Shared Meaning as a Sales Inducement Strategy: Bank Teller Responses to Frames,Reinforcements,and Quotas

Abstract

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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