This article is an ethnographic study of a bank's attempt to motivate sales communica
tion among a group of tellers. The organization developed three strategies to motivate
sales including framing messages, reinforcement messages, and sales quotas. The first
two of these strategies depended on extensive, organizationally created shared mean
ing. The study makes a distinction between two senses of shared meaning in organiza
tions. The implications of this distinction for organizational communication theory
and practice are discussed.
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