Case Studies in Organizational Communication 1

by Beverly Davenport PhD (Editor)

Overview

Using a descriptive approach to illuminate the topic, this volume presents accounts of how organizational life is accomplished communicatively in a variety of retail, manufacturing, public service, and newspaper organizations. The cases in this book focus on the ways in which communication creates and maintains organizational realities, with some demonstrating how communication can hinder organizational functioning and others highlighting creative and positive uses of different communication practices. Providing a view of organizational life that reflects the experiences of those who have not only observed, but taken part in its functioning, this volume is unique in the breadth of issues covered, the variety of methodological choices used in gathering data, and the focus itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780898622874
Publisher:	Guilford Publications, Inc.
Publication date:	03/23/1990
Series:	The Guilford Communication Series , #1
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Beverly Davenport Sypher, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas where she teaches and does research on organizational communication. In 1987, she was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Chisholm Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and in 1985 she was named a University of Kentucky "Great Teacher." Her research focuses on communication and communication related abilities and their relationship to individual success at work. In addition to the evaluation research at IBM as discussed in this volume, she has also worked on communication projects at CIGNA Corporation, Corning Glass, General Electric, and various nonprofit, governmental, and health-related organizations.

Table of Contents

I. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE ORGANIZATION.
1. The On-Campus Job Screening Interview, Miller & Jablin.
2. The Tale of Two Careers, Jablin & Miller.
II. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE. 3. Organizational Culture and Counterculture: An Uneasy Symbiosis, Martin & Siehl.
4. Corporate Philosophy and Professional Baseball: (Re)Defining the Texas Rangers, Trujillo.
5. Past and Present: Images of Challenger in NASA's Organizational Culture, Brown.
III. ISSUES OF POWER AND ETHICS. 6. Stalking Tiger Brown: Racial Undertones of an Ethical Dilemma, Prather.
7. Power and Sex Roles in the Workplace, Bingham.
8. Communicators Spanning the Boundaries: A Story of Power, Loyalties, and Stress, Allen & Siebert.
9. Stress and Distress in Organizational Life: Too Much Talk and Not Enough Action?, Ray. IV. MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION. 10. Management Communication Issues in the Family Business: The Case of Oak Ridge Trucking Company, Seibold.
11. Shootout at Midwest Manufacturing: When Supervisors and Staff Clash, James & Dewine.
12. The Indictment: A Superior-Subordinate Confrontation, Downs.
13. Implementing Self-Management at Holiday Inn, Zorn.
V. COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE.
14. Changing the Information Culture at the Pearson Company, Fairhurst.
15. Organizational Change at Jones, Lowell, and Smith, Putnam.
16. Unions Learn to Change: The Coming of Toyota to Kentucky, Prather.
17. The Role of Communication in Automating IBM Lexington, Sypher, Sypher, Housel, & Booth.
VI. COMMUNICATION AND NEW TECHNOLOGY.
18. Video Comes to Organizational Communications: The Case of ARCOvision, Ruchinskas , Svenning, & Steinfield.
19. Computer-Mediated Communications in the Organization: Using Electronic Mail at Xerox, Steinfield.
20. TRW Corporation: The Space Park Network Design Decision, Davidson & Housel

Interviews

Instructors and students in communication, business, management, and organizational psychology, as well as professionals involved in corporate training and development. It also serves as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses in organizational communication, organizational behavior, and case study methodology.
 

Editorial Reviews

"At long last, a yawning gap in our literature is being filled with the publication of CASE STUDIES IN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION....The cases are consistently fascinating and always provocative. By exhibiting the enormous complexity of human communication events in the organizational setting, they invite the reader to abandon simplistic notions and to engage in some mind-bending analysis. Now that this book is available, I can hardly conceive of offering a basic course in which it is not required reading, whether as a text or a source book."— W. Charles Redding, Ph.D. Purdue University

From the Publisher