The Importance of Context, Situation and Setting in ...

Consulting That Matters A HANDBOOK FOR SCHOLARS & PRACTITIONERS

JENNIFER H. WALDECK DAVID R. SEIBOLD EDITORS

This book is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

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PETER LANG New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

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PETER LANG New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

CHAPTER

FOUR

The Importance of Context, Situation and Setting in Consulting LOYD S. PETTEGREW

University of South Florida

Every moment--every blink--is composed ofa series of discrete moving parts, and every one of those parts o/.firs an opportunityfor intervention, for reform, andfor correction. -MALCOLM GLADWELL, BLINK,

2005

INTRODUCTION

Understanding in an unambiguous way the differences between context, setting and situation is a necessary coin of the realm for successful consultants. This chapter supports Hymes's (1974) argument that communicating competently is context dependent. Doing so necessitates the ability to understand and differentiate context from setting and situation and incorporate this understanding into actual consulting practice. The differences are neither semantic nor trivial for the consultant-scholar who wants to make a difference through research (Frey, 2009, p. 209). The downside of treating context, setting and situation as interchangeable is that you miss important dynamics that both enable and constrain communication. A number of years ago I was asked by a national media company to present a proposal that would deliver customer service training to its newspaper division. This was a huge and potentially lucrative contract, so I picked a colleague I had worked with before and who was an excellent trainer. The company had just read research by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University that presented national data showing newspapers having the highest

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT, SITUATION AND SETTING IN CONSU

customer satisfaction ratings were also the most profitable. My colleague and I had done customer service training for Yamaha USA, a national restaurant chain, and Arthur Andersen (before the Enron debacle). She insisted we use these existing training materials and adapt thesn for the new audience, saving us preparation time, and the client considerable money. I understood that print journalism and print journalists were such a different animal that any successful training program had to be "one off," designed specifically for this audience and organization. We continued to struggle over these conflicting viewpoints. Hers would be efficient and less costly; mine necessitated background research with a representative sample of newspaper employees, cost three times as much and take four times longer · to complete. My position prevailed though I was afraid the price tag would elim- . inate us from the running. In the end, we were awarded the contract; I was both elated and apprehensive because it was an unproven program and a great deal of work for two people. My friend at the company's corporate headquarters revealed that we were chosen over bigger, national companies. He revealed, "Our S.V.P. of i Newspaper Operations said we need a training program tailored exactly for us and you were the only group that did just that. He trusted you would come to know us more intimately." Our research at the various newspapers, revealed that not unlike many academics, newspaper journalists doubt they even have customers, so customer service was anything but a given and the audience would be challenging. Understanding the context, setting and situation and this particular audience made the difference in our consulting. The academy (social sciences, business, and communication in particular). has long tolerated an equivocal approach to using the terms, context, setting. and situation. All three words pervade the literature with egalitarian imprecision. An essay in Communication Quarterly by Goodall (1984) is illustrative. In the first page of the article, he uses context and situation interchangeably, yet never defines either term. Goodall is not alone. I conducted a Google Scholar search finding 3,010,000 articles using context, 3,300,000 articles using setting and 3,430,000 articles using situation. I randomly sampled 65 articles and the majority failed to carefully consider or define how these respective words were being used or their precise meaning in the research. Like the communication phenomenon itself (see Hopper, 1981), context, setting and situation are habit- · ually taken for granted. In this chapter, I argue that social science and business deserve better. In fact; consultant-scholars have a much more phronetic (see Tracy, 2007), if tacit, understanding of context, setting and situation, allowing them to traverse successfully the communication complexities they encounter in their consulting roles. The following model of context, setting and situation is offered to further my argument and illustrate the important differences of these terms. 0

l:TheModel.

1 shows that setting and situation are imbedded in context. but are conceptually distinct. Embodied in this model is "'~'ication in contexts, be it healthcare, education family or setting and situation; all are affected by the larger culture in ' . 1 As consultants, if we are to understand any context more to setting and situation in our research and practice. communication happens, and within setting is situation-,t~ pmmunication. In other words, if you are going to discuss account for where the communication takes place and its ~·.~el;inct, but inseparable from the contextual whole. An example 'Tn;versity Medical Center (UMC) will help illustrate this model. When at UMC, I worked with an ER team, not unlike ::.,l!.l&enberg, Baglia &Pynes (2006). The context was healthcare and a large academic medical center in the southeast. During a .rung, interaction among team members was relaxed and informal; were triaged and treated. An hour later, in this same context, ectting, a call came in from the airport. A regional jet had crashe4J f,nd multiple trauma victims would be medevac'd to the UMC ER. 1ub-context and setting remained the same but the situation had lng from routine to STAT. Ease and informality of staff communic:1

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replaced by hierarchical, technical and directive communication led by the chief of emergency medicine. It had become a decidedly different world communicatively. Hours later, the chaos had subsided; the trauma patients had been treated and released or triaged to the multiple ORs-or the ICU. When the ER team went off duty, they decided to have something to eat at the medical center cafeteria. While the context and sub-context remained the same, both the setting and situation were changed. Team interaction was no longer role-driven, directive, and hierarchical with a STAT character; it became informal and darkly humorous. Here, setting and situation had a profound efff:ct on communication within the same healthcare context and academic medical center sub-context. This model holds that context is influenced by the even larger cultural phenomenon. For example, in past years when Toyota USA achieved its profitability projections, all employees at its U.S. headquarters were released from work for a 2-hour, decidedly Japanese celebration where the CEO from the parent company congratulated the employees and performed celebratory Japanese cultural rituals. When employees returned to their desks, a bonus check greeted their accomplishment. It is doubtful that an American automobile company would accomplish such logistical precision or celebrate success this way.

Culture Contexts are indeed affected by the larger cultural milieu. This is particularly important for consultants who must deal with organizational divisions in foreign countries. For example, I performed training for both Yamaha U.S.A. and Yamaha Canada. Fortunately, I had several colleagues and family who were Canadian and had visited our northern neighbor many times. Even though both the USA and Canada divisions involved the same company, culture demanded a different approach and I toned down the presentation theatrics and adjusted the program content for the predominantly male Canadian audience by using a less stereotypically "John Wayne" American approach. Making these changes helped me create stronger identification with my Canadian audience.

THE IMPRECISION OF CONTEXT

A representative example of how context, setting and situation have been confounded in academe comes from the popular textbook, Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint, by Eisenberg, Goodall and Trethewey (2006). Within one chapter the reader is led to believe that context is (a) "where communication occurs" (p. 35), (b) "situated individual behavior" (p. 37),

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT, SITUATION AND SETTING IN CONSULT!

(c) "a set of constraints limiting creativity and individual freedom" (p. "multiple settings that frequently come in conflict" (p. 38). In the final learn that innovation will vary, depending on aspects of the context ation. Such loose definitions of context and situation are reminiscent