Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies

Download or read book Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies written by Dennis K. Mumby and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2011 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the increasingly diverse terrain of 21st century organizational life, research-ers and students are exploring theoretical frameworks and analytic tools that attempt to understand organizing proc-esses in all of their richness and complexity. As such, there is widespread recognition of the need to ex-amine organizations as constructed through, and repositories of, difference; that is, as complex intersec-tions of discourses of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other markers of difference. In this sense, organi-zations are one of the principal sites where differences that make a difference (Bateson) are produced and reproduced. Communication is not something that simply occurs in organizations; rather, organizing processes are constituted and made meaningful by the mundane communication practices of its members. This book examines difference as a communicative phenomenon: The differences that make a difference are social and material constructions that can be productively understood by examining them as communica-tively accomplished. All of the scholars in this volume explore difference from a variety of per-spectives, each of which examines systematically the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference. KEY FEATURES & BENEFITS: The book explores the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference through three foci: (1) Research, (2) Pedagogy, and (3) Practice. In Section I-Researching Difference, organizational communication scholars explore a number of ways in which differ-ence can be critically examined as a communicative phenomenon, with the goal being to demonstrate the importance of difference as a construct a sensitizing device through which the complexities of organiza-tional communication processes can be examined and better understood. In Section II-Teaching Difference, chapters move beyond teaching diversity in the workplace and instead explore how students can learn to appreciate