Beverly Davenport Sypher

Seeking Emotional Labor: When Managing the Heart Enhances the Work Experience.

Although both scholars and practitioners continue to privilege the “rational” aspects of organization, this article demonstrates the centrality of emotion in the organizing process. The case study method combines observation at a 911 center, interviews with dispatchers, and analysis of selected calls. Departing from most treatments of emotional labor, this article features workers who not only suffer through, cope with, and resist emotional labor but sometimes also seek it out. For these 911 dispatchers, emotional labor is a fun, exciting, and rewarding part of their work. In addition to providing a description of these neglected positive functions of emotional labor, this article speaks to a broader issue: the role of emotional labor in the construction of organizational community.

Listening, Communication Abilities, and Success at Work

Although many have argued that listening is particularly important in organizations, few studies have examined listening and listening skills in this context. This study ex amined relationships between listening, communication related abilities, employee level in an insurance company, and upward mobility. The results indicated significant positive relationships between listening and other social cognitive and communicative abilities. While findings suggested that nonsupervisors tended to possess better listen ing abilities than supervisors, there was some evidence that better listeners were in higher levels of the organization and were more upwardly mobile.

Perceptions of Communication Ability Self-Monitoring in an Organizational Setting

Several researchers have suggested that individual success in organizations can be attributed at least in part to interpersonal and communicative effectiveness. This study examined the relationship between several measures of interpersonal effectiveness and job level in the headquarters of a large international insurance corporation. Participants completed Snyders (1974) self-monitoring instrument and reported on their own communication abilities. Results showed that self-monitoring was related to perceived persuasive ability and to perceived communication effectiveness. However, when the self-monitoring instrument was decomposed into the subscales suggested by Briggs, Cheek, and Buss (1980), the other-directedness subscale was virtually unrelated to any other study variable. Job level in the organization was positively related to self-monitoring and to perceived communication effectiveness.

Reclaiming civil discourse in the workplace

Incivility in the workplace appears to be on a collision course with affluence, competition, technology, mobility, globalization, suburbanization, sleep‐deprived coworkers, and longer work weeks. One only need witness the name calling, public humiliation, and unrestrained emotional tirades at work to heighten our thirst for a sense of decorum and attendant communicative enactments grounded in remoralized expectations. The national study that produced the term “desk rage” to describe inappropriate and offensive displays at work warned of the harmful consequences that have been considered as grave as road rage and domestic partner abuse. This essay reviews the causes and consequences of workplace incivility and offers a typology of actions, behaviors, and terms that describe varying dimensions of intentionality and intensity regarding uncivil displays. The manuscript also offers an explanation of how incivility can be controlling and harmful regardless of the position of the target and intention of the instigator. What is called for is nothing short of a war on words grounded in remoralized behaviors that model and demand civility.

Individual Differences and Construct System Content in Descriptions of Liked and Disliked Co-Workers

Abstract This study examined the construct system content of both liked and disliked coworkers in terms of high and low levels of cognitive differentiation, level in the organization, and upward mobility. Findings revealed a fairly stable impression of “liked” co-workers, who were most often described as persons with integrity who were also considerate and personable. Employees in higher levels of the organization and the more upwardly mobile also included “influence” in their descriptions of liked coworkers with a significantly greater relative frequency than did their lower-level and less mobile counterparts. Impressions of “disliked” co-workers were found to be less tightly organized. Lack of integrity was listed most often in descriptions of disliked co-workers followed by self-centered and insecure. Gender accounted for little difference in the tightly organized descriptions of liked co-workers but had more of an impact on the disliked impressions. Males disliked a lack of integrity more often, and f...

Do Shared Goals Really Make a Difference

The study of organizations has been dominated since its inception by the conceptualization of organizations as goal-attaining entities. However, the degree to which goals are consensually shared and the manner in which organizational goals are communicated remain largely unexplored. Moreover, the relationship between shared goals and organizational outcomes remains unclear. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, this study examined the relationship between shared goals and the manner in which members learn the organizations goals. Second, the relationship between shared goals and organizational outcomes was examined. The study results suggest that the degree to which goals are shared is independent of any single method of communicating goals. Additionally, although perceptions of shared goals were found to be significantly related to important organizational outcome, the extent to which organization members can articulate the shared goals was not significantly related to the organizational outcomes examined in this study.

Personal constructs as indicators of cultural values

This study extended research exploring the values embedded in organization members’ interpersonal constructs. The values unmasked allow for increased understanding of an organizations culture. At the child care center studied, key values included consideration for others, personability, and integrity. Values unique to the organization (such as assertiveness) were highly ranked, suggesting the connection of individual values to an organizations culture. Personal constructs were found to reveal personal values, which grouped together indicated organizational values.

Philanthropy in the Workplace: How a Financial Institution Communicates Charitable Giving Values

As corporations increasingly support Americas philanthropic projects, employees are more likely to receive employer-constructed messages touting the importance of giving and volunteering. This case study employs qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, and archival data, to examine how one financial institution communicated its philanthropic values to employees. Findings reveal that the employer communicated giving values through repetition and consistency of philanthropic discourse and actions. As a result, employees viewed charitableness as an integral part of the organizations overall value system and used charitable values to make sense of other company practices, even those outside the conventional notions of corporate philanthropy.

Cognitive Differentiation and Communication Behavior: The Role Category Questionnaire

This article explores the validity and reliability of Crocketts (1965) Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ) measure of cognitive differentiation as a predictor of communication ability. The RCQ is a “free response” measure that has been shown in previous research to be a valid indicator of social cognitive and communication abilities. This review concludes that the RCQ may prove especially useful in exploring and predicting individual differences in managerial writing, presentation, and interpersonal communication in organizations.