A Decade of Organizational Communication Research: Journal Articles 1980–1991

Allen, Myria Watkins; Gotcher, J. Micheal; Seibert, Joy Hart

doi:10.1080/23808985.1993.11678856

“…Redding (1996) chastised organizational communica-tion researchers for virtually ignoring ethics. Earlier reviews (e.g., Allen et al, 1993) had found limited coverage of ethics; DeWine and Daniels (1993) noted that research into ethical issues has been pursued most often by rhetoricians, not social scientists. More recently, Cheney and Christensen (2001) highlighted the need to consider the integrity and consequences of messages relayed within and outside organizations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a challenge to both theory and methodology in the area, Allen et al (1993) argued that researchers must develop more complex research designs that take account of social and contextual factors affecting organizations and their communication processes. Miller (2001) urged quantitative researchers in particular to provide more background information on the rationale underlying their methodology, as well as explicitly acknowledging the relationship between their findings and the context in which the research was conducted.…”

Section: Impact Of Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wert-Gray et al (1991) encouraged researchers to conduct research in actual organizations, rather than in simulated situations. Likewise, Allen et al (1993) stressed the need to move away from survey studies and focus on naturally occurring communication in the workplace, with longitudinal research as crucial. Lewis and Seibold (1998) echoed this view in the area of organizational change.…”

Section: Impact Of Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Organizational Communication: Challenges for the New Century

Jones

¹

,

Watson

²

,

Gardner

³

et al. 2004

Journal of Communication

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Organizational communication covers an eclectic mix of approaches, theories, and methodologies, developed within organizational settings or applied from other areas. The authors start their assessment of recent literature with 6 challenges for the field that have been delineated in previous reviews: (a) to innovate in theory and methodology, (b) to acknowledge the role of ethics, (c) to move from micro-to macrolevel issues, (d) to examine new organizational structures and technologies, (e) to understand the communication of organizational change, and (f) to explore diversity and intergroup aspects of communication. All 6 challenges implicate the importance of considering the intergroup level of analysis as well as the interpersonal and organizational levels, to undertake multilevel research in context, and to consider the role and place of voice in organizations. Finally, researchers must make their research ethical and consequential.

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“…NOTES 1. This is a marked shift from the 80s and early 90s, when the lion's share of organizational communication research was focused on interpersonal relations in organizational contexts (Allen, Gotcher, & Seibert, 1993).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying Complex Discursive Systems: Centering Resonance Analysis of Communication

Corman¹

2002

Human Communication Research

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Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories: limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collectives. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is a new text analysis method that has broad scope and range and can be applied to large quantities of written text and transcribed conversation. It identifies discursively important words and represents these as a network, then uses structural properties of the network to index word importance. CRA networks can be directly visualized and can be scored for resonance with other networks to support a number of spatial analysis methods. Following a critique of existing methodologies, this paper describes the theoretical basis and operational details of CRA, describes its advantages relative to other techniques, demonstrates its face validity and representational validity, and demonstrates its utility in modeling organizational knowledge. The conclusion argues for its applicability in several organizational research contexts before describing its potential for use in a broader range of applications, including media content analysis, conversation analysis, computer simulations, and models of communication systems.1986; Schiffrin, 1994) makes conversation and interaction analysis less common than perhaps it should be in the communication discipline. Moving to the small group level, the detailed study of interaction is more difficult and rare still, and at the multigroup (i.e. organizational or cultural) level it is virtually unheard of. As our emerging theories and models of communication grow in scope to embrace complex collective phenomena, we risk making them unworkable as guides for empirical research. Put simply, we worry that the existing body of communication research methods is incapable of handling the complexity being theorized in the discipline.In this article, we propose a general analytical framework called centering resonance analysis (CRA), a flexible means of representing the content of large sets of messages, and assisting in their analysis. We present CRA as a text analysis method, suited to studying formalized communication like reports, letters, memos, emails, and other written texts. However, as we illustrate below, CRA is also applicable to transcribed conversations. Developments in voice recognition technology promise the ability in the near future to "textualize" live conversation, making it amenable to CRA methods as well. In establishing the need for CRA, we ground our arguments in the concerns of organizational communication because this is where the need to study large volumes of communication is especially acute. However, this does not mean CRA is only useful in research on formal organizations. As we explain in the conclusion, CRA has many applications in the broader discipline to problems in rhetoric, mass c...

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“…This is a marked shift from the 80s and early 90s, when the lion's share of organizational communication research was focused on interpersonal relations in organizational contexts (Allen, Gotcher, & Seibert, 1993). As one solution to this problem we proposed CRA, which represents texts or transcribed conversations as networks of centering words.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying Complex Discursive Systems..

Corman

¹

,

Kuhn

²

,

McPhee

³

et al. 2002

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholars increasingly theorize about the power of communication to organize and structure social collectives. However, two factors threaten to impede research on these theories: limitations in the scope and range of existing methods for studying complex systems of communication and the large volume of communication produced by even small collectives. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is a new text analysis method that has broad scope and range and can be applied to large quantities of written text and transcribed conversation. It identifies discursively important words and represents these as a network, then uses structural properties of the network to index word importance. CRA networks can be directly visualized and can be scored for resonance with other networks to support a number of spatial analysis methods. Following a critique of existing methodologies, this paper describes the theoretical basis and operational details of CRA, describes its advantages relative to other techniques, demonstrates its face validity and representational validity, and demonstrates its utility in modeling organizational knowledge. The conclusion argues for its applicability in several organizational research contexts before describing its potential for use in a broader range of applications, including media content analysis, conversation analysis, computer simulations, and models of communication systems.1986; Schiffrin, 1994) makes conversation and interaction analysis less common than perhaps it should be in the communication discipline. Moving to the small group level, the detailed study of interaction is more difficult and rare still, and at the multigroup (i.e. organizational or cultural) level it is virtually unheard of. As our emerging theories and models of communication grow in scope to embrace complex collective phenomena, we risk making them unworkable as guides for empirical research. Put simply, we worry that the existing body of communication research methods is incapable of handling the complexity being theorized in the discipline.In this article, we propose a general analytical framework called centering resonance analysis (CRA), a flexible means of representing the content of large sets of messages, and assisting in their analysis. We present CRA as a text analysis method, suited to studying formalized communication like reports, letters, memos, emails, and other written texts. However, as we illustrate below, CRA is also applicable to transcribed conversations. Developments in voice recognition technology promise the ability in the near future to "textualize" live conversation, making it amenable to CRA methods as well. In establishing the need for CRA, we ground our arguments in the concerns of organizational communication because this is where the need to study large volumes of communication is especially acute. However, this does not mean CRA is only useful in research on formal organizations. As we explain in the conclusion, CRA has many applications in the broader discipline to problems in rhetoric, mass c...

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A Decade of Organizational Communication Research: Journal Articles 1980–1991

Cited by 24 publications

References 51 publications

Organizational Communication: Challenges for the New Century

Organizational Communication: Challenges for the New Century

Studying Complex Discursive Systems: Centering Resonance Analysis of Communication

Studying Complex Discursive Systems..

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