Lynn M. Harter

The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work

Building on Kahn’ s (1990) ethnographic work, a e eld study in a U.S. Midwestern insurance company explored the determinants and mediating effects of three psychological conditions ‐ meaningfulness, safety and availability ‐ on employees’ engagement in their work. Results from the revised theoretical framework revealed that all three psychological conditions exhibited signie cant positive relations with engagement. Meaningfulness displayed the strongest relation. Job enrichment and work role e t were positively linked to psychological meaningfulness. Rewarding co-worker and supportive supervisor relations were positively associated with psychological safety, whereas adherence to co-worker norms and self-consciousness were negatively associated. Psychological availability was positively related to resources available and negatively related to participation in outside activities. Finally, the relations of job enrichment and work role e t with engagement were both fully mediated by the psychological condition of meaningfulness. The association between adherence to co-worker norms and engagement was partially mediated by psychological safety. Theoretical and practical implications related to psychological engagement at work are discussed. To explore the challenge to the human soul in organizations is to build a bridge between the world of the personal, subjective, and even unconscious elements of individual experience and the world of organizations that demand rationality, efficiency, and personal sacrifice . . . we must be willing to shift our viewpoint back and forth between what organizations want of people and what constitutes human complexity: the contradictory nature of human needs, desires, and experience. (Briskin, 1998, p. xii.) This quote from Briskin (1998), an organizational consultant, reflects the challenges that managers and researchers of organizations face as they seek to understand and

The Structuring of Invisibility Among the Hidden Homeless: The Politics of Space, Stigma, and Identity Construction

This ethnographic portrayal relies on participant observations at two supplemental support programs for youth without homes, narratives collected through in-depth interviews with educators and case managers, and focus group interviews with youth participants to explore the discursive (re)production of invisibility among youth without homes. Structuration theory is used to frame macro and micro forces coalescing to enable and constrain processes of invisibility among the hidden homeless. Analysis reveals how invisibility shapes (and is shaped by) processes of stigmatization, “street smarts” as enacted by youth, and “Mayberry” and “not in my backyard” community discourses, and how the disappearance of youth without homes simultaneously serves and undermines various stakeholders.

Masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and cooperative ways of organizing: contradictions and tensions in the experience and enactment of democracy

This study explores how members of the Nebraska Cooperative Council and its constituent producer‐owned cooperatives understand and enact democratic ideologies, drawing particular attention to how emergent contradictions and tensions are experienced and managed. The Council serves as a particularly rich context in which to explore traditionally feminine ways of organizing (i.e., cooperative enactment) in a historically male‐dominated arena (i.e., agriculture). The dialectic of independence and solidarity became a revealing prism through which to make sense of how members enact cooperative life. This dialectic manifests itself in the discourse of cooperative life as members struggle to manage tensions between efficiency and participation, equality and equity, and the paradox of agency. Communication theorizing about gendered organizing and the history of American agrarianism is used to explore intersections between the social construction of masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and tensions embedded in the discourse of cooperative organizing.

Participatory photography as theory, method and praxis: analyzing an entertainment-education project in India1

Abstract In this article I analyse the role of photographs, generated in a participatory manner, in entertainment-education practice and research. The main tenets of participatory communication as well as certain notable experiences in using participatory photography are discussed. Our experience with using participatory photography with listeners of an entertainment-education radio initiative in Bihar, India, where participants combined introspection, reflection, and action, is then analyzed. Through photographs and their accompanying narratives, our participants drew connections between the entertainment-education text they consumed and their lived experiences, articulating certain ideas that were previously silenced, overlooked, or rejected. Often, inspired by the storyline of the entertainment-education text, the narratives called for wider community discussion, mobilization, and action. We conclude our article by discussing the potential and caveats associated with using this visual approach in human communication research.

Narratives as Dialogic, Contested, and Aesthetic Performances.

Dr. Pete Anderson, a clinician and professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, entered the life of Anna and her family two years ago. Anna was referred to him because of his clinical research and expertise in pediatric oncology and multimodality therapies. Anna had been diagnosed with metastatic Ewing’s Sarcoma, a form of bone cancer initially localized on one of her legs. Dr. Pete facilitated Anna’s treatment including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and for a year her cancer was in remission. Although dramatic improvements in survival have been achieved for adolescents with Ewing’s Sarcoma, survivors require close follow-up because side-effects from therapy may persist or develop months or years after treatment and the incidence of recurrence remains high. I was familiar with the trajectory of Anna’s treatment because in many ways it paralleled that of my father who has lived with cancer and its treatments for several years. In fact, few things that I have discussed thus far would surprise people acquainted with bone cancer. What might bewilder readers, though, is what else I discovered about Anna through Dr. Pete’s storied portrayal of her experience in his one-page summary*a portable electronic medical record (EMR) on a flash drive. Included in his summary is a photo of Anna and her mother. This image, in fact, was what I first saw when I opened her record (with her and her family’s permission). I learned that Anna played tennis, loved animals of all kinds including her Chihuahua ‘‘Lucy,’’ and fantasized about senior prom and high school graduation. Anna attended both*rites of passage that most teenagers take for granted. Dr. Pete celebrated these occasions by inserting Anna’s prom and graduation photos into his summary of her cancer experience. Six months after her graduation, Dr. Pete sat in an exam room with Anna, her mother, and I. Images from a recent MRI were pulled up on one of the two computer screens in the room. He pointed to fuzzy gray spots on her lungs, lesions

Freedom Through Flight: Performing a Counter-Narrative of Disability

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. Our ethnographic portrayal is based on our experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through in-depth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. We unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere.

The Storied Nature of Health Legacies in the Familial Experience of Type 2 Diabetes

In this study, we position families as pivotal anchors for coping with biophysical and psychosocial needs of members with Type 2 diabetes in two vital ways. First, we present narrative theory as a conceptual framework for moving beyond an individualistic understanding of health and healing. Second, we illustrate the efficacy of this position through an interpretive study of meaning-making about intergenerational diabetes among families living in rural Appalachian areas—contexts historically characterized by disproportionately high rates for numerous diseases including diabetes. Stories elicited from participants during interviews characterized their diabetes health legacies as dense and devastating. Our analysis illustrates how legacies evolve and shift across generations and shape how family members understand and manage diabetes, including the role of family members as intergenerational lynchpins and intergenerational buffers.

The Intermingling of Aesthetic Sensibilities and Instrumental Rationalities in a Collaborative Arts Studio

This article argues for the theoretical and practical incorporation of aesthetic sensibilities into the communicative management of hybrid organizing. Using Deweys Art as Experience as a conceptual framework, it explores imaginative and aesthetic practices as knowledge-producing resources for organizing and social change. The analysis centers on the complex and contradictory ways that artful capacities and instrumental rationalities interweave to achieve the organizational order of a collaborative art studio. Using discourses from multiple stakeholders, this article examines in detail three themes: art as creation and vocation, art as ephemeral integration, and art as survival and social change. Findings are discussed in the context of other scholarship committed to recovering and fostering alternative logics for organizing.

Technology as the Representative Anecdote in Popular Discourses of Health and Medicine

Using a Burkean framework (1969), this article approaches medical dramas as cultural texts to be read for dominant meanings of health and health care. Burkes representative anecdote illuminates the melding of science, technology, and healing in popular discourses of health, establishing technological intervention as the norm and marginalizing nontechnological (i.e., alternative) forms of health care. Popular entertainment reinforces this anecdote in narratives of healing as technological competence triumphing over nature.

Reflexivity in Practice: Challenges and Potentials of Transnational Organizing

This article focuses on the efforts of an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Sweden. KtK (Kvinna till Kvinna) partners with local women’s organizations in postconflict societies to carry out “peace work.” Drawing upon postcolonial feminist theory and field work, the authors explore how KtK strives to practice reflexivity in its relationships with partners. Through these organizing practices, women who have been marginalized before, during, and after conflict struggle together to resist misrepresentations, reclaim spaces for political action, and reconfigure the meanings of sustainability by focusing on long-term networking and relationships. The authors’ analysis points to the struggles and opportunities of international organizing driven by feminist ideals and goals for peace and reconstruction.