Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems began in 1982 with just four employees. Today, the company has grown to over 34,000 employees and a Fortune 500 rank of 184. Sun Microsystems can be easliy recognized by the company's NYSE letters JAVA. The company also has several blogs available to employees. The Sun Guidelines to Public Discourse are the blogging tenants that attempt to guide employee blogging in a more meaningful direction of conversation.

• Blogging is a two way street
• Don't tell secrets
• No comment
• Policies apply
• Be respectful, interesting, and honest
• Write what you know
• Don't write annonymously
• Business outlook rules
• Think about consequences
• Other peoples information

These tenants attempt to cover a wide ground of blogging topics. Blogging is a two way street emphasizes reading and linking other peoples blogs. If the information is good, pass it along. The policy also follows the "golden rule" be respectful, keep personal information private, write what you know, and so on. This policy also has several components that are meant to guard company privacy such as, do not comment unless you are the spokesperson for that issue. Other company policies apply such as Standards of Business Conduct, export compliance, trademark guidelines, privacy requirements, confidential information protection, and anti-discrimination.

Sun Microsystems does not want to micro manage its employees. I feel they wish to create an interesting online community with its employees to facilitate many kinds of communication.

Thomas Nelson Publishers

Thomas Nelson Publishers is the World's largest publisher of Christian books and materials. Founded in Scotland in the late 1700's, Thomas Nelson is currently headquartered in Nashville, TN. Its President and CEO Michael Hyatt was on the forefront of the blogging phenomenon. As Michael began to blog and see its potential for his company.

He promoted blogging for his 675 employee company by creating a blog index on Thomas Nelson's website. The purpose of the index was to create interest and traffic for the employees' blogs. Hyatt encouraged employees to blog about what was going on within the company and its products. His goal was three-fold: to raise awareness of Thomas Nelson, to contribute to its industry, and to allow the public to get a picture of what goes on within the company. He created an easily navigable site that contains the blogs of all the employees. "House Work" is the blog index of Thomas Nelson's employees. This website is updated anytime an employee posts on the blog. It contains the basic information and first few lines of the blog, allowing for readers to skim and read the ones that are of interest.

Michael Hyatt also set guidelines for his employees' blogs. The guidelines cover different aspects of blogging. For example, users are required to use their real name and add a disclaimer to the end of every post explaining that their ideas are individual to themselves. Hyatt encourages to write often, advertise if they wish, be nice, and respect secrets and copyrights. If an employee has any question about whether a post might be in question, Hyatt reminds his employees to remember the handbook.

Thomas Nelson's blogging policy is found at Michael Hyatt's personal blog and has created an interesting communication style for one of the nation's largest trade publishers.

IBM's Social Computing Guidelines

IBM's blogging policy covers all areas that an employee might be concerned about when blogging online, and if the policy does not cover their question they recommend that the employee consult the Business Conduct Guidelines. IBM also states that is the employee's right as to whether or not they choose to participate in blogs, but they do encourage the practice. The company wishes to blog in order to learn and to contribute.

The first of the policy is the IBM employee is personally responsible for any information they publish. They are supposed to write in first person, identify who they are, and if it is relevant their role at IBM. If they publish anything to a website outside of IBM that has to do with their work or any subjects related to IBM they have to use a disclaimer that says these statements are the individual's and not IBM's. Employees are asked to follow copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws. They are not to provide confidential or proprietary information without permission and are not to cite anyone without their approval. They are not to engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM's workplace. Employees need to find others who are blogging or publishing on the topic and cite them and should link back to the source when referencing. Finally, they need to be consistent with how they wish to be seen in the workplace, not pick fights and they need to add value to what they write because it could be reflected back on the IBM brand.

The policy goes on to say that they regard blogs as a form of communication and relationship among individuals. IBM encourages honesty in blogs and managers and executives are not exempt from the rules.

I chose this policy because I thought they had a fair policy and were not being too strict, just sensible. They are trying to protect the employees and the company at the same time.

First Blog Post for Fall Semester 2008

This is a sample post for students in Comm 4020 at Austin Peay State University. Students will be making their first post about blogging policy.

I hope we all have a great semester and find many uses for blogs.

Critical Approach to Organization

Read this article and the New York Times,

The Smear This Time


What do you think of Anita Hill has to say in light of the feminist critique of organizations?

Presentations

We are going to look at how to do GOOD PowerPoint presentations rather than those boring slides with just bullet points that put us all to sleep. No one wants to see a presentation during which the presenters just reads the slides to the audience.

The PowerPoint slides need to help tell the story the presenter is attempting to relate to the audience. Presentations need to be dynamic and sell the ideas the presenter is attempting to communicate to the audience.

Here are some resources. Use them to help make your presentations better.

Presentation Zen

Beyond Bullet Points

Really Bad PowerPoint

Tell us about your experience with managers.

Much of management or organization theory still hearkens back to what Miller writes about in Chapters 1 & 2. The classical and human relations approaches both have merits but have become accepted as fact when as you found out in your readings both approaches lack a truly strong empirical basis.

Let's keep the conversation going that we started with the introductions. I would like each of you to give a description of both good and bad organizational settings you have experienced.

In addition to posting your experiences I would like to make this more of a conversation by having you post a comment about at least one other person's experiences.