Colleen Mills

Coming out of the closet: negotiating spiritual expression in the workplace

Current spirit at work literature often assumes spirituality needs to be introduced to the workplace. This paper offers an additional perspective, arguing that spirituality is already present, as many individuals have spiritual beliefs but struggle to articulate or enact these beliefs at work. Exploratory narrative research revealed frequent references to a lack of safety in expressing spirituality at work. The question is why and how do individuals silence their spiritual expression. This paper explores this question and presents a model that captures the ongoing experiential nature of spirituality and proposes that decisions about spiritual expression in the workplace are complex meshes of stimulus, decision‐making and action cycles (SDAs) that are embedded in the individual’s sensemaking, interpersonal relationships and group dynamics. Findings are explained through different theoretical lenses such as diversity management, social identity theory, social penetration theory and affective sensemaking theory.

Experiencing Gossip: The Foundations for a Theory of Embedded Organizational Gossip

This article presents findings on the nature and operation of gossip that emerged from an empirical study of organizational communication during a chief executive officer (CEO) succession process. By studying gossip within the context of a broader study of change-related communication, new insights were gained that extend, and in some respects challenge, commonly accepted views of the nature of gossip. The findings suggest gossip is experienced as coupled to or embedded in the other forms of change communication employees encountered across the CEO succession process. Gossip appears to be experienced as an integral part of sensemaking and social exchange and not as a phenomenon that can be fully understood in isolation to the formal and other types of informal communication that contribute to these processes. These findings provide the foundations for a theory of embedded organizational gossip that is offered here as a framework for further empirical study.

Integrating motivation, risk-taking and self-identity: A typology of ICT enterprise development narratives

This article describes an original typology of enterprise development narratives that emerged from a study of the motivation, risk-taking and self-identity of nascent ICT (information and communications technology) entrepreneurs. The typology provides a multifaceted and integrated framework for appreciating an entrepreneur’s quest to align ‘who I am and what I do’ and achieve what we are calling the ‘self-enterprise fit’. As such, it promises to provide a valuable framework for (re)locating the ‘psychology of entrepreneurship’ in entrepreneurs’ experiences of enterprise development so that our understanding of new entrepreneurs’ approaches to enterprise development is enhanced and business assistance can be more effectively targeted.

Collaboration and communication: Building a research agenda and way of working towards community disaster resilience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of Participatory Action Research (PAR), reporting on a collaboration, communication and disaster resilience workshop in Sydney, Australia. The goal of the workshop was to explore the challenges that organisations perceive as blockages to building community disaster resilience; and, through collaborative practitioner-led activities, identify which of those challenges could be best addressed through a deeper engagement with communication research. Design/methodology/approach – The authors link communication, collaboration and disaster resilience through the lens of PAR, detailing how communication and resilience experts can collaborate to improve disaster prevention, management and mitigation practice. Findings – The authors identify a number of theoretical considerations in understanding horizontal and vertical interfaces for improved communication. The authors also highlight how practical collaborative workshops can draw on communication resea...

Understanding Interorganizational Agency: A Communication Perspective

The opportunities and need for interorganizational collaboration in all production sectors have increased markedly over the later part of last century, yet, despite an extensive interorganizational relationships literature, little is still known about the way work is achieved in interorganizational collaborations and teams. Studies have failed to reveal the essence of the collaborative interfirm dynamic; the relationships between operational-level employees and how these are manifested and sustained at an interactional level. This case study of interfirm collaboration in the furniture manufacturing sector in France addresses this gap in the literature by examining the communication processes between the operational-level employees who produce enduring patterns of engagement. The findings reveal how actions are coordinated at the micro level through conversations and, in so doing, clarify how collective competence is formed and becomes stable. The result is a unique contribution to the literatures on interorganizational relationships (IOR) and organizational communication.

Materializing Strategy in Mundane Tools: The Key to Coupling Global Strategy and Local Strategy Practice?

While much of the literature on strategy and strategy as practice (SaP) focuses on traditional strategic tools, technologies and discursive practices of managers, this paper extends the understanding of strategic change implementation by proposing that mundane material tools, understood as text, translate global strategic discourse in ways that make sense to workers and orchestrate successful global strategy implementation at the local level. Based on a rich case study within one branch of a national bank, we demonstrate how a middle manager’s materialising practices developed local strategy practice while simultaneously transforming work and producing strategic figures or indicators that satisfied senior management’s global strategic change objectives. The contributions of this paper are threefold: i) we advance the understanding of the multimodality of materiality by identifying the influence of three kinds of mundane tools produced locally by a middle manager as he performed his sense of the senior managers’ strategic discourse; ii) we reveal how these three types of physical texts materialised the manager’s sense of this discourse, facilitating frontline workers’ engagement and coupling materiality and orality in a coherent way that allowed workers to embody the company’s global strategy in their ‘sayings and doings’; and iii) we highlight the importance of managers’ ability to materialise a strategic discourse.

Navigating the interface between design education and fashion business start‐up

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the interface between design education and business start‐up in the designer fashion industry (DFI) and provide a new framework for reflecting on ways to improve design education and graduates’ business start‐up preparedness.Design/methodology/approach – This interpretive study employed semi‐structured interviews to collect nascent fashion designers’ enterprise development narratives and tertiary educators’ views on how they prepare designers for the challenges of the DFI.Findings – While design and production skills studied in design education are valuable, it was found that work placements are particularly important resources for aspiring fashion business owners because they provide “education in enterprise” and the sort of social capital required for business success. The research produced a framework for reflecting on and refining the fit between design education and the practice of enterprise development in the DFI that incorporates considerations of ...

Career and work attitudes of blue-collar workers, and the impact of a natural disaster chance event on the relationships between intention to quit and actual quit behaviour

Despite being part of a highly visible and important occupational group, blue-collar workers have, to date, been under-represented in careers research. We explore the relevance and applicability of new career concepts to blue-collar employees, specifically, bus drivers. Based on a survey of 112 bus drivers, we test a model specifying the relationship between career attitude, perceived organizational support, psychological contract, and job satisfaction, as well as intention to quit. Employing a two-phase data collection process, we also test relationships between intentions and actual quit behaviour. Our results support the validity of career theories for blue-collar workers but with notable exceptions, such as lack of relationships between protean career and intention to quit. Contrary to intention-behaviour theory we find that actual quit behaviour was not related to intention to quit, which we attribute to a significant external chance event, a devastating earthquake, which took place during the study period. In addition, we identify relationships that appear to be unique to blue-collar workers.

Fostering Dwelling and Building Strategizing Abilities: A Case for Empowering Middle Managers

Over the past twenty years, organizations have tried to transform themselves from so called inefficient bureaucracies into dynamic, less hierarchical, customer-driven organizations based on employe...