ONTHEORIESWK7

Major Paper: Theories on Organizational Communication and Management

TEXTBOOK(S) AND REQUIRED MATERIALS: Title: Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint Author: Eric Eisenberg, H.L. Goodall Jr, Angela Trethewey, and Marianne Legreco Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin’s

Year Published: 2016 Edition: 8th

ISBN: 10: 1319052347 or 13: 978-1319052348

For your Research Paper you need to research on any four theories of your choice, from chapters three, four, five or six, and write an 11 – 12 paper, including the reference page, but excluding the cover page.  You do NOT need to write an abstract, just start with the introduction.  Because this is an academic appear, you have to include an introduction and a conclusion.  Please do not include graphs, pictures, bullets, or lists.  Rather all your text should be presented as full sentences in an essay format.

Please make sure your paper covers the following:

1.      A clear definition of the theory that you have chosen – please find different literature sources, such as books, or journal articles from which to find definitions.  From the definitions that you include in your paper, select the one which you think best describes the theory that you have selected. 

2.      A description of this theory in detail, – again, use several literature sources.  Here also include the formulator or propounder, when it was formulated.  Remember theories are historical – therefore given the historical circumstances of this theory; how does this theory explain organizational communication of that particular period?

3.      An evaluation of that theory – to what extent does it explain organizational communication well? What are some of the criticisms against those theories?

4.      An identification of organizations which best embody organizational communication theory as explained through the lenses of those theories

IMPORTANT POINT OF CLARIFICATION: Please follow steps 1 – 4 for all the four theories that you would have chosen. However please apply at least one theory to your personal experiences. 

Your paper should be written as a college paper; meaning that it should be double-spaced, spell-checked, with correct grammar.  It should include 6-8 academic citation sources and formatted using APA 7TH edition.

A research guide for a major paper

For your major paper, I would like you to use this guide to help you through the process, from the time of selecting your topic to citing your sources.

Step One: Select your topic or issue

Whenever you have an option of selecting a topic, the rule of thumb is to select a topic which is close to your heart. You will likely find it easier to research on, write about; it will more likely be useful to you and your readers; and you will also enjoy the writing process!

Step Two: Search for terms

You need to locate journal articles and books on this topic. 

a) Google Scholar

You can also use Google Scholar to find citation sources with. To use Google Scholar, go to Google, type Google Scholar, then type the key terms of your research , and include the term “communication” to make sure that the sources are focused on communication

To search your topic, use the appropriate terms for example:

McGregor’s Theory Y AND communication

General Systems Theory AND communication

The Learning Organization Theory AND communication

Critical Theory AND communication

Step Three: Look for different viewpoints on your topic

Step Four: Select only credible academic sources. In other words, if it’s a journal article, it has to be peer reviewed. When you search, you need to include in the search engine that you are looking for peer-reviewed sources. Only use journal articles which are nine years or younger.

Step Five: When you find articles that are suitable for your topic, go to the Discussion session, or Conclusions and get your information from there.

Step Six: Use the information from the Results and Conclusions sections as Examples in making your argument. Also use statistics generated by the authors in the journal articles which you would have reviewed.

Step Seven: Use the APA 7th citation format in your paper

A Few Reminders About In-text citations:

1) Remember in in-text citations, you do not include the initial of the author, you just include the last name of the author and the year, for example it’s (Johns, 2021), not (Johns, M, 2021)

2) In a narrative citation, the author’s name is used within the text of the sentence; whereas a parenthetical citation is a type of citation where the author and date are in parentheses at the end of the sentence, for example Johns (2021) explains how to make sandwiches using green carrots.

3) In a parenthetical citation, you put the information about the source in parentheses at the end of a sentence or in the text, for example: Making sandwiches using green carrots has become a nutritional boost for most older Americans (Johns, 2021).

4) Only use direct quotes if the essence of what you want to convey would be lost if paraphrased.

5) If you use direct quotes, you are required to include a page number or paragraph number in the citation. For example, leading health experts argue “how making sandwiches with green carrots gives added nutrition to people 65 years and above” (Johns, 2021, p.261).

6) When your citation has 39 words or less, place quotation marks around the quote. If however the citation is 40 words or more, indent the quotation, and exclude quotation marks.

7) Most importantly, your citation should not be sitting by itself as an isolated piece of information in your paper. Rather, you need to integrate it within the point that you will be making.

8) For all the sources in your reference page, in-text citations should be used inside the paper.

*The sources here are for each section. However the total number of sources required for the paper remains 6-8.

Adapted from
Armfield, G. G. (2017). Organizational Culture Analysis. New Mexico State University. Retrieved from
on August 29, 2021