Jessica Katz Jameson

Negotiating autonomy and connection through politeness: A dialectical approach to organizational conflict management

Organizations and their members struggle with dialectical tensions—opposing needs that appear mutually exclusive but must be met simultaneously. This paper asks how individuals in organizations cope with their seemingly opposing needs for autonomy and connection. The study of communication between anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists illustrates how politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, 1987) can successfully transcend the autonomy‐connection dialectic and foster more collaborative conflict management. This article demonstrates that integrating two previously separate theories illuminates the ways communication enables individuals to fulfill their desires for autonomy and connection while meeting organizational needs for collaboration and improved social capital.

Transcending intractable conflict in health care: an exploratory study of communication and conflict management among anesthesia providers.

This paper explores the contrast between the longstanding, intractable conflict between two anesthesia providers and the cooperation of many individual nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists working side-by-side to provide safe, effective anesthesia. Analysis of interview transcripts reveals that communication among anesthesia nurses and anesthesiologists may enact or transcend the conflict. This article proposes recommendations for improving communication between anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists in particular and de-escalating intractable conflict in general. It also contributes to communication theory in intractable conflict by examining how individual, interpersonal conflict management interactions lead to either transcendence or enactment of the larger group conflict.

The Role of Journalism in Democratic Conflict Management Narrating the New York Budget Crisis After 9/11

While media scholars and other observers have long argued that the news typically presents politics in adversarial, dualistic terms that emphasize drama and conflict, the impact of specific journalistic word choices on citizen participation in democracy has received surprisingly little attention. This article applies conflict theory in empirical analysis of newspaper coverage of the New York City budget crisis following 9/11. Metaphor and content analyses illustrate that conflict is often described as a “battle” or “game” that is played by elite decision makers. Stories emphasize political positions of a narrow range of actors rather than underlying interests of constituents. The authors argue that this coverage reinforces public beliefs that even decisions that affect them personally are out of their control and thus discourages public participation in what they call democratic conflict management: the collective processes of managing clashing interests and factions in ways compatible with representative democracy. The article concludes with a discussion of alternative journalistic practices that might encourage participation in the democratic process.

AIDS Communication Campaigns in Uganda: Organizational Factors and Campaign Planning as Predictors of Successful Campaign Execution

About 60% of all the HIV/AIDS cases are found in sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS, 2007). While a few countries in the region have shown a decline in prevalence, most countries in southern Africa have made little progress in their fight against AIDS. The goal of this study was to provide empirical support to confirm and extend an earlier model of the effect of organizational factors and campaign planning on campaign execution to help answer the question of what makes for a successful communication campaign to change AIDS-related behavior. A survey of the top leaders of 120 Ugandan organizations delivering AIDS communication campaigns supports a model that illustrates the vital role of several features, such as focused campaign goals, the formality of organizational structure, and outreach worker supervision, on effective campaign execution. Surprisingly, financial resources are negatively related to goal extensiveness and message clarity and may be a distraction during campaign execution.

Military Perspectives on Public Relations Related to Environmental Issues

Environmental management decisions on United States military lands are becoming increasingly important. We used qualitative methods to explore military perceptions on building and maintaining relationships with their local communities related to environmental issues. Informants believed that 2-way public relations (PR) were effective ways to build, improve, and manage relationships, but practiced 1-way PR. Perceived barriers to 2-way PR included lack of public interest, leadership turnover, and security concerns, which were considered unique to military contexts. We highlight how these findings contribute to scholarship on environmental public participation and relational models of PR, and offer recommendations for improving military conservation efforts and the relationships between installations and communities.

AIDS communication campaigns in Uganda: Assessing organizational factors as predictors of conducting campaign planning research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test a predictive model for organizational factors on the extent to which organizations involved in non‐governmental organizations (NGO) or bilateral partnerships conduct campaign planning research.Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with 120 heads of organizations running AIDS campaigns in Uganda were conducted. The interviewers queried the participants regarding characteristics of their organization and the extent to which they conducted campaign planning research during their last campaign. The information was assigned to quantitative categories, so that the predictive model could be tested using path modeling software.Findings – The results of the path analysis indicated that the model fits the data well. An emergent finding from the path analysis involved the relationship between the number of trained staff workers and the tendency to solicit outreach worker feedback. Organizations with a greater number of trained staff workers sought outreach w...

The Importance of Organizational Innovation and Adaptation in Building Academic–Industry–Intelligence Collaboration: Observations from the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences

ABSTRACT This article discusses the establishment and development of the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS), a unique site of academic–industry–intelligence collaboration, established in 2013 by the National Security Agency (NSA) and located on the campus of North Carolina State University. Since 2014, the authors have been participant-observers of LAS research teams. This article describes how inter-institutional, interdisciplinary collaboration has developed at LAS, drawing on multi-year data involving observations, surveys, and interviews that the authors have collected. LAS provides an opportunity to study the operationalization of an academic–intelligence collaboration and gather lessons learned in order to inform future collaborative efforts by the U.S. intelligence community. What this article reveals is the importance of organizational innovation and adaptation in light of various challenges that emerge in inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration.