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Sarah King
Organizational Communication
Assignment #2
An organization that I have been a member of is Our Lady of Grace (OLG) Catholic
Parish. My mom raised me as a catholic and ever since, I have continued to grow my
relationship with God and the OLG community. OLG as a parish has a catholic church and
grade school that I attended from preschool to 8th grade. Communication in a parish can be very
welcoming and has aspects of each the macro perspectives contemporary functionalism
(systems and functional), cultural and critical. In this paper, I will apply each of the perspectives
and refer to the text, Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and
Misunderstandings.
The contemporary functionalism perspective is about the effectiveness of communication
in an organization and is a combination of the systems perspective and the functional
perspective. From a systems perspective, Our Lady of Grace parish is a supersystem and
consists of other systems/subsystems in the Catholic parish environment that are important to the
survival of the focal system, OLG. Additionally, OLG church and school are both systems
because they are interrelated to the parish.
OLGs inputs generally include the people that make up the church (community) and the
materials and money that it takes to run events for the church such as speakers, mass, fish fries
and carnivals. OLGs throughputs include creating and maintaining your relationships with
Christ and the parish community, experiencing one or more of the seven sacraments and the
opportunity to get involved with subsystems at OLG, such as youth group, priests, womens
guild, event planning committees, etc. Each subsystem includes production, support,

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maintenance and manageable aspects in multiple ways, so each of them are vital to the system
and subsystem. OLGs outputs are donations of money or items given during events to other
organizations, such as homeless shelters or soup kitchens, and just the effect that a parish has on
people and other organizations.
From a functional perspective, Our Lady of Grace is an organization that shows
interdependence and balance. Interdependence involves an organization as a whole where each
element depends on the others. Interdependence is seen between the church and the parish
community, including the priests, altar servers and ushers. One primary example is that OLG
recently has its fish fries every Friday from 4-7 p.m. during Lent and without the
interdependence and support from people and organizations within and aside from the parish, the
event would not be possible. Specifically planning for the fish fry, my mom is in charge of
finding volunteers by looking for people within the church community and even the priest makes
announcements in mass about the fish fries or it is published in a newspaper and the bulletin that
a member of the church community submitted to increase the exposure/publicity for the event.
The six issues that are most relevant to the field of organizational communication (formal
vs. informal organization, cooperation, communication, incentives, authority and zone
indifference), a concept from Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and
Misunderstandings can be applied to Our Lady of Grace parish. Our Lady of Grace parish is a
formal organization, the community, including priests are able to communicate and willing to
contribute action to accomplish a common purpose. An example of this is during OLG church
mass, there is that sense of community and participation through prayer, listening and singing, to
gain a spiritual relationship with God. Cooperation is pretty self-explanatory within a catholic
parish; there is the sense of community and support. Communication is present during the

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church mass example, as well; it is nonverbal and verbal through song, prayer and actions.
Authorities in a parish are the priests in support from the community, but authority can be seen
also in community leaders within the parish. There is a zone of indifference in a church parish
because for the most part orders are followed. Going back to the church mass example, when the
priest tells the attending people to sit and listen to his homily, everyone sits down.
Our Lady of Grace parish can be labeled as a participative system of management, a term
from Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings. For a
catholic parish to function properly, economic and genuine participation, free-flowing
communication, full use of members energy, and a high level of responsibility and
accountability for the parish goals must occur. OLG in particular has a summer carnival where
the parish community, made up of the school students/employees, church goers, priests/church
staff and outside members participate by attending out of support through payments or serve as
providers of food/drinks and/or ride tickets. Outside organizations participate by donating
money or their food to be used for one night of dinner also. During the event, there is a free-flow
of communication between people and there is a sense of energy in full use between the
attendees and volunteers. The responsibility and accountability is mostly present in the adults of
the parish communities actions, whether they are just attending or volunteering at the carnival.
If we were to put God into the picture of the organization, then OLG parish would be considered
a benevolent, authoritative system of management would be present.
According to Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and
Misunderstandings, an organizational culture is Shared assumptions, values, and beliefs of a
social group. I found that this definition applies to OLG parish the most. OLG parish has most
of the elements of organizational culture (values, symbolic elements, role elements, interactive

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cultural elements and context elements). OLG values the catholic faith, to live Christ-like, God,
the 10 commandments, the 7 sacraments (seen through ritual) and the bible. The symbolic
elements that make up OLG are the cross, Jesus, sign of peace (in church), any member of the
bible and stained glass windows. I am not entirely sure how to apply role elements to a catholic
parish because of the spiritual elements and sense of community, but it would be God as the hero
and the devil as an the outlaw. There is a sense of community and participation through prayer,
listening and singing, to gain a spiritual relationship with God that represents the interactive
culture elements through the catholic ritual during mass. The context elements include the
history of the catholic faith that we learn from the bible in a traditional form and the place, which
is usually in the church or school.
Critical theory focuses on power. At the heart of critical theory is a concern with the
organization and how power is used and abused in the organizational setting (Organizational
Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings). Power in Our Lady of
Grace are the priests, but can also reside in community leaders within the parish. If we were to
put God into the picture of the organization, then God would have most of the power. Within
any organization, it is hard to discover who actually has the power because there is a difference
in appearance vs. reality, that is why I think also there is no power, each person in the parish
community decides for themselves to get involved or not and how much effort they put in.
According to Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and
Misunderstandings, Ideology represents social reality by telling organizational members what is
good, what is normal, and what is acceptable. Ideology can be applied to OLG parish by how
the priest tells the community that God is good and to read the bible and to live Christ-like. One
thing that stands out in a catholic faith that deals with critical theory is the fact that only males

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can be priests, this opposes the feminist organization communication theory that Organizational
Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings, but does not mean that
women are entirely oppressed; they can still grow in their faith and be involved.
Organizational ethics can be applied to OLG parish by how as I stated earlier, the setting
is very accepting and welcoming into the parish community. Everyone supports and listens to
one another and they share the faith, which is a powerful spirit. Actions can be learned from the
bible and other people in the parish community, there is not much competition since everyone is
just focusing on building their relationship with God. The OLG parish community lives like they
would after going to church with grace and dignity to live like Christ, so that others see Jesus in
them, such as treating people how you would like to be treated, since that is what they learn
about through the Catholic faith.