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Organizations and groups are a central part of our lives. Consider the number of groups to which you currently belong. It is estimated that company employees spend almost 90 percent of their time in group or team meetings. Giddens’s Adaptive Structuration Theory provides an important framework for understanding these communication opportunities. Among the criteria relevant to evaluating theory, we identify three for our discussion: scope, heurism, and parsimony.

Scope

Throughout the chapter we have applied structuration tenets to groups and organizations. The breadth, or scope, of the theory extends to two vast contexts of communication. Adaptive Structuration Theory provides an understanding of how the structures that are created in groups and organizations influence communication and decisions. Further, the theory’s scope is sufficiently and effectively expansive to examine the role that power plays in the development of groups and in the accomplishment of their goals. Scholars who have studied structuration in groups and organizations emphasize the importance of understanding the relationship between the inputs into groups (resources and rules) and the outputs (feedback). However, it is important not only to understand the existence of resources but also to examine how these resources evolve and change as a result of the communication activity taking place within a group.

Heurism

Adaptive Structuration Theory can be applied to almost all social settings and virtually every communication interaction. The areas of communication that have applied the theory with the most theoretical success are organizational communication and group decision making. A vast amount of research has examined structuration’s impact on the climate of an organization (e.g., Kirby & Krone, 2002; Scott, Corman, & Cheney, 1998; Sherblom, Keranen, & Withers, 2002) and its effects on small groups (Seyfarth, 2000). The theory, therefore, has heuristic value. The Research Note features an analysis of group decision making as viewed through the lens of the theory.

Parsimony

Recall that this criterion pertains to the simplicity of a theory: Is the theory easy to understand or cumbersome? Stephen Banks and Patricia Riley (1993) point out that Adaptive Structuration Theory is difficult to read and understand: “Structuration lacks certain characteristics that communication researchers and other social science scientists often find appealing: It is not quickly read, immediately intuitive, or parsimonious” (p. 178). Banks and Riley present many concepts as they examine the intricate process of how organizations and groups structure their communication and arrive at decisions. Their advice to those who are researching this theory in an attempt to understand organizations and groups is to “begin at the beginning” (p. 181). Thus, the researchers recommend that we break down a group into its various parts to understand the dynamics that influence communication and decision making. This requires insight and understanding of the historical rules brought into a group by each member-and this is an extremely difficult task to accomplish. Further, Banks and Riley suggest that scholars resist the temptation to apply preestablished categories in explaining how organizations and groups are developed and how they experience change. The reason for this suggestion lies in the evolutionary nature of the resources and rules that guide an organization, making the system rather unique.

The challenge for communication scholars in studying Adaptive Structuration Theory is to continue their study on the dynamics of the theory and its applicability to real-life situations. Although the theory is a bit intimidating due to the vast number of elements that must be considered to understand the group or organizational process, it is a critical framework to use as we explore the complexities involved in group and organizational evolution.








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