Management Communication Quarterly recent issues

The Mediation of Policy Knowledge: An Interpretive Analysis of Intersecting Activity Systems

Canary, H. E., McPhee, R. D. — 2009-09-30

We use structurating activity theory,an integration of structuration and cultural-historical activity theories, to examine how individuals construct policy knowledge.The study was conducted over 5 months with participants from related activity systems who interacted regarding special education policy. Qualitative analysis focused on how participants drew on system-specific and structural rules and resources to construct policy knowledge within and between activity systems. Results reveal how participants developed policy knowledge that was mediated by system elements of divisions of labor, communities, rules, subjects, and both material and symbolic mediating resources.The mediated knowledge construction process also reproduced broad structural features. Results interpreted through structurating activity theory extend current understandings of policy and knowledge processes and offer directions for future research.

Role Negotiations in a Temporary Organization: Making Sense During Role Development in an Educational Theater Production

Kramer, M. W. — 2009-09-30

Negotiating the performance of an individual’s role is an essential part of the assimilation process. Role negotiations consist of a two-part process: (a) negotiating a particular organizational role to perform and (b) negotiating that role’s performance once it is assumed. Whereas previous research has failed to explore how these two processes interact,this participant-observation study used sensemaking to examine the communication individuals used both to negotiate a specific role in a temporary organization, an educational theater production, and then to negotiate that role’s performance. The temporary organization provided a unique opportunity to observe both processes from beginning to end and allowed for examination of specific communication behaviors individuals used to make sense during both negotiations. The results provide insight into the relationship between negotiating a specific role and negotiating that role’s performance as well as extending the understanding of sensemaking.

"We Don't Want Complaining Women!" A Critical Analysis of the Business Case for Diversity

Perriton, L. — 2009-09-30

The author explores how the corporate discourse of "the business case" works to frame, restrict, and depoliticize the discussion of gender in the workplace. In turn, bemused and surprised by the ease with which women have been persuaded it is not "businesslike" to complain, the author explores how women’s linguistic choices shape their corporate lives. By examining the didactic and embedded "gender work" of a women’s leadership event and reflecting on her own, occasional, weakness for the discourse, the author contributes to the understanding of how a seemingly positive and popular communication strategy reproduces unequal gendered relationships in the workplace. The author rejects the claim that using a business case discourse is an effective strategy in improving the recognition, promotion, and rewarding of women in organizations.

Organizational Newc(ust)omers: Applying Organizational Newcomer Assimilation Concepts to Customer Information Seeking and Service Outcomes

Fonner, K. L., Timmerman, C. E. — 2009-09-30

The process through which customers resolve uncertainty regarding their participative role in service transactions may be similar to the process that organizational newcomers experience as they gain role clarity and assimilate into organizations.This study applies organizational socialization literature to examine customer socialization, information seeking, role clarity, and service outcomes. Results (N = 328) indicate that (a) customers’ perceived social costs have a stronger association with information seeking than does felt need for information, (b) overt and indirect information seeking is related to role clarity, and (c) role clarity mediates relationships between overt and third-party information seeking tactics and service outcomes.The report concludes with discussion of the benefits of applying organizational socialization frameworks to service contexts.

Violating Prescriptive Stereotypes on Job Resumes: A Self-Presentational Perspective

Tyler, J. M., McCullough, J. D. — 2009-09-30

The authors investigate the earliest stage of the job-screening process—the resume, which represents an applicant’s initial self-presentation efforts, and examine whether women are evaluated more negatively on hiring-related decisions when their resume communicates an identity that violates gender stereotypic prescriptions. This question is important because resumes determine whether an applicant is interviewed and because, in general, women suffer negative sanctions when their behavior violates stereotypic prescriptions.The results show that when women’s resumes violated these prescriptions, men evaluated them more negatively, with women’s perceived social skills mediating the applicant gender—evaluation relationship. These findings provide the first evidence showing that gender biases emerge at the earliest phase of the job-seeking process, that is, when a woman’s resume projects an identity-image that violates gender stereotypes.

Guest Reviewer Acknowledgement

2009-09-30

The Accomplishment of Authority Through Presentification: How Authority Is Distributed Among and Negotiated by Organizational Members

Benoit-Barne, C., Cooren, F. — 2009-07-15

The complex distribution and negotiation of authority in real time is a key issue for today's organizations. The authors investigate how the negotiations that sustain authority at work actually unfold by analyzing the ways of talking and acting through which organizational members establish their authority. They argue that authority is achieved through presentification—that is, by making sources of authority present in interaction. On the basis of an empirical analysis of a naturally occurring interaction between a medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières and technicians of a hospital supported by her organization, the authors identify key communicative practices involved in achieving authority and discuss their implications for scholars' understanding of what being in authority at work means.

Exploring Negative Group Dynamics: Adversarial Network, Personality, and Performance in Project Groups

Xia, L., Yuan, Y. C., Gay, G. — 2009-07-15

Most previous social network studies have focused on the positive aspects of social relationships. In contrast, this research examined how the negative aspects of social networks in work groups can influence individual performance within the group. Accordingly, two studies were conducted to make this assessment. The first study examined the effect of negative relations and frequency of communication on performance among student groups. The second study investigated how the Five Factor Model of personality and position in adversarial networks interacted to influence individuals' performance. Although results of the first study indicated that frequent communication with others could make a person more likeable, consequently helping him or her perform better, the second study showed that those individuals disliked by others were less likely to achieve a good performance rating, despite their conscientiousness, emotional stability, or openness to experiences.

The Social Influences on Electronic Multitasking in Organizational Meetings

Stephens, K. K., Davis, J. — 2009-07-15

Meetings serve an important function in organizational communication. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have infiltrated meetings and allowed a new range of communicative behaviors to emerge. This cross-organizational study relies on key elements in the social influence model to predict variables that influence engagement in electronic meeting multitasking behaviors. The observation of organizational norms and the perceptions of others' thoughts concerning the use of ICTs for multitasking during a meeting explain a considerable amount of variance in how individuals use ICTs to multitask electronically in meetings. Implications for workplace ICT use in meetings and contributions to the social influence model are also discussed.

Employee Voice Behavior: Interactive Effects of LMX and Power Distance in the United States and Colombia

Botero, I. C., Van Dyne, L. — 2009-07-15

In contemporary organizations, competitive advantage can come from ideas employees communicate to supervisors for improving processes, products, and services. One approach to studying employee communications with supervisors is voice behavior. In this research, the authors consider leader— member exchange (LMX) and the individual cultural value orientation of power distance (PD) as predictors of voice. Two studies, conducted in different countries, demonstrate the unique and combined effects of these predictors. In Study 1, conducted in the United States, LMX was positively related to voice, PD was negatively related to voice, and PD made more of a difference in voice when LMX was high. In Study 2, conducted in Colombia, LMX and PD were both related to voice but did not interact. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice.

Forum Introduction

Hogler, R., Gross, M. A. — 2009-07-15

Journal Rankings and Academic Research: Two Discourses About the Quality of Faculty Work

Hogler, R., Gross, M. A. — 2009-07-15

Symbolic Capital and Academic Fields: An Alternative Discourse on Journal Rankings

Putnam, L. L. — 2009-07-15

Discourse, Academic Work, and Journals as Commodities: A Response

Oswick, C., Hanlon, G. — 2009-07-15

Situating Organizations in Politics: A Diachronic View of Control-- Resistance Dialectics

Norton, T. — 2009-04-02

Organization scholars have long been interested in both collective action and the complexities revealed through dialectical analysis. A diachronic view provides one means of intertwining these concerns by exploring the way durable, systemic changes emerge temporally from ongoing contestation among stakeholders. The author explores this diachronic view through a decade-long multistakeholder conflict concerning the Grand Staircase— Escalante National Monument in the U.S. state of Utah. The case makes evident the historic unfolding of power dynamics: A successful resistance movement becomes a regime of control in an ongoing struggle among groups. The author concludes by discussing the capacity of diachronic analysis to illuminate (a) politics among organizations, (b) transformative potential of dialectics, (c) interplay of symbolic and material spheres, and (d) mutual yet distinct roles of dialectical and paradoxical tensions.

Embracing Left and Right: Image Repair and Crisis Communication in a Polarized Ideological Milieu

Svensson, P. — 2009-04-02

The author explores how a tobacco firm in crisis engaged in crisis communication and image repair work in a highly polarized ideological milieu. Through an analysis of the tobacco firm's public statements produced in the aftermath of a 1997 lawsuit, the author demonstrates how the firm dealt with its milieu by exploiting and embracing both of the ambient ideological poles. By embracing these poles, the firm turned critique and opposition into discursive resources for its crisis communication. The author argues that political— ideological framing of organizational communication and discursive appropriation of critique and opposition serve as critical foci for organizational communication scholarship.

Commodification and Co-Modification: Explicating Black Female Sexuality in Organizations

Forbes, D. A. — 2009-04-02

Recent organizational research suggests an emerging trend in which some women of color choose to quit their jobs, head smaller firms, or start their own organizations. Other emergent trends reveal a decline of women of color in executive positions. As reasons for this trend, women managers of color often cite pervasive sex- and race-based stereotypes and the inability of organizations to deal with subtle racism. In this study, the author examines Black women's experience of such sexual politics in organizations. Drawing on interviews and written narratives from nine Black women, the author argues that organizational discourse sexualizes Black women through commodification, experiences of invisibility, and tensions of ownership and consumption of their bodies, which consequently elicits a paradoxical dialectic of accommodation and resistance: co-modification. The analysis both explicates current trends of Black women's declining participation and exit from organizations and suggests how organizations might transform their discursive practices.

On a Growing Dualism in Organizational Discourse Research

Bisel, R. S. — 2009-04-02

Duality arguments are now a common perspective employed in organizational discourse research to avoid the problematic dualism of necessarily prioritizing structure or agency. Despite this considerable philosophical maturity, not all duality approaches are created equal. In fact, duality theorizing in current organizational discourse research has developed into two perspectives— structured in action or acted in structure. This article outlines the characteristics of each research program and provides an illustration of how similar organizational phenomena may be interpreted differently depending on paradigmatic orientation. Then, methodological recommendations and two emerging theoretical myopias—duality and organizing biases—are described to challenge scholars to employ dialectically these seemingly incommensurate perspectives in their theorizing of 21st-century organizational discourse.

Post-Forum Reflections: On Becoming Organizational Communication

Krone, K. — 2009-04-02

Introduction: A Brazilian Story on the Development of Organizational Communication

Putnam, L. L., Machado Casali, A. — 2009-04-02

The Social, Political, and Economic Context in the Development of Organizational Communication in Brazil

do Carmo Reis, M. — 2009-04-02

The Relationship Between the Academy and Professional Organizations in the Development of Organizational Communication

Krohling Kunsch, M. M., Nassar de Oliveira, P. R. — 2009-04-02

Organizational Communication in the Third Sector: An Alternative Perspective

Krohling Peruzzo, C. M. — 2009-04-02

Perspectives, Challenges, and Future Directions for Organizational Communication Research in Brazil

Marchiori, M., de Lourdes Oliveira, I. — 2009-04-02

Exploring the Concept of "Profession" for Organizational Communication Research: Institutional Influences in a Veterinary Organization

Lammers, J. C., Garcia, M. A. — 2009-01-05

Recent scholarship has argued that the concept of profession is undertheorized and accepted uncritically. The authors address this issue by summarizing the characteristics of professions and articulating professions as institutionalized occupations. Their study of a veterinary call center suggests that profession influences the workplace through (a) knowledge providing, seeking, and sharing; (b) self-management of behavior, emotions, and productivity; (c) internal sources of motivation; (d) a service orientation; (e) the invocation of field standards; and (f) participation in a knowledge community beyond the workplace. Although these features may be distinguishable analytically, they are unified in the experience of work. Moreover, the close match in this case between the service orientations of the profession and of the organization strengthened the workers' commitment and thus the legitimacy of the organization.

Employee Families and Organizations as Mutually Enacted Environments: A Sensemaking Approach to Work--Life Interrelationships

Golden, A. G. — 2009-01-05

Work—life research tends to privilege the organization—employee relationship, with the family's role largely relegated to providing emotional and material support to the employee and adapting to organizational requirements. Systems oriented research, however, points toward a larger role for the family, including mediating the employee's relationship with the organization as well as direct organizational interactions. This study uses Weick's model of organizational sensemaking to examine, through the analysis of employee and family interview accounts, how a global high-tech organization and its employees' families enact one another as environments. Three dynamics of mutual enactments— two cooperative and one competitive—were identified, along with implications for work—life integration research and practice, for more traditionally programmatic work—life accommodations, and for families' management of their relationships to employing organizations.

"In Case You Didn't Hear Me the First Time": An Examination of Repetitious Upward Dissent

Kassing, J. W. — 2009-01-05

This study explores how employees express dissent to management about the same issue on multiple occasions across time (i.e., how they practice repetition). Employees completed a survey instrument reporting how often they used varying upward dissent tactics, how often and for how long they raised the same issue, and how they perceived their supervisors responded to their concerns. Results indicate that employees relied predominantly on competent upward dissent tactics but that they adopted less competent and more face-threatening tactics as repetition progressed. In addition, employees' perceptions of their supervisors' responses to repetition related to the overall duration of repetition but not to the frequency with which employees raised issues or the amount of time that elapsed between dissent episodes.

Attraction to Organizational Culture Profiles: Effects of Realistic Recruitment and Vertical and Horizontal Individualism--Collectivism

Gardner, W. L., Reithel, B. J., Foley, R. T., Cogliser, C. C., Walumbwa, F. O. — 2009-01-05

Today's organizations are challenged with attracting, developing, and retaining high-quality employees; thus, many firms seek to improve their recruitment and selection processes. One approach involves using realistic job previews (RJPs) to communicate a balanced view of the organization. The authors explored the effects of organizational culture (hierarchy, market, clan, and adhocracy), recruitment strategy (RJP vs. traditional), and personality (horizontal and vertical individualism—collectivism) on attraction to Web-based organizational profiles using a sample of 234 undergraduate students in a mixed two-factor experimental design. Results indicate that the clan culture is viewed as the most attractive. Traditional versus RJP recruitment produced higher levels of organizational attraction. Finally, predicted relationships between the personality framework of horizontal and vertical individualism— collectivism and organizational attraction were supported.

Conversing About Performance: Discursive Resources for the Appraisal Interview

Gordon, M. E., Stewart, L. P. — 2009-01-05

Despite its acknowledged importance, performance appraisal (PA) continues to be one of the most persistent problems in organizations, especially the appraisal interview (AI) component of PA, for which many techniques have been attempted with only mixed success. The authors conceptualize the AI as a "conversation about performance" and draw on an extensive review of the communication literature to identify the discursive resources available to the organization, the appraiser, and the appraisee for improving the preparation for and conduct of a conversation about performance. The authors' conceptualization extends research on PAs by identifying methodologies and conceptual underpinnings with connections to interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication scholarship.

Imagining Organizational Communication as a Decolonizing Project: In Conversation With Broadfoot, Munshi, Mumby, and Stohl

Grimes, D. S., Parker, P. S. — 2009-01-05

Review Essay: Humor Without Interaction: A Joke Without a Punch Line

Lynch, O. H., Schaefer, Z. A. — 2009-01-05