Erika L. Kirby

An Organizational Communication Challenge to the Discourse of Work and Family Research: From Problematics to Empowerment

Using a discourse perspective, we articulate four problematics, (a) boundaries, (b) identity, (c) rationality, and (d) voice that underlie work-family theory, research, and practice. We situate existing interdisciplinary research within each problematic, showing how such research examines outcomes and effects rather than the process of constructing such outcomes. We supplement these studies with emerging communication research to illustrate new ways of thinking about each problematic. We highlight the role of daily microlevel discourses as well as macrodiscourses of organizations and families in creating the current processes, structures, and relationships surrounding work and family. We link each problematic with an agenda for empowerment through (a) questioning boundaries, (b) integrating identity, (c) embracing practical knowledge and emotionality, (d) seeking diverse voices, and (e) developing a communal orientation.

Family CEOs A Feminist Analysis of Corporate Mothering Discourses

Women construct their identities amidst contradictory and competing societal expectations about career success and motherhood. Due to the enormous value society places on our organizational lives and to the contradictory rhetoric on women’s roles today, the ability of stay-at-home mothers to construct their identities is argued to be in crisis. The purpose of this feminist critical-interpretive study is to interrogate corporate discourse as a new linguistic frame for defining mothering identity. Through textual analysis of online support Web sites and self-help books or guidebooks, four subject positions of stay-at-home mothers as professionals, managers, productive citizens, and irreplaceable workers are articulated and problematized. Corporate mothering is then further deconstructed in relation to historical ideologies of mothering, contemporary organizational privilege, feminist and postfeminist debates on women’s roles today, and raced and classed ideologies of mothering. Finally, implications for feminist praxis and organizational communication scholarship are addressed.

Work-Life Research from Both Sides Now: An Integrative Perspective for Organizational and Family Communication

This article uses work-life interrelationships as a lens through which to identify communication concepts that span the traditional “division divide” between organizational and family communication and to identify potential substantive contributions to worklife research that might be made from integrative perspectives. We review extant worklife research within the communication discipline to identify themes and methodological approaches represented to date; we also identify lines of research in both organizational and family communication that have not yet been tied to work-life research but that have strong potential connections. We explore three theoretical perspectives for bridging workplace and private-life frames of reference: structuration, systems, and relational dialectics. Within each perspective, we identify integrative directions for future research. We conclude with me tadis cursive reflections on obstacles to and pathways for spanning division divides.

“Helping You Make Room in Your Life for Your Needs”: When Organizations Appropriate Family Roles

As communication-based literature on the intersections of working/institutional and personal/family life continues to accumulate, it is clear that many organizations now focus on helping employees to lead ‘‘balanced’’ lives (for summaries, see Golden, Kirby, & Jorgenson, 2006; Kirby, Golden, Medved, Jorgenson, & Buzzanell, 2003). As Kirby, Wieland, and McBride (2006) illustrate, existing research on the intersection between work/institutional and personal/family life (WIl/PF) extends from microlevel analyses of individual perceptions of stress, to interpersonal negotiations of ‘‘balance,’’ to organizational initiatives to assist employees in ‘‘balancing’’ WIl/PF life*a current example comes from Deloitte & Touche (2006), a company that has ‘‘developed work/life balance programs to help you make room in your life for these important needs ’’ (emphasis added). Through a combination of policies, programs, and rhetoric similar to this, I contend organizations have taken steps to become more like employees’ personal and family lives. Issues and concerns that may formerly have been framed as ‘‘personal’’ or ‘‘private’’ (PF) have now become the purview of organizations (WI).

Forum Introduction: Communication-Centered Contributions to Advancing Scholarship in/of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations

The nonprofit and voluntary sector “occupies an increasingly critical and visible position in our political, social and economic life” (Frumkin, 2002, p. 1). As critical, nonprofit and voluntary organizations (NPVOs) deliver a myriad of services, foster social entrepreneurship, enable civic/political engagement, and facilitate the enactment of private/religious values. As visible, registered nonprofits numbered more than 1.5 million in 2010 in the United States alone and included public charities, private foundations, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, and civic leagues (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2011). These numbers increase dramatically when figuring in more informally organized volunteer community groups, not to mention the vast amount of nonprofit work happening across the world. In virtually every area of society, NPVOs offer alternatives to corporate and governmental forms of organizing—from banking and housing, to education and retail. In other Forum

Good Working Mothers as Jugglers: A Critical Look at Two Work–Family Balance Films

ABSTRACT We examine the portrayals of two good working mothers in popular work–family balance films—Melanie in One Fine Day (1996) and Kate in I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011). Using a critical standpoint, we build on communication work–family/life scholarship to extend theoretical understanding of underlying ideological notions of the good working mother. In particular, we analyze Melanie and Kate’s performances that reflect the underlying cultural ideologies of being an ideal worker, a true domestic woman, and an intensive mother. Further, we explicate how this juggling of identities portrays good working mothers as perpetually defensive. We go beyond the analysis of ideologies to lay out some of the consequences of the performance portrayals of the good working mother, in that she should (a) accept “punishments” from her children, (b) conceptualize fathers as secondary parents, (c) solve problems on her own, and (d) choose family over work.

Performing and resisting scripts of submission to illustrate critical theory

Objective: To illustrate aspects (i.e., power, ideology, hegemony, emancipation) of critical theory Course: Organizational, Communication Theory

Encountering my privilege (and others’ oppression)

ABSTRACT Courses: Communication and Diversity, Intercultural Communication, Gender Communication Objectives: After completing this semester-long activity, students should be able to (1) articulate a systems-of-oppression (privilege←→oppression) approach to thinking about difference; (2) confront and “interact differently” with one social identity category where they have privilege; and (3) explain the corresponding form of oppression at individual, institutional, and societal/cultural levels.

Communication research methods

This course helps students become knowledgeable consumers and limited producers of communication research as they develop skills in gathering, organizing, interpreting, presenting and evaluating research information competently using appropriate methods. After this course, students will be able to (influenced by Query, 2000) become “knowledgeable consumers” of research who can (1) ask communicationbased questions and hypotheses to address through systematic research; (2) locate, review, understand, explain, and evaluate communication research (and other empirical research) reported in scholarly journals as well as in the popular press; (3) describe various methods used to investigate communication (e.g., survey, textual/ rhetorical analysis, naturalistic inquiry) and know when and how to use them and become “limited producers” of communication research who can (4) conceptualize, design, execute, and interpret original communication research; and (5) communicate original communication research in several common forms (e.g., orally, visually in poster form, in writing using APA style).