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This research examines members' interpretations of family-like short-term organizational groups, identification with the group, and the experience of exit. In-depth interviews with former group members revealed functional, balanced, and enmeshed interpretations of family. Interpretations corresponded with different levels and forms of organizational identification shaped through four communicative processes - bonding, emotional expression, self-disclosure, and defining group experiences. Based on these findings, recommendations for the continued study of short-term membership, identification, and organizational socialization are presented. [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]