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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 explicates dialectical tensions in volunteer–manager communication stemming from the contested nature of volunteering and fluidity of volunteer membership. Interviews and observations of volunteers and supervisors in three nonprofit organizational contexts revealed four central tensions that are dialectical in nature: an attraction-adjustment dialectic in the socialization of prospective and new volunteers, an ownership-oversight dialectic regarding volunteer–manager negotiation of volunteer agency and autonomy, a formalization-flexibility dialectic concerning managerial expressions of expectations for volunteer performance and commitment, and an intimacy-distance dialectic pertaining to the scope and bounds of volunteers’ relationships within and outside their respective organizations. Based on these findings, we offer insight into how volunteers and managers might envision these tensions constructively as complementary dialectics. We also suggest starting points for future communication-centered theory and research on volunteer management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]