Organizational Surveys: A System for Employee Voice

Although surveys are often used to assess and track employee attitudes and opinions over time and are used quite frequently by applied communication researchers, the use of surveys as a channel to voice employee attitudes and opinions has not been fully explored in the employee voice or basic organizational communication literature. With the increased call for accountability, effective applied communication researchers can play an important role in ensuring that organizations engage in the survey process in a manner that is “safe” for employees, and ethical and practical for the organization. Because the question of how to accomplish this task is complex and cannot be fully addressed within the constraints of a commentary, I offer three general principles to guide future researchers in helping overcome organizational communication problems:

1. Build trust in the organizational survey process, the researcher(s), and the organization.

2. Eliminate the adversarial relationship that often exists between management and employees who speak up.

3. Provide evidence that the organization does more than purport to value the things that it says it values.

     

“We Do It,but They Don't”: Multiple Categorizations and Work Team Communication

The present study adopted an intergroup approach to information sharing and ratings of work team communication in a public hospital (N?=?142) undergoing large-scale restructuring. Consistent with predictions, ratings of communication followed a double ingroup serving bias: while team members reported sending about the same levels of information to double ingroup members (same work team/same occupational group) as they did to partial ingroup members (same work team/different occupational group), they reported receiving less information from partial ingroup members than from double ingroup members and rated the communication that they received from partial ingroup members as less effective. We discuss the implication of these results for the management of information sharing and organizational communication.     

Organizational Responses to Consumer Complaints: An Examination of Effective Remediation Tactics

Mistakes are common in business and can lead to negative repercussions for organizations. However, through the use of explanations, firms can diminish the negative consequences of their errors. The current study used a field stimulation to examine organizational explanations (excuses, justifications, and excuses) and their components (believable, appropriate, considerate, and responsible) to determine which factors make a difference in consumer satisfaction following organizational failures. Results, interpreted through the lens of expectancy violations theory, suggest that various components of explanations and the form of explanations used in remedial responses influence people's perceptions of organizations and organizational responses following complaints about failures.     

The flight attendant dilemma: an analysis of communication and sensemaking during in-flight emergencies

Building on past research, this article argues that organizational life can be usefully construed as a series of communicative performances that are embedded and enacted in everyday discursive practices. Specifically, this research explores the sensemaking process individuals undertake when faced with the dilemma of knowing when to invent appropriate ways to respond rather than being automatically constrained by past routines. The research presents case study evidence drawn from participant observation and interviews with flight attendants from a major U.S. airline. Shown to be high in emotional and impression management, flight attendants perform a feminized role that privileges accommodation over authority and reassurance over safety that may influence their performances in emergency situations. The work ends with an evaluation of the dominant air travel performance in relation to safety and offers recommendations for facilitating communication and coordination among flight attendants and pilots.     

Reconstructing the “Work Ethic” through Medicalized Discourse on Workaholism

While commonly construed as an ethic and/or balanceable life quality, work rarely is looked upon as being a disease. Drawing from theories of structuration as well as work–life balance literature, this study examines how societal trends of production and efficiency impact the embodied nature of human life, particularly for self-proclaimed workaholics. Through conducting a narrative analysis of texts written by workaholics, the author investigates how individuals reconstruct meanings for their work through their use of diagnostic and therapeutic terminology. Themes for the analysis center on how workaholics define and diagnose workaholism, express their experiences of this addiction, and reconstruct their lifestyles through recovery. The findings underscore the benefits of intersecting health discourse with occupational and ethical discourses surrounding work. Meanwhile, the author cautions that framing work as a disease focuses attention on individuals' problems and thus runs the risk of overlooking potentially “ill” societal conditions that warrant further concern. Suggestions are offered for promoting discussions that raise explicit awareness of the embodied interconnections between work and health.     

论高等院校在职教师信息化能力的培育

伴随着信息时代的飞速发展,对高等院校教师在专业水平、学历层次、知识面等方面提出了更深一层的要求,高等院校的教师迫切需要进一步提升自身水平。本文作者总结并阐述了教师信息化能力培养的四种模式。     

Distorted representations of the ‘capability approach’ in Australian school education

Recently, curriculum developments in Australia have seen the incorporation of functionalist ‘general capabilities’ as essential markers of schooling, meaning that any pedagogical expression of classroom-based practice, including subsequent instruction, should entail the identification and development of operational general capabilities. The paper questions and critiques recent curriculum developments in Australia that characterises capabilities purely in functionalist terms, something that the broader capabilities literature eschews. The analysis is informed by aspects of the theoretical frameworks of Martin Heidegger and Pierre Bourdieu. It examines the notion of ‘general capabilities’ in the Australian Curriculum. The paper argues that there is an inherent contradiction in Australian education policy, namely a vocationally oriented national school curriculum with implied functionings that cannot fulfil designated purposes. The paper finds that the curriculum's connection to increased individual and national economic prosperity, one championing ‘jobs and careers of the twenty-first century’, is evident, although current populous forms and categories of employment seem to suggest otherwise.     

Positive Perspectives on the Profession: Reframing through Appreciative Inquiry

Change theories and Organization Development strategies have long followed the problem-solving approach of looking at organizations, identifying the weaknesses and introducing interventions to “stop doing the wrong things.” In its simplest form, this approach has been successful in a variety of situations and has a popular following. Consultants or internal reviewers look for the problems, identify the cause of the problem, and introduce the intervention (new rule) to eliminate the opportunity for the repetition of the “problem.” Problem-solving is a popular perspective through which change is initiated in politics, academia, and in social media. Eliminate the “bad” and pay attention to what we have been doing wrong to improve. This article first reviews the problems posed in past Hanna lectures to some major themes: (a) the need to address societal concerns, (b) the need to reduce sub-disciplinary fragmentation, (c) the problems inherent on university campuses as a result of politics and the economy, (d) the need to re-examine the over-reliance on the scientific research paradigm at the cost of phenomenological understandings, and (e) the framing of problems to be solved by professionals in our field. The introduction of Appreciative Inquiry and is then provided as an alternative approach to examine current contextual setting with the primary emphasis away from “What problems are you having?” and toward “What is working around here?”. This alternative suggests that in all organizations there is some positive force that is moving the organization forward, and the identification of that force (what works) can lay the ground work for doing more of “what works.” Finally, three examples of Appreciative Inquiry opportunities in action from our discipline are offered for consideration.     

Trust in top management and immediate supervisor: The relationship to satisfaction,perceived organizational effectiveness,and information receiving

Utilizing 2068 individuals in 60 organizations in the U.S. and Italy, this study (a) examines the overall relationship between trust in top management and immediate supervisor and overall estimates of satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness, (b) compares the amount of variance in satisfaction and effectiveness that can be explained by trust in top management to the amount of variance explained by trust in immediate supervisor, and (c) clarifies the role of information receiving as a predictor of trust in top management and immediate supervisor. Results of a canonical correlation analysis indicated that the canonical equation explained 49% of the variance in the linear composites (Canonical R = .69, p < .001). Trust in top management was more strongly associated with satisfaction and effectiveness than was trust in immediate supervisor. Tzvo separate multiple regression analyses indicated that after controlling for geographic location of company and type of industry, information received about job and organizational issues uniquely explained 26% of the variance in trust in top management and 13% of the variance in trust in immediate supervisor.