Organizational Communication Focus Area

The Organizational Communication area focuses on the various ways in which we produce, enact, and generally conduct our lives in various organizational contexts. We explore organizations at the interpersonal, cultural, and social levels, with emphasis on creating ethical, constructive communities in both for profit and non-profit settings.

The Faculty

Debbie Dougherty
Research: emotion and power in the workplace; research on emotion examines emotional intelligence, and sense-making and emotions in organizations; research on power looks at power in acquisitions, but more often this line of inquiry has focused on sexual harassment.

Department Focus Areas

Focus Areas:
   Interpersonal Communication
   Organizational Communication
   Mass Communication
   Political Communication

Michael Kramer
Research: three main areas: employee transitions in organizational settings, emotion management in organizations, and group communication processes, particularly in non-profit organizations such as community theater, although he has recently begun investigating the relationship of researchers to institutional review boards.

Rebecca Meisenbach
Research: issues of identity in relation to nonprofit and gendered organizing; a current project examines the identity negotiations of higher education fundraisers, including how the fundraisers construct positive professional identities in the face of stigmatizing societal discourse.

Select Recent Publications

Dougherty, D. S., Kramer, M. W., Klatzke, S. R. & Rogers, T. K. K. (in press) Language convergence and meaning divergence: A meaning centered communication theory. Communication Monographs.

Olson, L. N., Coffelt, T. A., Dougherty, D. S., & Gynn, A. (2007). Doing difference: An intergenerational analysis of the performance of age in the workplace. International and Intercultural Communication Annual.

Dougherty, D. S. (2006). Gendered constructions of power during discourse about sexual harassment: Negotiating competing meanings. Sex Roles, 54 , 495-507.

Atkinson, J., & Dougherty, D. S. (2006). Alternative media and social justice movements: The development of a resistance performance paradigm of audience analysis. The Western Journal of Communication, 70, 64-88.

Dougherty, D. S., & Drumheller, K. (2006). Sensemaking and emotions in organizations: Accounting for emotions in a rational(ized) context . Communication Studies 57, 215-238.

McGuire, T., & Dougherty, D. S., & Atkinson, J. (2006). “Paradoxing the dialectic”: The impact of patients' sexual harassment in the discursive construction of nurses' caregiving roles. Management Communication Quarterly, 19 , 416-450.

Dougherty, D. S., & Atkinson, J. (2006). Competing ethical communities and a researcher's dilemma: The case of a sexual harasser. Qualitative Inquiry, 12, 292-315.

Dougherty, D.S., Kramer, M.K., Hamlett, S.R., & Kurth, T. (Accepted 2008). Language convergence and meaning divergence: An examination of language and meaning for social-sexual behaviors in organizations. Communication Monographs.

Kramer, M.W. (2008). The year of the newborns: A department chair's reflections. Women's Studies in Communication, 31, 196-202 .

Aubrey, J.S., Click, M.A., Dougherty, D.S., Fine, M.A., Kramer, M.W., Meisenbach, R.J., Olson, L.N., & Smythe, M.J. (2008). “We do babies!”: The trials, tribulations, and triumphs of pregnancy and parenting in the academy. Women's Studies in Communication, 31, 186-195 .

Click, M.A., & Kramer, M.W. (2007). Reflections on a century of living: Gendered differences in popular songs. Journal of Popular Communication, 5, 241-262.

Kramer, M.W., Hess, J.A., & Reid, L.D. (2007). Trends in communication scholarship: An analysis of four representative NCA and ICA journals over the last 70 years. Review of Communication, 7, 27-238.

Kramer, M.W., Benoit, P.J., Dixon, M.A., & Benoit-Bryan, J.M. (2007). Group processes in a teaching renewal retreat: Functions and dialectical tensions. Southern Communication Journal, 72, 145-168.

Meisenbach, R. J. (in press). The female breadwinner: Phenomenological experience and gendered identity in work-family spaces. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research .

Buzzanell, P. M., Meisenbach, R., Remke, R., Sterk, H., & Turner, L., (2009). Positioning gender as fundamental in applied communication research. In K. Cissna & L. Frey (Eds.), Handbook of applied communication research (pp. 181-202). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Meisenbach, R. J., & Feldner, S. B. (2009). Dialogue, discourse ethics, and Disney. In R. L. Heath, E. L. Toth, & D. Waymer (Eds.), Rhetorical and critical approaches to public relations II (pp. 253-271). New York: Routledge.

Meisenbach, R. J. (2008). Working with tensions: Materiality, discourse, and (dis)empowerment in occupational identity negotiations among higher education fund raisers. Management Communication Quarterly, 22, 258-287.

Meisenbach, R., Remke, R., Buzzanell, P. M., & Liu, M. (2008). “They allowed”: Pentadic mapping of women's maternity leave discourse as organizational rhetoric. Communication Monographs, 75, 1-24. LEAD ARTICLE
*Article of the Year Award, OSCLG 2009

Feldner, S. B., & Meisenbach, R. J. (2007). SaveDisney.com and activist challenges: A Habermasian perspective on corporate legitimacy. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 1, 207-226.

Meisenbach, R. J. (2006). Habermas' discourse ethics and principle of universalization as moral framework for organizational communication. Management Communication Quarterly, 20, 39-62.

Meisenbach, R. J., & McMillan, J. J. (2006). Blurring the boundaries: Historical developments and future directions in organizational rhetoric . In C. Beck (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 30 (pp. 99-141). Mahweh, NJ: LEA.