Essay on National Public Radio (NPR)

One of the largest media companies in the US, National Public Radio (NPR), is home to 900 radio stations. All NPR radio stations are required to air only educational and nonprofit productions and to run only non-profit organizations’ advertisements.

When people encounter actions or concepts that contradict with their beliefs, they feel cognitive dissonance, an emotional conflict. When employees experience cognitive dissonance, NPR may be exposed to risks like as higher absenteeism, a demotivated and inefficient workforce, antiquated business concepts, and widespread emotional discomfort among staff members that manifests as stress and despair at work. NPR can deal with cognitive dissonance through advocating for corrective action among its employees. Corrective actions that are most efficient for dealing with cognitive dissonance include adjusting beliefs to accommodate foreign behaviors, and learning new ideas in order to comfortably accommodate new practices.

By dealing with cognitive dissonance, National Public Radio will sustain a happy and productive workforce that is less prone to work related stress and depression, less employee absenteeism and motivated employees who are capable of fronting contemporary ideas to grow the organization.

However, if corrective action for cognitive dissonance is not implemented keenly, it may result in an improvident workforce which may embrace any new behaviors, ideas and practices including those that may work against the organization growth.

Cognitive Dissonance at NPR

Introduction

Human beings have a tendency to seek apposition in their perceptions, behaviors and beliefs. Whenever people’s beliefs and perception fail to match their behaviors, they experience discomfort and tension, a situation known as dissonance. In order to resolve dissonance, an individual has to alter their behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs. Dealing with cognitive dissonance leads to a healthy and productive workforce since it reduces stress and emotional conflict among employees.

National Public Radio (NPR) is one of the largest media organizations in the United States. The company has a network of over 900 radio stations, all of which are non-commercial and educational (Cwynar, 2017). This proposal outlines the negative impacts that cognitive dissonance may have on an organization and the corrective actions which NPR and its employees should employ to tackle it.

National Public Radio

National Public Radio (NPR) is a non-profit media organization that is based in the United States. The company is comprised of a national network of 900 public radio stations which are all based in Washington DC (Cwynar, 2017). The company is involved in the production and distribution of cultural programming and news through the public radio satellite system, where all radio stations have specific productions for broadcast. Besides radio broadcasting, the company’s production is also available to the public via mobile, web and podcasts (Atkin, & McCardle, 2015).

The birth of NPR was realized when the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In 1970, the CPB invented NPR with an objective to offer programming to the Educational and noncommercial radio stations in the US. Before 1977, NPR was a production and distribution organization which later evolved into an association of public radio stations.

NPR operates as a membership organization where each member station must either be a non-commercial or educational station. According to Atkin, & McCardle, (2015) each of the NPR member stations is required to have a minimum of five professional employees working fulltime, and the station should be dedicated to either spread a religious philosophy or be used as an educational platform for distance learning. It is mandatory that each member station of NPR be operational in at least 18 hours every day. Each member station of NPR is entitled to a vote, through which they use to make decisions in the company’s board meetings as well as participate in the company’s board elections (Carey, Means, Burriss, & Stepno, 2016).

NPR is the most accredited source of news in the United States and has a weekly audience of over 20.9 million listeners (Akbari, 2009). The NPR’s Morning Edition is the most endeared program in the US, which draws a weekly audience of over 12.9 million listeners. Unlike the traditional commercial broadcasting, NPR advertises through underwriting spots, which are brief statements such as short descriptions of products and services, as well as contact information or corporate slogans from key sponsors (Akbari, 2009). NPR radio adverts are strictly limited to non-profit organizations (Stavitsky, 1994).

Core Publisher is the backbone of NPR’s digital news broadcast and publishing system. NPR acquired a huge steak in digital media in the US when it adopted the microblogging service which is a popular digital platform conveyance. Research has shown that over 4 million people access the NPR’s production and news through the company’s website, social web, podcast and the NPR mobile app. This makes it one of the leading company in digital media in the US. In 2014, NPR launched its first mobile application for both android and IOS, which was named NPR One. The objective of NPR One was to allow for easy navigation and auto play of NPR podcasts and enable its listeners to stream all NPR radio stations live (Carey, Means, Burriss, & Stepno, 2016). Since its launch, NPR One has been advanced and made accessible on many more platforms.

Persuasion of Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance causes psychological discomfort among individuals mainly due to a conflict of beliefs, ideas, practices and behaviors. Human beings have a tendency to cultivate and maintain harmony among their belief, attitude, and behaviors (Wicklund, & Brehm, 2013). Whenever people are faced by an inconsistent circumstance that calls for an alteration in their behavior or belief. They experience an internal clash which causes maladaptive and irrational behaviors at work. Such situations of conflicting ideas and behavior in the workplace may induce stress, depression and severe internal discomfort among employees. High levels of stress and work-related depression that emanates from cognitive dissonance in the workplace often lead to chronic impairment of employee performance (Tay, Lees, & Dar, 2016).

People can manage cognitive dissonance by changing their behaviors, changing conflict cognition to justify new behaviors, and adding new cognition. Employees can give in to the conflicting behavior at their workplace and decide to turn a blind eye on their beliefs. Employees may also adjust their mindset and conflict cognition to accommodate conflicting ideas or behaviors (Chang, Solomon, & Westerfield, 2016). This helps reduce cognitive dissonance since an employee will be comfortable with practices that were previously in conflict with their beliefs. An employee may also focus on beliefs and ideas that outweigh the conflicting behaviors (Wicklund, & Brehm, 2013). This helps justify the conflicting beliefs at work hence reducing workplace pressure.

NPR being as national corporation employs people from different walks of life, different religion, race, and diverse beliefs. By employing corrective actions to help its employees eliminate cognitive dissonance among themselves, NPR will save its workforce from emotional discomfort, depression and stress. In the long run other corporation will save its resources which would otherwise be used to replace a non-productive and stressed workforce (Van Veen, Krug, Schooler, & Carter, 2009).

Due to a diversity in religion and beliefs, the employees of a NPR may have a problem with each other when each is practicing their faith (Griffin, 2006). Moreover, because of different beliefs, some employees may find it difficult to advertise products such as liquor, cigarettes or nightlife events on their radio stations. In order to for all employees to stay comfortable in the organization and accommodate each other’s behavior and belief, they must eliminate cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance may cause increased absenteeism in NPR. Employees often find it easier to justify absenteeism than expose themselves to work related stress. NPR may also suffer a reduction in performance, disengagement and withdrawal by employees when they are faced with cognitive dissonance (Chang, Solomon, & Westerfield, 2016). Cognitive dissonance demotivates employees from fronting innovative ideas in the organization and causes them to disengage from major organization processes which causes a negative effect on organization culture.

Discussion

Employing corrective action against cognitive dissonance helps maintain a productive workforce in an organization. Its benefits are reducing stress and job-related anxiety among employees, preventing depression and absenteeism, and maintaining an emotionally healthy workforce. Employees are able to enjoy their work and engage in diverse ideas to help grow the company. Such action also saves the company from high staff turnover which may be experienced due to high employee departure.

The limitation of dealing with cognitive dissonance is that it creates a leeway for sloppiness in an organization. When employees adjust their beliefs, ideas and practices to accommodate new behavior, they become prone to adopting behaviors that may have negative impact on an organization. When employees change their conflict cognition in order to fit in an organizational behavior or belief, they reduce their chances of eliminating a vice and opportunity to front better practices.

Future research should delve to understand the corrective actions for cognitive dissonance that do not give leeway for employees to embrace organization vices as a means to justify behavior change. Employees should uphold their beliefs and Ideas at all time and they should have the power to refuse conforming to behaviors that hurt an organization.

References

Akbari, H. (2009). Popular College Courses, A National Public Radio Online Audio Series. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(4), 617-619. doi:10.5465/amle.2009.47785483

Atkin, J. L., & McCardle, M. (2015). Old Dog, New Tricks: Staying Relevant in the Digital Era. Journal of Critical Incidents, 877-80

Carey, M. C., Means, B., Burriss, T. L., & Stepno, B. (2016). Four Views on NPR’s A View from Appalachia. Journal of Appalachian Studies, 22(2), 288-294. doi:10.5406/jappastud.22.2.028

Chang, T. Y., Solomon, D. H., & Westerfield, M. M. (2016). Looking for Someone to Blame: Delegation, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Disposition Effect. Journal of Finance, 71(1), 267-302. doi:10.1111/jofi.12311

Cwynar, C. (2017). NPR Music: Remediation, curation, and National Public Radio in the digital convergence era. Media, Culture & Society, 39(5), 680-696. doi:10.1177/0163443716674362

Griffin, E. M. (2006). A first look at communication theory. New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill.

Stavitsky, A. G. (1994). The changing conception of localism in US public radio. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 38(1), 19-33.

Tay, A., Lees, C., & Dar, O. L. (2016). Job performance expectations and perceptions of retail employees: Cognitive dissonances between self-reports and supervisor-ratings. South African Journal of Business Management, 47(3), 13-23.

Van Veen, V., Krug, M. K., Schooler, J. W., & Carter, C. S. (2009). Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance. Nature neuroscience, 12(11), 1469-1474.

Wicklund, R. A., & Brehm, J. W. (2013). Perspectives on cognitive dissonance. Psychology Press.