Linda M. Gallant

Wireless Organizational Communication: A Framework for Communicative Informatics

As mobile communication becomes more pervasive, there is an increasing need to study the potential uses of wireless organizational communication. The difficulty in analyzing information and communication technology (ICT) in organizational communication is the unintentional split between information processes perspectives and human communication perspectives in the discussions of workplace techno logy. By merging two constructs, organizational informatics and organizational sensemaking, this paper develops a communicative organizational informatics (COI) framework, which provides a robust perspective on how people communicate through the uses of techno logy in organizational settings. This communicative informatics framework offers a powerful lens to study the meanings, understandings, uses and gratifications, and potentials of technology in organizations and how it can facilitate workplace communication. A COI analysis of a personal digital assistant (PDA), a Palm VII, with a live wireless connection to a company sales database is examined by applying a usability testing methodology.

Tensions in Talking Diversity

Diversity policies and programs continue to be a prominent yet problematic feature of organizational life. This study explored tensions arising as 30 employees talk about their experience with Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Affirmative Action (AA), and diversity in a midwestern human service organization. Tensions related to fairness and fear emerged as interpretive themes prompting majority group members to avoid interacting about racial differences and minority group members to do the work of making difference meaningful. We argue that formal policies and diversity programs be re-imagined so as to ease interaction constraints between groups.

Resistance: Active and Creative Political Protest Strategies

Resistance to U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies on gender equality, health care, race relations, the environment, and immigration has been large, widespread, and persistent. Following President Trump’s election, millions of people across the United States protested, creatively using slogans, signs, costumes, chants, and songs. Others engaged in resistance with online videos, songs, memes, and hashtags. By employing the communicative informatics model, we examine the relationship between online communication and the creative and active audience involved in U.S. political resistance in 2017.