Search

This study examined volunteer coping and resilience processes in emotionally-taxing work. Based on the reflections of 34 client-facing volunteers with a nonprofit that supports people experiencing homelessness, survivors of human trafficking, and refugee children, we identified four primary processes of volunteer resilience: (a) preemptive support offered at an individual level, (b) promotion of periodic rest from volunteering, (c) reframing and transforming the struggle, and (d) invoking spiritual identity anchors. These findings contribute to resilience theorizing by underscoring the necessary role of both routine social support and rest from emotion work in resilience processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Door-to-door sales is an emotionally demanding job with a high rate of burnout and, as such, has been the subject of multiple studies on employee motivation. However, the role that communication among fellow sales team members plays in salesperson motivation has been largely neglected, which represents a critical gap in research considering the substantial amount of time that teams often spend sharing their sales strategies and experiences. The current research addresses this gap with an ethnographic case study of one door-to-door summer sales team. Analysis of in-depth interviews with salespeople and observational data from meetings and house calls revealed three dichotomies of emotional expression created by the team in their communication. These include: (a) envisioning the job as abhorrent and admirable, (b) performing the role as obscene and humane, and (c) considering team dynamics as wrought with both care and competition. We contend that staying motivated despite the emotional stresses of their jobs required salespeople to embrace these dichotomies, and doing so was powerfully facilitated through team interaction. The applicability of these findings beyond door-to-door sales is discussed, as well as further research needed to develop a more comprehensive model of coworker communication, motivation, and emotion management in service-oriented jobs with elements of dirty work or social taint.

In this essay, we reconsider the traditionally pejorative notion of "going native" and alternatively define the role of a native engaged scholar as distinctly valuable to the study and practice of organizational communication. We envision this role as constituted in three interconnected qualities that we describe as (a) intimacy with the subject matter, setting, or people that stems from one's insider status or firsthand experience, (b) partnership with natives to craft the nature and aims of the research, and (c) commitment to a contribution that proves meaningful for participants over time. In articulating the researcher role of a native engaged scholar, we seek to coalesce disparate practices embraced within engaged scholarship, participatory action research, autoethnography, feminist inquiry, as well as established field researcher roles. Using case illustrations based on colleagues' and our own research, we illustrate this role in action and its benefits. Notwithstanding its merits, we close by acknowledging the inherent tensions of empathy, commitment, and identity that arise when taking on this role in scholarly research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a mission ends, missionaries must make sense of their experiences, themselves, and their lives going forward. This process of sensemaking and its implications for religious organizations' communication with members who occupy terminal roles is the focus of this study. Based on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with former missionaries in one organization, two distinct and divergent patterns of missionaries' sensemaking and role exit emerged. Finisher sensemaking involved deidentification with vocational ministry, leaving the sending organization, and (re)constructing multiple identities through an arduous process of identity work. Conversely, bypasser sensemaking drew upon the sending organization as a resource to sustain a deep identification with vocational ministry. Thus bypassers positioned themselves as essential members and reidentified with new roles in the organization. The ongoing study of communication in/about terminal roles in religious and other totalistic organizations is discussed as well as practical implications for organizations and their members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study expands conceptions of organizational membership by examining individuals whose relationships with their organizations are traditionally characterized as involuntary in nature. Data from inmates and prison employees in four U.S. and Norwegian correctional institutions was examined using structuration theory as an emergent interpretive lens, and five primary ways in which involuntary membership is constructed in communication are identified:physical environment, mobility, relationships, engagement, and body.These facets are presented as the foundation of a continuum-based theoretical perspective on (in)voluntary membership and are discussed for their applicability to future research and theorizing across organizational communication studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Door-to-door sales is an emotionally demanding job with a high rate of burnout and, as such, has been the subject of multiple studies on employee motivation. However, the role that communication among fellow sales team members plays in salesperson motivation has been largely neglected, which represents a critical gap in research considering the substantial amount of time that teams often spend sharing their sales strategies and experiences. The current research addresses this gap with an ethnographic case study of one door-to-door summer sales team. Analysis of in-depth interviews with salespeople and observational data from meetings and house calls revealed three dichotomies of emotional expression created by the team in their communication. These include: (a) envisioning the job as abhorrent and admirable, (b) performing the role as obscene and humane, and (c) considering team dynamics as wrought with both care and competition. We contend that staying motivated despite the emotional stresses of their jobs required salespeople to embrace these dichotomies, and doing so was powerfully facilitated through team interaction. The applicability of these findings beyond door-to-door sales is discussed, as well as further research needed to develop a more comprehensive model of coworker communication, motivation, and emotion management in service-oriented jobs with elements of dirty work or social taint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the social network ties, motivations, and experiences of high-stakes volunteers (HSVs): individuals who fulfill long-term, consistent, and intense time commitments providing medical, social, and/or psychological assistance. Interview, focus group, and observational data from three settings (volunteer firefighting, victims’ services/advocacy, outreach for at-risk youth) were analyzed using qualitative methods. Accordingly, five types of HSVs (stable lifer, imbalanced lifer, conventionalist, professional, crusader) are presented and discussed. These findings advance theoretical insight into the variety of individuals who take on HSV roles and contribute to growing scholarship on diversified approaches to volunteer management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between sorority communication practices and members’ body images through the lens of organizational socialization and identification. Specifically, we analyzed 210 sorority members’ memorable messages concerning weight and physical appearance using an inductive coding method. While many of the messages examined were affirming or complimentary in nature, the results of the analysis suggest that these types of messages may positively as well as negatively influence members’ body images, behaviors regarding physical appearance, and social identities. These findings contribute to scholarly and practical understandings of the influences on college women’s body image and health and the potentially powerful role that organizations play in shaping members’ attitudes and actions concerning their eating, exercise, and other aspects of their appearance. Implications for future health communication research in other organizational contexts outside of sororities are also discussed. Additionally, the findings of the current study indicate the broad utility of a memorable messages approach and suggest the need for further examination of the ways in which differing organizational dynamics may demonstrate divergence from traditional sources of memorable messages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]