism (Near and Miceli 1995).

Similarly, Near and Miceli’s(1995) model of whistle-blowing effectiveness describes the effect of organizational structure and values on the ability of the whistle-blower to effect change in organizational behavior. They argue that the organizational characteristics that affect the organization’s willingness to change direction or behavior in response to whistle-blowing include the perceived appropriateness of whistle-blowing; the climate of support/non-support of whistle blowing; and the level of bureaucracy in the organization structure. Appropriateness refers to the situation that arises when the organization views whistle blowing as a legitimate response to problems. Where whistle blowing is viewed as a legitimate function, the organization is more likely to change its behavior; whistle blowing is part of the ethical culture of the organization.

The organizational climate refers to whether an organization encourages or discourages either the wrongdoing or blowing the whistle. In terms of the Deaf Effect, it refers to whether the organization encourages or discourages maintenance of the current course of action. Where the current course of action is held to be the approved method of operation, whistle blowing is held to be less effective in changing the current course of action.

5.2.2 Distortion

By distortion, I refer to a change in the content of the message to make the message more acceptable to the recipient. It can also add linguistic cues designed to make the decision maker perceive the report of bad news as less serious than it actually is. Snow and Keil (2002) and Snow, Keil and Wallace (2007) have indicated that the true status of a project to be reported is distorted by first, errors in understanding of the actual status and then by bias. The direction of this bias is held to be twice as likely to be in an optimistic direction as a pessimistic one (Snow, et al. 2007). This positive distortion of the report of bad news results in a softening of the impact or a reduction in the

perception of the seriousness of the problem to the decision maker causing it to appear less serious to the decision maker.

Even when formal feedback seeking mechanisms are implemented, management may create a climate for distortion of bad news messages through their reaction to the bad news (Morrison and Milliken 2000). Similarly when management attempts to force upward feedback by intrusive supervision, distortion of reports of bad news is likely to occur (Athanassiades 1973; Smith, et al. 2005).

Smith, Iacovou and Thompson (2007) have reported on a multiple case study of 9 projects reporting to an IT oversight board (ITOB). Utilizing regulatory theory (Scholz 1984; Scholz 1991), they found that auditors and reporters assess each other’s signals in their dealings with each other and based on their perception of the meaning of the signals adopted a certain strategy. The auditors could adopt a “conciliatory” or “ adversarial” strategy and the reporters could adopt a “full reporting” or “misreporting” strategy. These signals can be distorted by “noise pollution” caused by ineffective signaling. These studies illustrates that the signals used by auditors can affect the reporting strategy of the bad news reporter resulting in distortion of the message into one which does not communicate a serious problem to the decision maker which could cause the Deaf Effect.

5.2.3 Obscuring

An unclear organizational structure or weak culture could also lead to occurrence of the Deaf Effect (Wissema 2002). Where there is an unclear division of responsibilities, signals indicating problems in a project can be missed as managers assume that others are attending to those signals. A weak culture does not provide guidance to the bad news reporter as to how or to whom to report bad news. This could result in the signal being lost in wrangling over how to respond or who is to respond to the signal, a misdirection of the bad news report or even its suppression (Mum Effect).

Alternately, one manager may be overwhelmed and ignore the signal or may have so many things to attend to that the report may be lost or ignored in the clutter (Wissema 2002). Similar effects may result from stress and exhaustion.