Homelessness in today's urban centers poses a problem of huge proportions. Increasingly, the homeless and the urban dilemma are intertwined. Cause and effect are blurred as the needs of the homeless confront and affront while shaping urban policy. Because of the diverse nature and needs of the American homeless population, individual organizations are not able to provide the range of services necessary for survival on the street and long-term recovery off the street. The authors present a grounded theory study of coordination and communication in the provision of service to the urban homeless. They begin by reviewing theoretical perspectives on communication and coordination in interorganizational relationships. They then consider this literature in light of the urban homelessness context.
We detail the experiences of a department of six faculty members in negotiating spirituality in a Jesuit, Catholic University. Grounding our work in ''co-constructed narrative'' as a method, we utilize narratives gathered through self-reflection, conversation, and interviews to elucidate how contradictory conditions are created through competing discourses of spiritual values and secular practices. These competing discourses create tensions of (a) embracing=resisting, (b) inclusion=exclusion, and (c) proclamation=silence. Faculty narratives revealed the ways they frame and negotiate these tensions in their attempts to construct their identities in relation to the organization and its values. Dialogic theory
Burnout is an often-cited danger of human service work, and emotional communication is one of the most important causes of burnout in such jobs. In this paper, we review theoretical work on emotional communication and burnout, concentrating on the Empathic Communication Model of Burnout (Miller, Stiff, & Ellis, 1988). We then argue that a consideration of job involvement, organizational role, and attitude regarding service recipients could enhance the extent to which this model constitutes a complete understanding of the burnout process. We pose several research questions and one hypothesis regarding the role of these variables in affecting the fit of the Empathic Communication Model and test them with a sample of workers who provide services to the homeless. The results of our research provide support for a modified version of the Empathic Communication Model and suggest that the moderating variables of job involvement, organizational role, and attitude about service recipients influence the impact of various portions of the model in explaining burnout.
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