Patrice M. Buzzanell

Organizing resilience as adaptive-transformational tensions

In organizational communication, resilience encompasses the processes by which individuals and organizations reintegrate and foster productive change during and after career setbacks, material and personnel losses, disasters, or other obstacles (Buzzanell, 2010). These disruptions might include: deaths of C-Suite or other members; infrastructural destruction and relational instabilities in the aftermath of hurricanes or wildfires; toxic workplace interactions; failed entrepreneurial ventures; and difficulties in mobilizing informal and formal business connections upon loss of cellular towers, roads, internet capabilities, and social networks in areas devastated by war and trauma (e.g. Agarwal & Buzzanell, 2015; Buzzanell, Long, Kokini, Anderson, & Batra, 2015; Doerfel, 2016; Seeger & Sellnow, 2016). Organizational communication scholars contribute understandings and interventions on micro (individual), meso (team, organizational, and community), and macro (interorganizational, national, global organizing networks, multinational corporations, and non-governmental organizations) levels. These levels often intersect as people engage in sensemaking, adaptation to, and transformation of their realities (Buzzanell, 2018; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001). Regardless of the virtual and bricks-and-mortar organizational space in which people communicatively constitute resilience, there seem to be key processes whereby resilience is constituted. Buzzanell (2010, 2018) theorized resilience as adaptive-transformative processes triggered by loss or disruption and involving five subprocesses: crafting a new normalcy; affirming or anchoring important identities during difficult times; using and/or maintaining salient communication networks; looking beyond conventional ways of thinking about and doing life by putting alternative logics to work; and foregrounding productive action while backgrounding unproductive behaviors or negative feelings. With regard to adaptation, when disruption happens, the trigger point may vary in permanence, (single or accumulated) event structure, and (unexpected or forecasted) nature. For instance, the death of a coworker from a terminal illness would be permanent, single, and forecasted, in contrast to recurring microaggressions in workplace interactions that become embedded in organizational cultures that are changeable, accumulated, and forecasted. An active shooter or terrorist attack would be unexpected in nature. In spatio-temporal ordering, initially there are reactive responses to assist recovery (e.g. emergency first-responders and disaster-relief workers; checks on closest family members, colleagues, friendship networks, and business ties through mediated and personal connection; mobilization of interorganizational linkages; e.g. Doerfel & Haseki, 2013; Doerfel, Lai, & Chewning, 2010). Proactive factors might be compensatory

Communication and resilience: multilevel applications and insights – A Journal of Applied Communication Research forum

The concept of human resilience continues to gain popularity among practitioners and scholars. A Google Trends search using the term ‘resilience’ illustrates that the number of searches for the con...

Communication and resilience: concluding thoughts and key issues for future research

In reflecting upon our introductory overview and individual essays, we identify three key issues related to an applied or engaged communication scholarship agenda in the area of resilience that war...

Ventriloqual voicings of parenthood in graduate school: an intersectionality analysis of work-life negotiations

ABSTRACT Taking a ventriloqual approach to intersectionality analysis, this study investigates the communicative constitution of graduate student parenthood and their work-life negotiations. Analyzing 30 in-depth interviews, we found that figures – ideal graduate student worker norms, gender ideologies of work and family, and cultural values of family and child-rearing responsibilities – intersected with one another in shaping the experiences for graduate student parents. These intersectionalities belong to broader structures that constrain graduate students’ career and personal-life choices to fulfill/disrupt roles in navigating parenthood, yet the interplays of various aspects of intersectionality create space for transformation. The study contributes to an emergent grounded-in-action perspective of intersectionality to uncover systems of interlocking oppressions and lived tensions. The theoretical and practical implications of nonhuman agents acting to enable and constrain sustainable work-life communication are presented.

Implementing Sustainability in Organizations: How Practitioners Discursively Position Work

Although largely espoused by contemporary organizations, implementing sustainability is often vague and ineffective. In contrast to most studies that employ resource-based or institutional perspectives to study sustainable organizing, we draw on discursive positioning theory to examine how sustainability practitioners make sense of and enact their work on the ground. Interviewing 45 practitioners and analyzing 35 curriculum vitae (CVs), we traced four subject positions – discovery, enlightenment, legitimacy, and consumption – constructed via 12 discursive resources. These positions emphasized 12 strategic messages, depending on participants’ work contexts. Findings also indicated four ways that politics shaped participants’ subject positions through government collaborations, regulatory environments, vested political agendas, and dominant sociopolitical discourses. We close by discussing some key theoretical and practical implications related to discursive positioning, the political implications of work practices, and sustainability policy making.

Chinese Post80s Generational Resilience: Chengyu (成语) as Communicative Resources for Adaptation and Change

The combined forces of China’s reforms, resurgent traditional values, and problematic labor market have led the Chinese Post80s generation to reconstruct their careers. Drawing on 33 in-depth inter...

Communicating/organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety: Special Issue introduction

Purpose NA Design/methodology/approach NA Findings NA Research limitations/implications NA Practical implications NA Originality/value NA

New Ways Towards Professionalization: The Case of CSR Practitioners

This panel symposium focuses attention on the professionalization of emerging occupations through the case of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professionals. In recent years, a growing number ...

Introduction to special issue: Learning organization/organizational learning and gender issues

Purpose n n n n nThis paper aims to first introduce the four contributions to the themed issue of The Learning Organization entitled “Learning Organization/Organizational Learning and Gender Issues”. Second, the commonalities among these articles function as themes that can generate further research and engaged or problem-driven scholarship and practice. n n n n nDesign/methodology/approach n n n n nFeminist critique. n n n n nFindings n n n n nThese articles challenge commonsense, blur boundaries between reality and imagined visions and form a multilevel matrix for understanding and change regarding gendered learning organizations. n n n n nOriginality/value n n n n nAs an introduction to a special issue, this essay summarizes and extends on the four contributions and then extends the insights to encourage discovery, learning and engagement.