Chapter 11 Communicating in Organizations 321meeting has been moved to a different room, you can just text her. However, if
you needed to discuss the fact that you noticed a $250 discrepancy on the books,
you’d have better communication with a face-to-face conversation.
Research shows that most people do make conscious decisions about which
communication vehicle to use based on the situational and relational contexts.
Table 11.2 offers a look at various organizational goals and people’s perceptions
about the most competent channel for achieving those goals.
With such a variety of communication technologies available to organiza-
tional members to keep in close contact with one another, it should come as no
surprise that people wind up using technology to achieve personal goals as well.
Twenty years ago, employees might get in trouble if they spent too much time
THINK
ABOUT
THIS❶ Mayer’s assertion
suggests that prioritizing
creativity over productiv-
ity is “right for Yahoo right
now.” Must there be a
trade-off between produc-
tivity and creativity? What
factors would influence
a company’s decision to
maximize one over the
other?
❷ The change in policy
at Yahoo was big news,
prompting commentary
and blowback far beyond
the business pages. Why
was a change in human
resources policy such big
news? Does Mayer’s gen-
der play a role?
❸ What does your ideal
work situation look like?
Do you envision a career
spent working at home, in
a collaborative office envi-
ronment, or in some other
kind of setting? Do you
think Yahoo will be a more
or less attractive place to
work in the future?Working Here, There, and Everywhere
When Marissa Mayer took over as CEO at the struggling Internet company
Yahoo, it was not surprising that she would implement some of the organi-
zational techniques used at her wildly successful former company, Google.
She provided each employee with a new smartphone and free meals. And in a
controversial step, she put an end to the company’s work-at-home policy: she
wanted employees to be collaborating face to face on projects, which meant
bringing everyone back into the office. Telecommuting, she explained, was “not
what’s right for Yahoo right now” (Mayer, quoted in Tkaczyk, 2013, para. 4).
Yahoo was not the first, or the last, company to shift gears on telecom-
muting: Hewlett-Packard—once a trailblazer in telecommuting—began bring-
ing more workers back into the office to facilitate brainstorming and team-
work almost a decade ago (Holland, 2006), and other companies, like Best
Buy, Zappos, and Aetna, have followed suit (Rampell & Miller, 2013).
Reactions to the move were mixed. Mayer, a new mother as well as a
new CEO, had a nursery built next to her office at Yahoo so she could take
her baby to work. It seemed hypocritical, complained some critics, to deny
other parents the option to work at home near their own children. Some wor-
ried that employees who used to work well at home would be less productive
when faced once again with the distractions of a busy office environment.
But others point out that Mayer was hired to bring the kind of energy and
innovation that define Google to its failing competitor, and much of that in-
novation is spurred by the communication environment at the Googleplex—a
sprawling campus designed to keep employees happy while they collaborate
and interact face to face (Rampell & Miller, 2013). And, of course, many noted
that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and that different workers, and dif-
ferent types of work, require different policies and norms for where and when
and how people should work (Fayard, 2013).
Mayer herself acknowledged that there were trade-offs in both situa-
tions. “People are more productive when they’re alone,” she explained a few
months after the announcement. “But they’re more collaborative and innova-
tive when they’re together” (Mayer, quoted in Tkaczyk, 2013, para. 6).WIREDFORCOMMUNICATION