{"title":"The Strategic Aestheticization of Work: How Workers Read Normative Organizational Values in Workplace Imagery","authors":"Peter A. Bacevice, Elizabeth Wilhoit Larson","doi":"10.1177/08933189231203232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231203232","url":null,"abstract":"Organizations strategically invest in the aesthetics of their spaces to communicate about their values, mission, and position within an industry or community. Given the growth of mass visual culture and the circulation of images online, exposure to aestheticized workspaces is pervasive. In light of this heightened awareness of workplace design, we sought to understand how workers make sense of and interpret such images. We conducted a visual study in which office workers responded to images of strategically-designed offices. We found that most participants used sensemaking strategies of interpreting affordances and other salient cues to arrive at generally favorable conclusions about the organizations portrayed; these conclusions largely reflected organizationally-preferred interpretations. However, participants’ sensemaking also revealed how they wrestled with ambiguities of meaning to arrive at their conclusions. We illustrate the power of workplace imagery for communicating normative values about work, workers, and organizations.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135395163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sport Officiating as Aggression Work: A Positioning Analysis of Gendered Emotion Management","authors":"Alaina C. Zanin, Chandler Marr, B. L. Avalos","doi":"10.1177/08933189231200240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231200240","url":null,"abstract":"This study documents how sports officials negotiate aggression from cisgender male athletes as a key feature of their occupational role. Through an ethnographic case study of a collegiate intramural athletic organization, sports officials ( N = 24) were observed while officiating and interviewed about their experiences with athlete aggression. Utilizing a phronetic iterative approach and positioning theory as an analytic framework, three organizational storylines were identified that contribute to the implicit, often gendered, rules related to the experience and expression of aggression in this context. Findings also indicated that male and female officials differed in their positioning strategies in response to athlete aggression, through (a) confidence positioning, (b) stoic positioning, (c) expert positioning, and (d) coercive positioning. Implications for how aggression work and positioning theory might build on past emotion management literature are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47139974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communicative Tensions in Remote Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Camilla Suortti, A. Sivunen","doi":"10.1177/08933189231199052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231199052","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental changes can render latent organizational tensions salient, and tensions can be viewed as a lens through which to study the social interactions of organizational actors. This study aims to uncover what kinds of tensions and their entanglements arise in knowledge workers’ collaboration and technology-mediated communication practices during a transition to remote work. The qualitative dataset was collected through an open-ended online survey at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 from 569 remote workers, and the data were analyzed iteratively according to thematic content analysis methods and applying elements of contrapuntal analysis. The findings indicate emerging tensions and their entanglements in knowledge workers’ remote work and technology-mediated communication practices, here manifesting in process-, task-, and relationship-oriented interactions. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for how entangled tensions in remote work could be managed to support effective communication, collaboration, and employee well-being during and beyond the pandemic situation.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48359877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Family-Supportive Leadership Communication Enhances the Creativity of Work-From-Home Employees during the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Yeunjae Lee, Jarim Kim","doi":"10.1177/08933189221144997","DOIUrl":"10.1177/08933189221144997","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Adapting to the remote working environment has been one of the most visible challenges for many organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. As employee creativity helps organizations' survival and resilience during times of crisis, this study aims to examine the role of leadership communication, family-supportive leadership communication in particular, in fostering creativity among work-from-home employees. The current study specifically focuses on the mediating processes in this relationship and the moderating role of employees' work-life segmentation preferences, using a survey of 449 employees who have worked from home during the COVID-19 outbreak. The results showed that employee-organization relationship (EOR) quality, positive affect, and work-life enrichment mediate the relationship between family-supportive leadership communication and employee creativity. The effects of family-supportive leadership communication on employees' positive affect and work-life enrichment were more prominent for those who prefer to segment their work and lives. This paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for leadership in organizational communication.</p>","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9742737/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49454891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kay Yoon, Cameron W. Piercy, Young Ji Kim, Yaguang Zhu
{"title":"Boundary Work and Transactive Memory Systems in Teams: Moderating Effects of the Visibility Affordance","authors":"Kay Yoon, Cameron W. Piercy, Young Ji Kim, Yaguang Zhu","doi":"10.1177/08933189231192078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231192078","url":null,"abstract":"Individuals in work teams frequently cross boundaries across teams, often by using information and communication technologies (ICTs). The current study investigates the effects of members’ boundary work and the visibility affordance of teams’ ICTs on Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) in teams. Survey data from 212 full-time employees whose work hours were divided between multiple teams reveals that boundary spanning enhances the focal team’s TMS specialization and credibility and negatively influences TMS coordination. Additionally, boundary reinforcement positively affects TMS credibility and coordination. The visibility affordance has a direct positive effect on all three dimensions of TMS and a moderating effect for boundary reinforcement such that higher visibility overrides the positive direct effect of boundary reinforcement on TMS. These findings suggest that different types of boundary work contribute to different dimensions of TMS and that teams might consider prioritizing the use of ICTs with high visibility to enhance their TMS.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48492096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I Only Tell Them the Good Parts:” How Relational Others Influence Paid Careworkers’ Descriptions of Their Work as Meaningful","authors":"Kirstie McAllum, M. Elvira, Marta Villamor Martin","doi":"10.1177/08933189231180133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231180133","url":null,"abstract":"The occupational images associated with paid care work for older adults range from a job carried out by earthly angels to a form of stigmatized dirty work: This ambiguity makes maintaining a committed long-term care workforce challenging. Encouraging careworkers to view their work as meaningful has been touted as a potential solution. Moving beyond a purely subjective approach to meaningfulness, we explore how careworkers construe their work as meaningful and how relational others influence careworkers’ ability to speak about meaningfulness. Others’ messages matter, although their importance depends on relational others’ knowledge of care tasks and involvement in the care relationship. By documenting how others’ accounts both enhance and compromise careworkers’ ability to speak about meaningfulness and moments of meaninglessness, our study identifies sources of meaningfulness for careworkers, a socially essential workforce under-examined by meaningful work research, and extends meaningful work research in contexts where relationships are central to occupational identity.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46388364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a Conceptualization of Corporate Accountability: A Consumer Perspective","authors":"Jonathan Borden, X. Zhang","doi":"10.1177/08933189231180132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231180132","url":null,"abstract":"Corporate accountability remains a significant construct in normative business management theory, yet it remains ambiguous in practice. This research operationalizes a three-factor perceived corporate accountability scale from the consumers’ perspective based on the extant literature then validates this scale among three consumer samples. Perceived corporate accountability consists of three factors: proactive expectancy, reactive expectancy, and accountability enforcement. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45960092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Participatory Practices During Organizational Change: Rethinking Participation and Resistance","authors":"Surabhi Sahay, Christine Goldthwaite","doi":"10.1177/08933189231187883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231187883","url":null,"abstract":"To encourage buy-in and manage resistance, change managers utilize participatory strategies. This study examined the communication practices and perspectives of implementers and employees as they negotiated the change participation process to better understand resistance dynamics. Data were collected through interviews ( n = 37) and observations ( n = 2) with nurses and change implementers in a medical center. Grounded practical theory was used to reconstruct the stakeholders’ normative theories of participation in which multiple and often contradictory perspectives emerged. Asking employees to participate reduced implementers’ perceptions of control and increased their feelings of vulnerability. Implementers often equated participation with resistance and used different communication techniques to shape how nurses shared ideas, influencing their participation. Theoretically, this article adds to the study of participation and resistance by showing how resistance is constituted through communication by both implementers and change recipients as they attempt to navigate the inevitable contradictions that arise during the change process.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47496229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Veteran Contempt for Civilian Communication Scale: Development and Validation","authors":"William T. Howe, Ryan S. Bisel","doi":"10.1177/08933189231186149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231186149","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on the development and validation of a communication measure designed to assess how military veterans feel toward civilian communication. Specifically, we theorize that some veterans experience a mild negative moral emotion (i.e., contempt) toward civilians’ communication habits. The emotion is likely a consequence of intense professional socialization and membership in a totalistic organization. Veterans who served in the military since September 11, 2001 ( N = 215) responded to items, which were factor analyzed. Then, in a second study, the scale was validated using another sample of post-9/11 veterans ( N = 466). Together, these studies contribute an original communication measure that could help identify whether a veteran will have difficulty reintegrating into civilian work life. The scale could be useful in developing interventions to aid veterans in successful reintegration. Ultimately, the measure holds the potential to promote workplace diversity through the successful inclusion of more veterans in the workforce.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49387063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Violent Enactments and Erasures: A Western Capitalist Ontology of Labor in Organizational Rhetoric About Resettled Syrian Refugees","authors":"Jeannette I. Iannacone","doi":"10.1177/08933189231186103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231186103","url":null,"abstract":"With more than half of Syria’s population forced to flee their homes over nearly a decade, the narrative of Syrian refugees has evolved to reflect the realities of their displacement. The purpose of this article is to critique how the rhetoric of organizations meant to serve resettled Syrian refugees can also perpetuate dominant neoliberal and capitalist ideologies that result in harmful discursive practices. More specifically, this essay uses a thematic narrative analysis to examine the manifestation of a Western capitalist ontology of labor in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “Stories” of Syrian refugees. The narratives perpetuated the entrepreneurial ideal, individualized systemic labor challenges, and privileged the organization’s intervention and voice. The analysis subsequently juxtaposes how an organization meant to protect and advocate for refugees can be discursively violent through the enactment of Western, colonizing representations and erasures.","PeriodicalId":47743,"journal":{"name":"Management Communication Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65254416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}