Drawing on 30 interviews with volunteers and employees in community-based organizations, this study theorizes volunteering as the evolution of attachments throughout one’s career, rather than a decision to “give time” driven by fixed motivations. Our theorizing combines insights from interactionism with those of the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective, complemented by Hennion’s notion of attachment. Our analysis reveals that volunteers become attached to tasks, people, and causes through situated interactions, and that these attachments are repeatedly tested in moments of trial. Vignettes illustrate how involvement deepens, shifts, or unravels as individuals navigate organizational constraints, personal identities, and collective commitments. This approach moves beyond psychological models of motivation to show volunteering as a relational accomplishment shaped by organizational environments and power dynamics.

Adopting the Network Theory of Social Capital (NTSC), this study explores how bonding and bridging network ties in collaborative social networks of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) relate to organizational resilience and adaptive capacity following the COVID-19 pandemic. Network data were collected from 59 nonprofits in a midsize U.S. county, yielding a collaboration network comprising 240 partners organizations and 608 ties. Bridging social capital was measured via constraint and betweenness centrality, while bonding social capital was measured via transitivity and closeness centrality. Results show NPO resilience was associated with both forms of bridging social capital, constraint and betweenness centrality, but unrelated to bonding social capital. NPO adaptive capacity was positively associated with closeness centrality, but unrelated to constraint, betweenness centrality, or transitivity. Findings offer insight into NPOs networks, differentiating organizational resilience and adaptive capacity relative to network position, advancing a conceptual distinction between these constructs, and yielding practical insights for NPO collaboration.

How do global team members experience agency while navigating connectivity in their work communication across countries, continents, and time zones? Adopting a phenomenological approach, this study examines this question by investigating how employees in a global organization experience agency as a dialectical interplay of being able and unable to connect, respond, or disconnect. Based on an iterative analysis of interviews with 37 team members, we show how this experience unfolds relationally, shaped by the global context, organizational characteristics, work demands, communication technologies, and coworkers. At the team level, these relations form a dialectical web of freedom and constraint. Our findings advance understanding of how connectivity and agency are co-constituted in global teams, offering theoretical, methodological, and practical insights into the communicative experience of working in globally distributed, technology-mediated environments.

Public sector employees often embody care ethics in their external communication roles; however, the influence of care ethics on internal organizational dynamics remains underexplored. Grounded in the ethic of care theory, this study examines how perceptions of care at the individual level (through caregiver role identity) and the organizational level (via a caring climate) shape employee work stress and quiet quitting intentions. Survey data from 308 self-identified U.S. government employees involved in communication tasks show that personal caregiver identity increases stress and indirectly raises quiet quitting intentions, while a caring organizational climate reduces both. These findings highlight how care perceptions influence employee outcomes differently and question the assumption that care is always positive by revealing the psychological costs associated with unsupported caregiving roles. This research offers a nuanced understanding of care ethics and practical strategies to create workplace environments that support, rather than exploit, care in the public sector.

This case study examines the Korean Air “Nut Rage” incident as a high-profile example of “owner risk” within South Korea’s chaebol system, where inherited family control can lead to public crises. It analyzes Korean Air’s crisis communication strategy, focusing on CEO Cho’s emotion-centered apology on behalf of his daughter, and situates this within Korean cultural expectations around familial responsibility. The case explores how protecting the company’s owner over stakeholders intensified public backlash, especially in an era of social media where traditional media control is ineffective. It also assesses the financial consequences through an event study and investigates the effectiveness of different apology types in restoring public trust. This case is appropriate for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in Crisis Communication, Business Ethics, Corporate Governance, and Asian Business, offering students insights into crisis leadership, corporate accountability, and stakeholder management in family-led firms.

What role do body practices play in the communicative accomplishment of authority in traditional Chinese martial arts organizations (TCMAOs)? This article develops the concept of differential authority, building on Fei Xiaotong’s theory of chaxugeju (differential mode of association), to extend communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) research on authority. Differential authority highlights how instructors demonstrate affiliation with authoritative figures through embodied instruction—especially master demo and testing touch—thereby establishing legitimacy as lineage vectors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a TCMAO in Zhengzhou, China, this study shows how authority is performed, transmitted, and recognized through corporeal, relational practices. Findings reveal the co-constitutive relationship between individual and organizational authority, and the role of embodied instruction in knowledge transfer and continuity. This research situates authority within a culturally specific framework and expands CCO theorizing beyond Western, credential-based models. It opens new directions for examining body-based authority across sociocultural contexts, especially amid globalization and digital mediation.