Searching for alternative organizational communication voices: The inscription of an organized labor perspective

Tricia L Hansen-Horn, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to assert and establish the absence of an organizational communication labor voice within the written discourse of organizational communication scholars. The project is framed from a critical social constructionist perspective. The author surveys the idea of labor as it has been treated by communication scholars. This is followed by a review of the phenomenon of managerialism and its influence within the field of organizational communication. The author then uses Social Constructionist Metaphor Analysis (SCMA) as a tool for articulating an organized labor perspective. This is followed by an interrogation of a body of self-reflexive, chronologically-ordered organizational communication discourse for the presence or absence of an organized labor perspective of organizational communication. Three Research Questions drive this dissertation: (1) "How might an organized labor perspective be characterized?" (2) "Is there an organized labor perspective of organizational communication evident in the literary discourse and what does it look like?" and (3) "If there is not an organized labor perspective evident in the organizational communication literature, what is there instead?" The SCMA results of the study characterize an organized labor perspective, indicate that there are limited indices of an organized labor perspective evident within the organizational communication texts, and point to processes of systematic exclusion within the organizational communication texts that bar the inscription of an entire organized labor perspective. The SCMA results are also, themselves, critically reflected upon in a effort to establish research biases influencing them. Chapter Five points out implications for asking research questions, and implications for the ways the field of organizational communication defines, teaches, and reflects upon itself. Implications for the preliminary value of interpellating organized labor perspectives into organizational communication theories and stories are also developed.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Smith, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Communication|Labor relations|Occupational psychology

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