Search

Purpose – Project communication is overwhelmingly viewed as the proper and timely delivery of pertinent project information. The view of communication in this way misses the constitutive nature of communication. Communication is more than message exchange but a way that project managers generate the grounds for a project. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the communicative practices of project managers creates a dialogue with stakeholders that ultimately impacts the content, direction and outcome of a project. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were performed with project managers from the Project Management Office of a large international bank. The project managers were responsible for their own projects of varying size with scopes that included everything from marketing initiatives to heavily oriented technology projects. Findings – Overall, the project managers interviewed for the current project do not subscribe to the belief that communication is part of a constitutive dialogue. Instead, when discussing their overall views of communication, 82 percent of the interviewees took a transmission approach to the action. To that end, they believe that the goal of communication is to send clear, unambiguous and complete information. Originality/value – Unlike other studies about communication within the field of project management, the current study looks to uncover how communication is part of a constitutive dialogue between a project manager and project stakeholders. The researchers did not look just to understand the micro-level exchanges between project managers and stakeholders but how those exchanges enabled a sustained dialogue that shapes the scope and trajectory of a project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication is a response that can mitigate and even restore the damage resulting from organizational crisis. Yet what is often asserted in most of the research is that organizations are in a state of crisis and that they are indeed engaging in crisis communication. Sometimes organizations are in controversy as opposed to crisis. The distinction between controversy and crisis, in turn, has implications for the practice of communication. The current paper takes the opportunity to show the fruitful directions to be taken up based on the differences between crisis and controversy and how these differences impact organizational communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research note was to investigate how female leaders in the securities industry use communication to overcome masculine norms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with female leaders in the industry to investigate how they use communication to not only survive in the securities industry, but also to thrive in it. Two specific, yet interrelated, findings were identified. Every female leader interviewed demonstrated an enhanced ability to develop and convey succinct messages that are tailored to the audience. Irrefutably, all 11 of the female leaders interviewed for the current project have adopted the same unique communication competency-one that is unlike traditional communication models. The research findings make a twofold contribution to the literature. First, they explore the consequences of gender in everyday work-life interactions. Second, they illuminate how certain women have handled institutionalized structures within the industry to reach the top of their profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the idea that celebrity public relations has emerged as an inclusive field of communicative practice and that there fruitful directions to be taken up when academic attention is centered on understanding the field. Topics discussed include how the role of communication in cultivating the context where choice is made is undervalued in celebrity studies and how celebrity public relations is discussed in classrooms that attend to public relations or celebrity.