27 research outputs found
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? : A Discursive Analysis Of Career Socialization and Decision-Making
No full textCareer decision-making is an increasingly important concern in contemporary society, where the individual-organizational relationship has changed dramatically, sometimes appearing as a series of brief engagements rather than a long-term commitment. Current socialization research has not examined career socialization and decision-making as a dynamic and comprehensive process. This study explores how various communication interactions and experiences impact individuals\u27 views of career and career decision-making. Specifically, this study analyzes young professionals\u27 career socialization experiences. Participant accounts revealed that they are less influenced by socialization experiences within organizational structures. Instead, participants\u27 definitions of career are a reflection of socializing interactions and experiences with parents, educators, and peers. Participants continually use these socially constructed definitions to make career decisions and enact work and family life. In particular, these young professionals base their career decisions on work-life balance issues and suggest that they have jobs rather than careers. This study proposes a new model for career decision socialization as a multilayered, multidirectional process that cannot be confined to sequential and organized phases of development. In addition, this new model adds to previous models by placing more emphasis on social interactions in addition to social structures
Living Our Mission: A Study of University Mission Building
No full textAt the same time that organizational communication and management scholars are focusing attention on trends of spirituality in the workplace, faith-based organizations are taking up the question of how they might maintain a distinct spiritual identity. For these institutions, communicating mission becomes the defining feature of institutional identity. Explicitly religious organizations provide a venue for understanding the implications of incorporating spirituality in organizational discourse. This empirical study explores a mission-building conference and examines the ways in which communicating a spiritual mission simultaneously enriches and constrains both the individual members and the organizations as a whole
Culivating and Retaining Committed Volunteers: An Analysis of Volunteer Identification in Nonprofit Organizations
No full textWith nonprofit organizations expanding due to a weakened economy and a growing population, there is an increased need for volunteers to staff and support these organizations. Since most nonprofits operate with limited finances, these organizations have to generate and retain a group of effective and committed unpaid organizational members. In this study, I argue that the best way for nonprofits to cultivate efficient and dedicated volunteers is to use communication tactics that encourage members to identify with the organization. I also argue that if volunteers strongly identify with an organization, they are more likely to continue contributing their time and effort to the organization, leading to lower volunteer turnover rates and stronger relationships between the organization and volunteers. In order to discover the ways in which volunteers express identification, I conducted in-depth interviews with volunteers from a Midwestern animal welfare organization. From the interviews, three major themes emerged, including: ways in which participants expressed organizational identification, the organizational struggles participants encountered, the organizational challenges facing identification, and within this final theme, the impact of organizational communication on identification. The results present interesting findings because participants expressed being so identified with the Midwestern Animal Society that they expect to receive information and responsibilities typically given to employees and desire to have personal relationships with employees so as to receive more communication and maintain a more intimate relationship with the organization
Rhetorical Invention, Leadership, And Dialogue: Dorothy Day\u27s Extemporaneous Encounters
No full textDorothy Day, the co-founder and pragmatic leader of The Catholic Worker Movement, delivered extemporaneous speeches from the inception of the movement in 1933 until her death in 1980. Selected digitized, archival copies of her public discourse are analyzed for the first time through a newly developed framework for rhetorical communication and leadership entitledEncounter Rhetoric.
A hybrid model synthesizing the theory of invitational rhetoric, transformational leadership theory, and social movement theory is developed and employed to conduct a critical analysis of 17 speeches delivered by Day between 1958 and 1975. This analysis reveals the rhetorical strategies employed by Day as a social movement leader.
The framework is comprised of five constructs: (1.) principled persuasion as an ethical means to communicate and to lead, (2.) unconditional regard for the value of process, mutuality, and voice, (3.) tentativeness in understanding and concluding, (4.) acknowledgment of paradox in perceptions and conditions, and (5.) collaborative action. These constructs inform Dorothy Day\u27s charismatic eloquence and leadership.
Even as a self-admitted apprehensive speaker, Dorothy Day\u27s public discourse reveals The Catholic Worker Movement\u27s communication strategy as well as a discernible format for extemporaneous dialogical exchange. As an analytical framework and as a rubric for communication practitioners and leaders in other settings, encounter rhetoric is offered as a means for dismantling binary positions and potentially providing relief to otherwise marginalized voices and communities.
In addition, the potential relevance of the framework is considered in relation to new and social media, including reflections upon those parties unwilling or unable to respectfully or safely engage in encounters of mutual regard. The usefulness of encounter rhetoric may be further considered as a tool for analyzing the rhetorical acumen of communicators as leaders and leaders as communicators, especially those orators, reluctant or charismatic, who traditionally have not been included as subjects for study in academic scholarship
Research and the Bottom Line in Today’s University
No full textCiting examples of corporate involvement in university research and decision making, the authors argue that today’s university is characterized by a web of symbiotic relationships which may turn them away from other important priorities, particularly teaching. When universities are scrambling for corporate support, the missions that become most important are conducting research that attracts corporate sponsors, developing marketable products and technologies, maintaining and cultivating ties with the private sector, and fashioning imaginative partnerships with corporate patrons
Transparency in Communication: An Examination of Communication Journals’ Conflicts-of-Interest Policies
No full textIncreased corporate-sponsored university research and professorial consulting has caused medical, psychological, and other scientific journals to adopt conflicts-of-interest disclosure policies. This study examines editorial policies concerning conflicts of interest at communication journals in the context of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The results show that communication journals do not have the same mandatory disclosure requirements that journals of other disciplines have. In this regard, communication research journals are similar to the mass media. Consequently, the article suggests that disclosure policies are needed if communication research journals are to function as part of a larger dialogic process. Moreover, communication researchers are not in a position to criticize the mass media for failing to disclose conflicts of interest when their own journals do not require disclosure
Blurring the Lines Between Personal and Organizational Identity: The Role of Identity Construction on Twitter when Leaders Change Organizations
No full textSaveDisney.com and Activist Challenges: A Habermasian Perspective on Corporate Legitimacy
No full textThis study develops a Habermasian framework for evaluating and generating challenges to organizational legitimacy. The launch of the SaveDisney.com web site represents an innovative example of an Internet-based activist public successfully challenging a corporation’s legitimacy and advocating for changes in corporate governance. Legitimacy research has focused on strategies used by organizations to build legitimacy (e.g., Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975; Metzler, 2001), but scholars rarely address how publics challenge legitimacy claims. Using Habermas’ conceptualization of communicative action and legitimacy to explore the SaveDisney.com case offers insight into ways that activist publics successfully challenge and reject the legitimacy claims of powerful corporations
