Engaging Organizational and Communication Theory and Research: Multiple Perspectives

"This book offers a refreshing and engaging overview of the ways some research traditions in organizational communication have unfolded over time and continue to be connected to everyday, real events."
―Patrice Buzzanell, Purdue University
 
Engaging Organizational Communication Theory and Research: Multiple Perspectives is a book unlike any in the field. Each chapter is written by a prominent scholar who presents a theoretical perspective and discusses how he or she "engages" with it, personally examining what it means to study organizations. Rejecting the traditional model of a "reader," this volume demonstrates the intimate connections among theory, research, and personal experience.

Significant theoretical perspectives such as post-positivism, social construction, rhetoric, critical theory, feminism, postmodernism, structuration theory, and globalization are discussed in terms of their history, assumptions, development, propositions, research, and applications. In addition to editors Steve May and Dennis K. Mumby, contributors include Brenda J. Allen, Karen Lee Ashcraft, George Cheney, Steven R. Corman, Stanley Deetz, Robert McPhee, Marshall Scott Poole, Cynthia Stohl, Bryan C. Taylor, and James R. Taylor.

Key Features
• An introduction that addresses the idea of engaged research.
• Accessible and cutting edge accounts of important research traditions written by well-known leaders in the field.
• Personal accounts of each scholar′s place in his or her field of study.
• A conclusion that explores the future of organizational communication studies.
• An extensive body of references on each perspective.

Engaging Organizational Communication Theory and Research is an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to be familiar with current trends in the field of organizational communication. It is recommended as the main text for upper-level undergraduate and entry-level graduate courses in organizational communication theory. It is also an excellent supplementary text for related courses in departments of communication studies, business and management, sociology, and industrial relations.

 

Steve May (Ph.D., University of Utah, 1993) is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Leadership Fellow at the Institute for the Arts and the Humanities, an Ethics Fellow at the Parr Center for Ethics, and a researcher and ethics consultant for the Ethics at Work program at the Kenan Institute for Ethics He is co-editor, with George Cheney and Debashish Munshi, of The Handbook of Communication Ethics and, with Oyvind Ihlen and Jennifer Bartlett, of The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility. His organizational communication research has been published in journals such as Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Public Policy Yearbook, and Organizational Communication: Emerging Perspectives. He is a past Forum Editor of Management Communication Quarterly and Associate Editor of The Journal of Applied Communication Research and The Journal of Business Communication.

Dennis K. Mumby is the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Communication at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.  His research focuses on the communicative dynamics of organizational control and resistance under neoliberalism.  He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, and a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar. He has authored or edited 7 books and over 60 articles in the area of critical organization studies, and his work has appeared in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization Studies, Organization, and Human Relations.  He is past chair of the Organizational Communication Division of NCA, and an 8-time winner of the division’s annual research award.  He has served as chair of the Organizational Communication Division of the International Communication Association, and is a recipient of the division’s Fredric M. Jablin Award for contributions to the field of organizational communication.