Debbie S. Dougherty

Sensemaking and Emotions in Organizations: Accounting for Emotions in a Rational(ized) Context

Organizations tend to be guided by a rationality/emotionality duality in which rational behavior is privileged over emotional behavior. Consequently, emotions in organizations have historically been undervalued in favor of rationality. Despite the privileging of rationality, however, organizations are emotion-laden environments. The present study uses sensemaking theory to explore how employees manage the rationality/emotionality duality in the workplace. Using a qualitative analysis of 38 emotional experiences derived from 19 interviews, it was found that participants accept the duality by orienting toward emotions that are associated with the disruption or enhancement of “rational” business practices. Further, participants tended to reinforce the dichotomy by carefully controlling their emotions in organizations through denial of emotions, reframing their experiences, by rationally reciting their emotional experiences, or by relegating emotions at work to appropriate time and place.

Sensemaking, organizational culture, and sexual harassment

While EEOC guidelines for managing sexual harassment prescribe a strong sexual harassment policy and aggressive remedial action following complaints, a communication approach suggests a need for a more complex understanding of sexual harassment as diffused throughout an organizational culture. The present case study uses a sensemaking approach to explore the response of members of an academic department to an alumnus donors serial sexual harassment of three of its members. Sensemaking proceeded through three phases: the phase of discovery, the debriefing phase, and the dispersal phase. Insights into the role of humor, white men, shared experiences, and responding to sexual harassment are discussed.

“Paradoxing the Dialectic” The Impact of Patients’ Sexual Harassment in the Discursive Construction of Nurses’ Caregiving Roles

Using the concepts of paradox and dialectics, this qualitative study examines the tension that contradictions bring to nurses’ narrative construction of their roles as caregivers. The nurses in the study reveal that they negotiate their roles as caregivers within the dialectical poles of closeness and distance in relation to their patients. The sexual harassment of nurses by their patients, however, serves to destroy this ability to move between these poles and instead calls for a single response—distance. This “paradoxing of the dialectic” changes the ability to negotiate between closeness and distance and presents nurses with a paradoxical set of decisions on how to cope with such harassment and maintain their role as caregivers. Implications for theory are discussed.

Sexual Harassment as [Dys]Functional Process: A Feminist Standpoint Analysis

Researchers have approached the study of sexual harassment as though it were dysfunctional. However, a feminist standpoint theory analysis would suggest that it functions differently for men and women. A study using discussion groups and stimulated recall interviews was conducted in a large health care organization. A thematic analysis revealed a primary theme of sexual harassment as a [dys]functional process. For the male participants, sexual behavior served as a coping mechanism for stress, as a form of therapeutic care, and to create and demonstrate camaraderie. For the women participants, sexual behavior tended to be either nonfunctional or dysfunctional. They did not associate it with stress reduction, therapeutic touch, and viewed group camaraderie as a means of prevention. Implications are discussed.

Dialogue through Standpoint Understanding Women’s and Men’s Standpoints of Sexual Harassment

It is important to rethink sexual harassment by addressing the following question: Because most men do not harass women, why do men tend to be resistant to admitting the breadth and depth of sexual harassment in organizations? The author posits that because men and women do not understand each other’s standpoints on sexual harassment, a gap exists between men’s and women’s understanding of what sexual harassment means. Specifically, men’s power over standpoint and the related fear of marginalization clash with women’s power with standpoint and the related fear of physical harm. The author concludes by suggesting that engaging in a dialogue with the goals of understanding and accepting other standpoints is necessary before sexual harassment can be approached in a humanistic manner.

Alternative Media and Social Justice Movements: The Development of a Resistance Performance Paradigm of Audience Analysis

ABSTRACT This study examined the performances of social justice activists who were audiences of alternative media—media that are defined by their resistance to social and corporate power structures. Contemporary performance-oriented audience paradigms do not take into account power and ideology, which are integral to the content of alternative media. Through interviews with 27 social justice activists and qualitative analysis of the alternative media content that they used to gain information about social justice and corporations, we explored performances of alternative media audiences to develop a new performance-oriented audience paradigm. With the resulting data, we developed a resistance performance paradigm that accounts for (a) different critical worldviews and interactions of audiences with alternative media production within (b) intertwining “theatres” shaped by alternative media content, (c) which were coordinated by common visions and goals and separated by the differing themes in the alternative media content.

Language Convergence and Meaning Divergence: A Meaning Centered Communication Theory

Some communication theories have explored the processes of language convergence, but comparatively little attention has explored the ways meaning systems diverge while converging on the same set of symbols. To examine this process, a grounded theory study of social-sexual behavior in the workplace was conducted. The Language Convergence/Meaning Divergence (LC/MD) theory emerged from the analysis. LC/MD processes identified in the analysis include language convergence, meaning divergence through meaning clusters and meaning fragments, and the illusion of shared meanings. This communication-centered theory uniquely focuses on both language and meaning, making it of potential value across the discipline.

The Construction, Enactment, and Maintenance of Power-As-Domination through an Acquisition The Case of TWA and Ozark Airlines

Organizational scholars tend to operate under the assumption that power is domination. This assumption may spring from the fact that domination is the primary form of power used in U.S. organizations. Given the pervasiveness of the power-as-domination assumption guiding both researchers and practitioners, it is important to understand how power-as-domination works in organizations. This interpretive study explores how domination was created, enacted, and maintained in the acquisition of Ozark Airlines by TWA. Results of the analysis reveal how communication practices were used by TWA to effectively dominate Ozark employees. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.

Revealing a Master Narrative: Discourses of Retirement Throughout the Working Life Cycle

Retirement is an expected phase of life that is made meaningful through social discourses such as master narratives. This study identified and explored a master narrative of retirement. Eighty-four individuals were interviewed representing four work experience phases. A thematic analysis revealed a master narrative of retirement that shaped expectations for retirement. Participants consistently narrated retirement as the ultimate marker of individual success and freedom. Two fractures appeared in this master narrative: the freedom/routine fracture and the individual responsibility/universal expectations fracture. These fractures created tension within the master narrative of retirement. This study has implications for social class as well as implications for the ways in which master narratives are interwoven into the cultural fabric of society.

Overcoming the Dichotomy: Cultivating Standpoints in Organizations through Research

Feminist standpoint theories are seldom used by researchers. One possible reason is the ongoing debate between postmodern theorists and feminine standpoint theorists. The debate has been constructed in bipolar terms such that the issues are perceived as mutually exclusive. However, bipolar assumptions are damaging to women, both in general and in organizations. We contend that feminist standpoint theories should theorize similarities, material reality, and communal agency while being sensitive to differences, multiple realities, and individual agency. A study of academic women is used to illustrate how standpoints can develop around similarities while respecting differences. Using a creative narrative, participants’ organizational standpoints were developed around the common experiences of invisibility, overvisibility, isolation, energy dissipation, and a desire for community. Cultural differences, idiosyncratic differences, and differences in the evolution of a consciousness of oppression are discussed.