Culture,communication, and the challenge of globalization

This essay deals with the problematics that globalization poses for critical communication scholarship. Globalization challenges our understanding of culture and identity in ways that both open up new directions for communication scholarship and invite a rethinking of current ones. First, we discuss how difference is unsettled and re/staged in the context of globalization. Second, we address how uneven patterns of global processes are enacted through cultural practices produced by the transnational flows of images and capital. This essay explores several areas of contemporary global growth with the overall objective of demonstrating the urgency of rethinking the study of culture in critical communication studies.

One of the most important implications of globalism is simply that there is no longer a space elsewhere. This means that instead of thinking in terms of displacements, a movement elsewhere, it is important for cultural studies to think in terms of dis-location, which is the transformation of place. –Ackbar Abbas (1997, p. 312), “Cultural Studies in Postculture.”

To think globality is to think of the politics of thinking globality. –Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak (1999, p. 364), A critique of postcolonial reason.     

“Omega is a Four-Letter Word”: Toward a Tension-Centered Model of Resistance to Information and Communication Technologies

The adoption of enterprise-wide information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become a growing trend in a wide range of industries. Resistance has been identified as one of the most common reasons for unsuccessful implementations. Assuming technologies as fixed objects, many existing theories tend to reduce resistance to psychological mechanisms or structural misalignment. The purpose of this study is to retheorize resistance to ICTs by integrating a social constructionist perspective of technology and a framework of organizational tensions. By employing qualitative methods, a case study examined the adoption, implementation and use of an enterprise-wide software system in a technology service organization. The in-depth case analysis revealed a tension-centered process model, which shows that resistance to ICTs is constituted in a dynamic, reflexive interplay between the ongoing construction of ICTs and organizational tensions. In this process, an ICT adoption brings into play various organizational tensions, which then shape the interpretations of the ICT in oppositional terms, and reactions to these tensions and oppositional interpretations result in various forms of resistance behaviors. This tension-centered process model offers a useful alternative to existing research on resistance to ICTs in the workplace.     

The mud,the blood,and the beer guys: Organizational osmosis in blue‐collar work groups

This essay examines the communicative processes associated with organizational assimilation within blue‐collar work groups in a manufacturing company. The study hinges on a heretofore unidentified variation to traditional assimilation models, labeled as organizational osmosis. Organizational osmosis refers to the seemingly effortless adoption of the ideas, values, and culture of an organization on the basis of preexisting socialization experiences. The study explores how a common ideological grounding and anticipatory socialization experiences increase identification mechanisms among work group members. This ideological grounding is influenced by interaction with family, friends, and peers during anticipatory stages and results in organizational osmosis. Because these newcomers strongly identify with the values and goals of the organization, these members submit to mechanisms of control and discipline in their work group. The essay concludes with implications for the future study of communication within blue‐collar work populations.     

Encountering the Ethics of Engaged Scholarship

This commentary offers reflections on the preceding articles and frames ethics of community engagment by (organizational) communication scholars in terms of broader issues about the enterprises of applied research. The brief essay considers how we approach and position ethics (writ large) in our work and then offers the following dialectics for consideration: openness versus protection, privilege versus equality, distance versus empathy, listening versus advising, and representation versus intervention.     

The Rate and Delay in Overload: An Investigation of Communication Overload and Channel Synchronicity on Identification and Job Satisfaction

This study investigates the relationship between communication overload and uses of diverse communication channels in terms of their level of synchronicity. Emphasis on the synchronicity of any given channel reveals how temporal elements (i.e., rate and processing time) play an important role in perceptions of communication load. Additionally, this study examines the association between communication overload, organizational identification and job satisfaction. Findings reveal: (a) both high and low synchronous channels are associated with increased reports of communication overload; (b) a mediating effect of organizational identification on the relationship between communication overload and job satisfaction; and (c) a moderating effect of communication overload on the relationship between low synchronous channels and organizational identification.     

Establishing the structure of reality for an industry: model and anti-model arguments as advocacy in Nike's crisis communication

This study illustrates the potential role of model and anti-model arguments in organizational crisis communication. Specifically, model and anti-model arguments are described as a strategy for moving the focus of a crisis from an organization to its industry. Model arguments enable organizations to establish their corrective action as industry standards that merit imitation. Conversely, organizations can set minimum standards for their industries with anti-model arguments. Phil Knight's May 12, 1998, speech announcing Nike's new initiatives in global manufacturing is analyzed as a case study. The essay concludes that model and anti-model arguments can suspend criticism of the organization, create the foundation for a return to industry prominence by the organization, and establish proposed new industry standards that are favorable to the organization.     

Communication and Social Identity Theory: Existing and Potential Connections in Organizational Identification Research

This essay builds on the growing, but underdeveloped, role of communication in work based on Social Identity Theory (SIT) as it relates to identity and identification in the organization. Five existing areas of connection between communication and SIT in organizational identification research are documented and assessed. These include salience of dual/multiple identifications, computer-mediated communication and virtual work related to identification, relationally focused work identities, organizational-level identities, and disidentification and related forms.     

新媒介环境下的跨文化传播——以讲述“美丽江苏”故事为例

在全球化时代,跨文化传播对于塑造自身形象、增进理解意义重大。新的国际格局和传播环境要求跨文化传播在传播主体、渠道、内容、受众意识等方面进行变革。本文以"美丽江苏"的跨文化传播为例,分析了这一品牌形象传播的现状和问题,提出"六结合"的理念和具体的传播策略。它们指向了这样一种对跨文化传播的理解:跨文化传播是一座"桥",连接了不同的群体,其价值不是为了传播自己,而是依靠对"自己"的传播,争取相互之间的理解。     

#MeToo,sexual harassment: an article,a forum,and a dream for the future

#MeToo has breathed new life into the women’s movement and especially into understanding and rectifying sexual harassment, abuse and assault. It has galvanized activists around the globe. And it has placed thousands of stories of the harassed in full view of the public. Sexual harassment, abuse and assault may occur within the organizational context or beyond; but sexual harassment, in particular has been legally labeled an organizational phenomenon. With this in mind, Robin Clair frames the early part of this article around the most recent organizational communication theories (see the appendix for an overview of these theories). Following the essay is a forum, in which invited scholars address questions related to the #MeToo movement.     

Staff problems with geriatric care in two types of health care organizations

This essay examines the content and importance of issue‐similar texts created by nursing home and hospital professionals. The purpose of the analysis is to understand some of the cultural, linguistic, and thematic dimensions of nursing home organizations in relation to care for older adults. The number, types, imagery, and intensity of metaphors; the degree of certainty‐ambivalence of language; the primary themes of the stories; the complexity of the communication; and the degree of attraction toward the older patient group are considered. These groups of caregivers appear to be similar in text construction, sympathy toward clients, and the issue of control in relationships. They seem to differ in terms of organizational insensitivity, story content, work context, and complexity of awareness relating to aging issues.     

Cultivating consubstantiality with the land institute: Organizational rhetoric and the role of place-making in generating organizational identification

This essay examines the organizational rhetoric of the Land Institute in order to address the ways place-making contributes to the inducement of organizational identification (OI). In addition to defining place-making as a practice of cultivating arrangements, the essay unpacks two ways in which a strategically arranged place facilitates OI: (a) materializing the places and times imagined in textual materials, and (b) generating encounters with OI targets. By analyzing the Land Institute’s Prairie Festival alongside discursive materials, the essay also demonstrates how organizations take control of place’s inherently inventive character and thoroughly distributed rhetoricity in order to achieve organizational ends. In order to make these arguments, the essay employs a critical method that operates through both field immersion and textual criticism.     

“We're too afraid of these imaginary tensions”: Student organizing in lesbian,gay, bisexual and transgender campus communities

This study utilizes grounded theory to examine student organizing in a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community on a college campus. Through a Glaserian approach to grounded theory, this study identifies three key tensions that influence the formation and maintenance of community: Unity and Difference, Commitment and Apathy, and Empowerment and Disempowerment. These tensions co‐exist within the community and produce challenges for organizing social change on campus. Ultimately, this essay argues that all three tensions may be endemic of community organizing, and potentially of organizing practices in general. Future directions for research in organizational communication and community formation are explored.     

The interplay of linguistic universals and cultural knowledge in personal address: Colombian Madre terms

A general question that communication theories seek to answer is what kinds of resources and knowledge must be drawn upon for communication to take place. This essay proposes that the question may usefully be pursued through investigation of personal address. It elucidates ten address terms in Colombian Spanish derived from the central term madre, “mother.” From the data, a functional model of personal address is generated which incorporates both universal resources for communication (the ubiquitous phenomenon of personal address, universal semantic principles that reflect basic human experiences, and metaphorical usage) and cultural resources (a particular set of address terms, a range of intention and interpretation that may be realized, and a system of cultural premises that organizes and makes sensible the terms and actions that constitute the system). Extensions of the study to other forms of personal address and other kinds of communication behavior are suggested.     

Responding to the Americans with disabilities act: Contributions of interpersonal communication research and training

The enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), has resulted in considerable misinformation and resistance, especially when ablebodied individuals and persons with disabilities interact. This essay reviews contributions of interpersonal communication researchers who address the challenges persons with disabilities face when communicating with ablebodied others, suggesting ways to mitigate communication discomfort and to reduce problems in helping situations. The authors suggest foci for future research and training which can contribute to the acceptance and effectiveness of ADA and to facilitate communication between ablebodied persons and persons with disabilities.     

Winning Is(n't) Everything: The Paradox of Excellence and the Challenge of Organizational Epideictic

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects. Through a case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's “Stay in Bounds” program teaching children to be good sports both on and off the field, the essay demonstrates the challenges of organizational epideictic through the paradox of excellence. It also provides suggestions for the management—but not elimination—of paradox in organizational epideictic, particularly directed at external publics.     

Winning Is(n't) Everything: The Paradox of Excellence and the Challenge of Organizational Epideictic

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects. Through a case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's “Stay in Bounds” program teaching children to be good sports both on and off the field, the essay demonstrates the challenges of organizational epideictic through the paradox of excellence. It also provides suggestions for the management—but not elimination—of paradox in organizational epideictic, particularly directed at external publics.     

What Structures?

This article examines how the topic of an ethnically diverse workforce can become an organizational problem (or not) in private media companies. The study is based on interviews with Human Resources managers and persons responsible for diversity issues at these companies. This article favors a communicative approach by relating structures to agency through the concept of expectation. This is in contrast to the bulk of media research, which considers structures as something fixed and objective in determining organizational action. By exploring the expectations structures we can see which expectation patterns condition organizational communication. As a result, the main pattern of migrant background as adding value to the organization (or not) could be revealed as a guiding distinction in organizational communication about diverse workforces.     

Strike While the Iron Is Hot: Change Management in the Context of a New Political Administration

In 2013, the Missouri State Library was restructured due to the election of a new Secretary of State. This article evaluates the library's restructuring using interviews and an analysis of internal and external public records. Presented as a case study, changes to the library are examined in terms of change management and bureaucratic organization. Findings emphasize the value of communication and the impact of placing libraries within politically oriented organizational structures. It is recommended that administrators allow for more autonomy when making decisions that depend on professional knowledge.     

The Physical Organization as Equivocal Message

This study expands our understanding of the importance of physical organizational space and the relationship between physical and social structure by emphasizing and demonstrating how social structure is physically contextualized. I examined the impact of a building designed specifically to enhance communication and creativity among workers and discovered that users of the building experienced the facility very differently than the designers intended. Specifically, employees struggled to reconcile their experiences with the new facility across five problematic themes: transition, openness, finances/layoffs, management, and the building itself, with the building serving a core, unifying function. The results are discussed in terms of how organizational physical space affords opportunities for material space use that may be unforeseen by designers. Workers’ values and the impact of multiple stressors played key roles in the negative reactions to the new facility. J. J. Gibson's theory of affordances is used to explain the degree to which building design as equivocal message can predetermine communication outcomes.     

Challenging Assumptions Underlying the Metamorphosis Phase: Ethnographic Analysis of Metamorphosis Within an Unemployment Organization

Organizational communication scholars have grappled with assimilation processes and expanded the theoretical conceptualization of each phase. This article joins in conversation with organizational communication scholars by identifying and problematizing the assumption that reaching metamorphosis is always a positive experience. Through the ethnographic analysis of empirical data collected from an unemployment support organization, the author argues that being an established organizational member is sometimes counter to organizational objectives. While traditional organizations attempt to maintain and grow their membership, some alternative organizational formats aim to minimize membership. This premise challenges the assumption that achieving metamorphosis is always a desirable state of organizational membership. Furthermore, this study reveals how communication changes when it is undesirable for service recipients to reach metamorphosis.