Matthew L. Sanders

Meaningful work? Nonprofit marketization and work/ life imbalance in popular autobiographies of social entrepreneurship

As social entrepreneurship gains increasing acclaim and institutional support, there is a need for greater critical assessment of its practices and effects, including how it relates to current concerns about meaningful work. Our critical analysis of popular autobiographies of social entrepreneurs provides insight into how marketization forces are shaping the construction of meaningful work within the US nonprofit context. Our findings illustrate that although popular portrayals of social entrepreneurship offer a compelling vision of meaningful work centred on solving pressing social problems, they also celebrate a troubling account of work/life balance centred on self-sacrifice, underpaid and unpaid labour and the privileging of organizational commitment at the expense of health, family and other aspects of social reproduction. In focusing critical attention on popular autobiographies, our analysis contributes to ongoing efforts to understand how popular culture assists in reproducing problematic assumptions about work and professional life.

Being business-like while pursuing a social mission: Acknowledging the inherent tensions in US nonprofit organizing

Nonprofit organizations face an increasing expectation to be more business-like. Although scholars have theoretically explored this phenomenon and studied its influence in various contexts, there has been little empirical examination of the ways in which nonprofit practitioners themselves describe and make sense of their organizations and their work as business-like. Specifically, scholars have not explored the ways in which nonprofit practitioners communicatively reconcile the inherent tensions between being business-like and the pursuit of a social mission. Based on findings from an eight-month ethnographic field study of a US nonprofit organization, this article describes the sophisticated ways in which nonprofit practitioners understand, define and negotiate the need to be business-like within the nonprofit context and the central role of communication in that process. Additionally, critical assessment of these findings reveals the political qualities of talking about nonprofit organizing as being business-like, leading to potential transformative redefinitions of the business-like imperative that acknowledge rather than suppress conflicts inherent in the practice of nonprofit organizing.

Being Nonprofit-Like in a Market Economy Understanding the Mission-Market Tension in Nonprofit Organizing

Nonprofit organizations experience a tension between pursuing their social missions and meeting the demands of a market economy. This mission-market tension is an everyday, practical concern for nonprofit practitioners. Yet, scholars know very little about how nonprofit practitioners define and manage this tension. Drawing on contradiction-centered perspectives of organizing, data from an ethnographic study of a single U.S. nonprofit organization demonstrate that the mission-market tension was defined and managed by organizational members as both a contradictory and interconnected phenomenon. This framing was enabled by specific communication practices that supported a productive and generative relationship between these seemingly incompatible goals. Findings suggest that the mission-market tension is an inherent condition of nonprofit organizing and highlight the central role of communication in successfully managing mission and market concerns.

The Dilemma of Grades: Reconciling Disappointing Grades With Feelings of Personal Success

This study examines how students reconcile disappointing grades with feelings of personal success. Findings from 8 focus group interviews at 2 universities illustrate that this reconciliation is a communicative dilemma in which students regularly engage. To reconcile this dilemma, students draw on positive discourses of personal growth and genuine learning to describe their success. Findings suggest that, despite the conflict that arises in teacher–student communication about grades, such conversations can be engaged in a positive and constructive manner.

Connecting Nonprofit and Communication Scholarship: A Review of Key Issues and a Meta-Theoretical Framework for Future Research

The purpose of this review is to analyze the current relationship between communication and nonprofit studies, and to demonstrate how the field of communication can make a significant contribution to nonprofit scholarship by offering a unique way to analyze and explain nonprofit phenomena. To accomplish this we begin with a brief review of communication research in the nonprofit literature to see how scholars in this interdisciplinary field understand communication. Next we review key developments in the history of communication as an academic discipline in order to situate contemporary perspectives toward our field. We then explain how communication scholars have progressed from our intellectual origins. Our subsequent review of communication scholarship in and of the nonprofit sector highlights this evolution toward a more complex and nuanced approach to communication. From there we develop a distinct “communication perspective” toward the nonprofit sector based on a constitutive view of communication—a key meta-theoretical framework currently influencing the field of communication. Our primary contribution is thus to explain the implications of a constitutive approach to communication and how such an understanding can advance nonprofit—communication scholarship, as well as provide a meta-theoretical framework to further galvanize all scholars interested in this kind of work.

(Re)organizing Organizational Communication Pedagogy: Attending to the Salient Qualities of a Communicative Approach to Organization

Recent discussions about making the field of organizational communication more influential have given inadequate attention to how our pedagogical frameworks could more explicitly promote the distinct contributions of organizational communication scholarship. Embracing the classroom as an overlooked yet tremendously meaningful site for demonstrating the value of organizational communication theory and practice, we offer a guiding framework for teaching organizational communication that more clearly attends to the salient qualities of a communicative approach to the study of organization. We argue that this overarching approach to organizational communication pedagogy will help develop greater practical wisdom among students as they learn to apply communicative perspectives for understanding, critiquing, and engaging the problems of contemporary organizational life.

Understanding What It Means to Be Business-Like in the Nonprofit Sector: Toward a Communicative Explanation

Nonprofit organizations experience a significant dilemma: whether they are and/or should be business-like. Yet scholars know too little about how nonprofit practitioners themselves respond to and enact this tension. Through in-depth interviews, findings indicate that although nonprofit leaders claimed that their organizations were like businesses, they carefully constructed the meaning of “business-like” as compatible with and in service of their nonprofit mission. These findings support and extend previous ethnographic research and strengthen a communicative explanation of what it means to be business-like in nonprofit work.

Forum Introduction: Promoting the Field Through Organizational Communication Pedagogy

Organizational communication scholars have frequently discussed ways to promote the field by making communicative approaches to organization more useful and meaningful for scholars, organizational participants, and our communities. For instance, a 2002 Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ) forum discussed ways to translate our scholarship into meaningful practice by extending our research to a wider variety of audiences (Trethewey, 2002). Furthermore, a 2005 MCQ forum reflected on the “golden era” of the 1980s (Barker, 2005) and how the field can continue to progress by developing “distinctive theory that responds to pressing interdisciplinary problems in unique ways” (Kuhn, 2005, p. 626). And a 2007 MCQ forum discussed how we can promote the field by moving beyond the traditional boundaries of our scholarship and partnering with various publics to address important issues facing our communities (Krone & Harter, 2007). Although these forums provided useful insights into how we can enhance the relevance of communicative approaches to organization, explicit discussion as to how our undergraduate teaching can enhance the legitimacy and relevance of the field has been largely absent from these conversations. As such, this forum explores how our pedagogical approaches can increase the influence of organizational communication by better aligning our distinct theoretical perspectives, research findings, and applied practices with our undergraduate teaching.