Jody L. S. Jahn

Vocational Anticipatory Socialization (VAS): A Communicative Model of Adolescents' Interests in STEM

Models of career development have focused on important vocational influences such as self-efficacy, exposure, and gender prescriptions but have glossed over the role of communication in socializing adolescents toward or from various careers. We investigate academic interests in math and science and related career aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Drawing on data from 38 focus groups (241 students), the proposed Vocational Anticipatory Socialization (VAS) model of STEM depicts factors that influence adolescent academic-career interests including communication associated with gender prescriptions; cultural membership/socioeconomic status; experiences; personal factors (self-efficacy, exposure, resilience); and importantly, the sources and significance of VAS messages for the development of academic-career pursuits.

Adapting Safety Rules in a High Reliability Context How Wildland Firefighting Workgroups Ventriloquize Safety Rules to Understand Hazards

Safety rules are unavoidable in hazardous work and are often codified insights from accidents and fatalities. Safety rules research predominantly focuses on factors that influence compliance and violation of rules (a rationalist view), but rarely examines how members draw from safety rules to take action and gain experience. This study draws from and extends an adaptation view of safety rules, which considers how members use safety rules as “tools” to inform action. The study compares how two wildland firefighting workgroups incorporate safety rules into communication practices, and specifically, how they ventriloquize them. From a communication perspective, ventriloquization directs attention to ways safety rules enable members to make sense of hazards, navigate authority, and develop experience. The findings contribute an explanatory workgroup model for how members adapt safety rules into action according to workgroup norms, complementary relationships, and practices, which extends our understanding of adaptive action and learning in hazardous work organizations.

A Model of Communicative and Hierarchical Foundations of High Reliability Organizing in Wildland Firefighting Teams

Organizational hierarchy is an inescapable aspect of many exemplary high reliability organizations (HROs). As organizations begin to adopt HRO theorizing to improve practice, it is increasingly important to explain how HRO principles—which assume the hallmarks of a flat hierarchy—can be understood and enacted in rigidly stratified organizations. We propose a preliminary theoretical model suggesting how various supervisor–subordinate and work group communication patterns and practices enable members to navigate hierarchy to achieve high reliability. We test the model using structural equation modeling on a sample of N = 574 U.S. wildland firefighters from three federal agencies. Results suggest how organizational members might overcome common hierarchy-based constraints to HRO through considering how leaders throughout a chain of command communicate to cultivate the necessary cross-level awareness of an operation, and ways in which supervisors, members, and groups might cultivate interactional cultures with respectful affect.

“When Will I Use This?” How Math and Science Classes Communicate Impressions of STEM Careers: Implications for Vocational Anticipatory Socialization

This study expands vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) theory by articulating the concept of vocational anticipation—envisioning what careers are like and how to attain them based on communication from educators and others. We examine communication-based factors related to the leaking STEM pipeline. Data from 38 focus groups (N = 241) show that math and science classes communicate fragmented and limited information about STEM occupations, what they are like, and how courses and content fit into career pursuits. Findings highlight the importance of understanding how VAS receivers envision the world of work and direct attention toward related communicative concepts like occupational identification and proactive VAS.

The communicative constitution of adaptive capacity during Sweden’s Västmanland Wildfire

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explain how adaptive capacity is accomplished through communication processes and can contribute to enhancing disaster resilience. We adopt a structurational “four flows” explanation of communication processes. Design/methodology/approach We observed and analyzed discourse in meetings of a crisis communication network consisting of representatives of municipalities and public authorities involved in crisis communication management during the Vastmanland wildfire in Sweden. Findings Adaptive capacity during the wildfire was principally accomplished through the structurational communication processes or “flows” of self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning. These flows intersected demonstrating how communication accomplishes (a) the development of a responsive affiliation, (b) organizes stabilizing structuring practices, and (c) enables adaptive structuring practices. Research limitations/implications The main contribution of this study is ...

Genre as textual agency: Using communicative relationality to theorize the agential-performative relationship between human and generic text

ABSTRACT This study proposes an explanation for textual performance grounded in communicative relationality. Specifically, genre is theorized as a form of textual agency whereby generic texts and organizational actors form agential-performative relationships that script action and shape professional epistemologies. The case examines how agential-performative relationships between wildland firefighters and safety rules changed when a new US Forest Service policy, Doctrine, altered safety rule practice. Findings from 12 years of Doctrine documents and firefighting accounts from 37 firefighters revealed that pre-Doctrine commissive relationships with safety rules compelled members to follow them, enabling dissent and passive learning about hazards. Post-Doctrine, directive relationships enabled flexible decisions, but expanded the job’s scope and constrained dissent. Theoretical contributions to textual agency and genre studies are discussed.

Communicative leadership: Fostering co-worker agency in two Swedish business organizations

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge of how leadership concepts are embraced by leadership actors and perceived to influence relationships between leaders and co-workers. ...