Organizational Communication Research Research Articles

Book Review: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication

Book Review: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication

Analisis Komunikasi Organisasi Pengurus Pramuka DKC Sidoarjo dalam Melaksanakan Program Kerja Lomba Prestasi Penegak

The activity of the Enforcer Achievement Competition is to realize creative and highly competitive Sidoarjo scouts. The form of activities of the Enforcer Achievement Competition is the General Competition and Optional Competition. In conducting LPP activities requires good and correct organizational communication. The purpose of this study is to analyze organizational communication carried out in the LPP committee management where the communication can provide reciprocity so that the message is successfully conveyed so that the LPP committee can carry out its duties and achieve common goals. The method in this research uses descriptive qualitative method. Data was collected through interviews conducted with ten informants with the condition that the LPP committee informant. The result of organizational communication research on the management of the LPP committee is that the communication that occurs runs smoothly and effectively. Organizational communication is carried out openly so that all committees can provide ideas or ideas and all committees can work together harmoniously and all LPP administrators can provide information and manage important information in the organization that makes them able to understand the messages conveyed so that they can make decisions together with the LPP committee in order to achieve the desired goals together. The benefit of this research is to improve organizational communication among Sidoarjo DKC Scout administrators in achieving organizational goals.

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication. Boris H. J. M. Brummans, Bryan C. Taylor, and Anu Sivunen (Eds.)

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication. Boris H. J. M. Brummans, Bryan C. Taylor, and Anu Sivunen (Eds.)

Reconsidering the Problem of Common-Method Variance in Organizational Communication Research

This manuscript details the different attributes associated with the problem of common-method variance. First, upon defining validity, we review the two primary ways by which scholars attempt to control for common-method variance, and in doing so discuss their merits. Second, we provide two alternative explanations that may also account for the appearance of disparate correlations, neither of which have to do with common-method variance. Finally, we offer a set of parsimonious solutions for the problem of common-method variance, namely CFA without correlated residuals or modeled method factors. Overall, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide guidance for organizational communication scholars when dealing with this problem.

Shells, Fronts, Astroturfing, and Beyond: Examining Concealment Strategies of Proxy Organizations

This study investigates what we call proxy organizations (e.g., shell companies, front organizations, astroturfing efforts). Drawing on existing literature to better conceptualize proxy organizations and their communicative nature, we position these proxy organizations within scholarship on visibility management and hidden organizing. To answer research questions about public discourse around these proxies and their use of concealment strategies, we analyze news coverage of these organizations from 2001, 2011, and 2021. Findings suggest sizable increases in discourse about each proxy type. Additionally, analysis reveals several concealment themes in that media coverage: dark/secret money/finances, hidden owners, shadowy influence, anonymous proxies, covert links, online concealment, secret/illegal activities, and revelation safety/fear. We then draw conclusions, discuss implications, and suggest directions for future organizational communication research about proxy organizations.

“They are always ambiguous when they don't know how it will turn out.” Dissemination, Practices, and Ethical Assessment of Strategic Ambiguity

Strategic ambiguity increases an organization's scope for action. Ambiguous statements are, among other things, easier to deny; they also facilitate change. Strategic ambiguity has long been a theoretically well-established practice in organizational communication research. To date, the substantial number of theoretical and conceptual contributions has been contrasted by relatively few empirical studies of strategic ambiguity. This is the starting point of the present paper, which provides answers to the following research questions: How are the use and diffusion of strategic ambiguity perceived? What goals are pursued with strategic ambiguity? What ambiguous practices are used in strategic political communication? And finally: How is strategic ambiguity assessed ethically? To answer the research questions, semi-structured interviews were conducted. In addition to political PR practitioners, political journalists were also interviewed in order to contrast the self-assessments of PR practitioners with the external assessments of journalists. The results show that strategic ambiguity is perceived as very common in the field of politics. From an ethical perspective, strategic ambiguity is evaluated ambivalently: Protective motives, which are evaluated as legitimate, are contrasted with deliberately deceptive motives, which are evaluated as illegitimate.

The overlap between workplace bullying and organizational dissent in New Zealand

Purpose This study aims to examine the extent to which organizational dissent predicts perception of workplace bullying. As previous studies have reported inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results regarding the interaction between the reporting of bullying and demographic variables, these variables are examined in the New Zealand context. Organizational communication research provides considerable insight into the ways individuals make sense of and resist workplace bullying through juxtaposition with the concepts of dissent and intragroup conflict. Design/methodology/approach A nationally representative sample of managers in New Zealand (n = 239) was conducted. Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: Organizational Dissent Scale and Negative Acts Questionnaire Revised Scale. Findings Key results and indications for further research are highlighted by the third model in this study. First, workers who reported they engaged in either articulated dissent or latent dissent were more likely to perceive workplace bullying. Second, workers who are more likely to express contrary opinions in the workplace are more likely to recognize, acknowledge and tolerate less positive interactions in the workplace such as bullying. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze dissent and bullying in the New Zealand context. Second, this research raises the question of whether there is a conflation of work-related bullying behaviors and bad leadership styles that may not be targeted (e.g. authoritative leadership and micromanaging). Finally, communication research provides a distinctive contribution by exploring the narrative form of worker responses to perceived bullying. In this manuscript, the authors examine potential predictors on the perception of workplace bullying in the context of New Zealand, particularly focus on the relationship between dissent and the perception of workplace bullying.

Ecological constraints on audience size in the digital media system: evidence from the longitudinal tracking data from 2019 to 2022

Abstract The current high-choice media environment is characterized by increasingly intense competition for audience resources among media products. Drawing on research in organizational ecology and communication, audience behavior, and media economics, this study provides an ecological explanation for audience size in the digital media system. The analysis of Comscore’s aggregate audience data on the use of 64 digital media platforms over a 38-month period from 2019 to 2022 shows that a platform’s audience size is negatively associated with its niche overlap with another platform. This competitive effect of niche overlap on a platform’s current audience size is moderated by its previous audience size (size dependence) and species membership in the environment (species dependence). The results also support the short- and long-term stability of audience size.

“We Like the stock!”: Partial Organizing, Latency, and Communicative Contestations of Actorhood in r/WallStreetBets

This work investigates the dynamic of organizing without being organized on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets (WSB). Guided by tenets of partial organizing and organizationality frameworks, findings reveal how momentum building, validating, and membership affirming communication flows constitute the organization by latently interconnecting decisions. As external entities attribute actorhood to the collective, maintaining deniability flows reduce the actorhood, and thus culpability, of the organization. This article adds to organizational communication research by theorizing the role of latent and embedded forms of communication in partial organizing processes and conceptualizing organizational actorhood, not as a stable property, but as held in constant communicative flux.

A Dual-Process Model of Promoting Employee Mental Health in Crises: Impacts of Leadership Health Support and Organizational Leaders’ Crisis Communication in COVID-19

ABSTRACT This study examined how organizations may promote their employees’ mental health in difficult times. Drawing from organizational crisis communication and organizational health promotion research, it proposed and tested a dual-process model that links leadership health support, an essential dimension of organizational health culture, with organizational leaders’ crisis communication (i.e. use of ethical-base responses) and workers’ self-care awareness and perceived stress in a crisis. Through a survey of 502 full-time U.S. employees conducted during COVID-19, we found that organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses predicted employees’ enhanced self-care awareness and decreased stress levels. Further, leadership health support provided a double-buffer effect to sustain employee mental health by directly bolstering employees’ self-care awareness and organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses. The findings of this study bridge the gaps in organizational health promotion and crisis communication literature and offer practical suggestions for organizations seeking to foster employees’ mental health challenges during crises.

Politics of Transnational Feminism to Decolonize Feminist Organizational Communication: A Call to Action

We draw upon transnational feminism as a theoretical resource to outline decolonial thinking for feminist organizational communication in this essay. Decolonial perspectives in transnational feminism reinforce antiracist, anticapitalist, and anti-imperial interventions in theory, practice and activism. We argue that the assumptions of neoliberal hegemony and imperial legacy remain largely unchallenged in feminist organizational communication research and call for rigorous examination of global capitalism and its close links with colonization of knowledge to make the project of the empire visible. Our recommendations urge shifting dominant sites of knowledge-making to epistemologies of disenfranchised women and generating insurgent knowledges by carefully forging non-exploitative collaborative relationships with activists and communities of struggle. We hope these agendas offer new imaginings to decolonize imperial legacies, address historical absences and silences, and invigorate social justice orientation in the field.

Interactive Management Research in Organizational Communication

In this research methods essay, we describe Interactive Management Research (IMR), a participatory action research methodology with extensive applications in organizational settings but new to organizational communication research. IMR offers possibilities as a participant-centered methodology that is particularly well suited for complex organizational design situations requiring a systems perspective. We detail two versions of IMR, an interview-based method (IMRi) and a group-based method (IMRg), using a case study of each method to illustrate their application to organizational communication research. We believe IMR is an approach to participatory action research that can provide unique insights into the systems thinking and communication that shapes organizations and organizing.

Internal communication in enterprises located in Poland with the use of means of electronic communication – research findings

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to describe the means of electronic communication used by companies for internal communication, to rank them according to the frequency of use by organizations, and to identify the attributes of the organization affecting the frequency of use of these means. Design/methodology/approach: The article is based on a review of the literature in the field of organizational communication and own research. The research was conducted by means of a diagnostic survey among 225 companies located in Poland (16 provinces) using the CAWI technique and an author's survey questionnaire. Findings: The survey results illustrate the high and continuing popularity of e-mail communication and the untapped potential of tools designed for team and project work. No correlation was noted between the use of means of electronic communication with the scope of the company, the form of ownership of the company, the ownership capital and the respondent (manager, IT manager, owner, board member). The correlation related to the use of e-communication means and the size of the company appears only in the case of e-mail and electronic workflow systems. A similar relationship, but involving more electronic communication means, appears for the degree of computerization of the company. Research limitations/implications: A certain difficulty, already at the design stage of the survey, was the preparation of a list of means of electronic communication. There is not one in the literature that is exhaustive, disjointed and accepted by all. This fact points to the need for research and findings in this area. The risks accompanying the study are related to the development of technology and the obsolescence of specific communication tools. Originality/value: The paper is primarily of cognitive value. The findings allow those responsible for communication in an organization to confront the means of electronic communication used in their organization with those used by others. It also illustrates the untapped potential of electronic tools for team or project work. The results of the study can serve as a reference point for further comparative research. The paper draws attention to the area of intra-organizational communication, which is still unstable and under development in the Polish reality. Keywords: internal communication, means of electronic communication. Category of the paper: research paper.

Incommunication and disorganisation in organizational communication research. Exploring an invisibilised controversy

Cet article interroge une controverse invisibilisée qui traverse le champ de la communication organisationnelle, et oppose différentes conceptions de la relation entre communication et organisations. Une première partie questionne les rapports communication – incommunication (Robert, 2005) et opère une mise en perspective avec différents modes d’agencement de l’action collective constitutifs des espaces organisés. Une seconde partie propose d’identifier différents paradigmes dans les recherches existantes, certains considérant que l’incommunication peut être dépassée de manière relativement aisée, et d’autres mettant davantage l’accent sur le caractère structurellement incommunicationnel du social, d’où émerge un ordre contraint et temporaire.

Applying Hierarchical Mapping Techniques to the Study of Interpersonal Communication: Descriptive Features of the Social Network

Social networks remain a relatively understudied topic in the field of interpersonal communication. As such, the hierarchical mapping technique (HMT) can help shed light on the levels of closeness that people share with their network members. For interpersonal, organizational, and family communication researchers, this gap is tremendously important, as uncovering trends in relationship closeness is pivotal to understanding the individuals/roles/relationships that bear the most weight in a person’s life. The present study utilized HMT to explore which type(s) of relationships people believe are closest to them, as well as which people are mildly close and also rather distant. Results demonstrated that most people consider their parents, siblings, children, best friends, and roommates as first-tier network members. Common second-tier relationships included cousins, aunts/uncles, friends, and non-biological siblings. Common third-tier relationships included patrons, acquaintances, neighbors, and idols. Moreover, there were statistical similarities across a variety of network relationships, indicating that there is substantial variance in the sorts of relationships that people typically consider close, interpersonal, and distant. Results are discussed in terms of both theoretical and methodological significance.

Brazilian White-Collar Employees’ Discourses of Meaningful Work and Calling

The search for meaningfulness in work is considered a human need, resulting in growing communication and interdisciplinary scholarship. However, most studies are quantitative and situated in Western, developed nations with different discourses and materialities based on whether studies focus on economically mainstream or marginal, but symbolically significant, occupations. Our study explores Brazilian white-collar employees' accounts of meaningful work. Three themes emerged from interview data: being competent, being an explorer, and being a builder of a better world. Participants cast meaningful work as tensional processes within and across themes, reflecting characteristics of Brazilian middle classes and globalized discourses. As participants aspired to meaningful work, they experienced dysfunctional and corrupt work cultures, toxic workplace relationships, and shifts in their worldviews that deflated their sense of meaningfulness, resulting in reported psychological distancing, emotional distress, and turnover intentions. We encourage organizational communication researchers to take up the 2009 MCQ call for further studies in Brazil.

Communicating inclusion: a review and research agenda on inclusion research in organizational communication

ABSTRACT Inclusion is a topic of interest to many organizational communication scholars and is often implicit in research, but not fully articulated. In this paper, we review the published English-language organizational communication literature on inclusion. The major themes in the literature are inclusion as a discourse of difference, inclusion as voice and participation, inclusion-exclusion as tension, inclusion as communicative practices, and inclusion as a call to action. To begin to address the lack of explicit theorization of inclusion in organizational communication, we foreground a series of working principles derived from extant scholarship to guide future research and practice on critical inclusion. We suggest several areas for future research based on these principles and conclude with practical suggestions for communication scholars to practice inclusivity.

Uma metodologia reflexiva para desocidentalizar o subcampo da Comunicação Organizacional LatinoAmericana

Abstract This paper aims to develop a reflexive methodology to explore the production of knowledge of the subfield of Organizational Communication research, considering the contextual, institutional, and cultural realities of the Latin American region. For this purpose, responding to the recent calls to de-westernized Communication, this paper adopted a “bottom-up” approach, which favors the realities experienced by Latin American Organizational Communication researchers and scholars. The proposed methodology provides a model that can serve as an example to de-westernize knowledge production in related fields.

Book review: Movements in Organizational Communication Research: Current Issues and Future Directions

Book review: Movements in Organizational Communication Research: Current Issues and Future Directions

DA’WAH HIDAYATULLAH COMMUNICATION STRATEGY IN SOCIALIZING ISLAMIC RELIGION IN TANA TORAJA DISTRICT

The communication strategy carried out by the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute in Tana Toraja Regency is an effort to spread Islamic education in Indonesia. The urgency of this research is increasingly visible because the Hidayatullah Institute is in a Christian-majority area. This study aims to describe the communication strategies carried out by the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute in disseminating Islamic education in Toraja Regency and aims to determine the supporting and inhibiting factors of the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute in disseminating Islamic religious education in Tana Toraja Regency. The research method used is descriptive qualitative using an organizational communication research approach—data obtained through observation, in-depth interviews (in-depth interview), and documentation. The purposive sampling technique determines informants according to their position and work position in the organization. This study indicates four communication strategies by the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute, namely (1) through the marriage system. (2) Moving door to door. (3) Through the field of recitation and (4) Through the field of politics. The results of further research are the supporting and inhibiting factors of the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute. Supporting factors (1) Strong militancy of Hidayatullah cadres (internal). (2) full support from the government (external). The inhibiting factor (1) The lack of Hidayatullah cadres in Tana Toraja Regency (internal). (2) Lack of network facilities and strong local traditions of Tana Toraja (external). This research has a research limitation which only describes aspects of the communication strategy carried out by the Hidayatullah Da’wah Institute in Tana Toraja Regency. This research is interesting because the object of research is in areas with the majority outside of Islam.