Sally Planalp

Meaningful Work and Personal/Social Well-Being Organizational Communication Engages the Meanings of Work

This chapter argues for a broadening of organizational communication scholarship through the consideration of meanings of work including meaningful work. First, we define meaningful work especially within the frame of a broader examination of meanings of work. Along the way, we consider the concept of meaningful work within a constellation of terms that includes job enrichment, work-life balance, career path, leisure, life satisfaction, and so forth. Second, we consider the historical-cultural contexts for our understanding of meaningful work. Here we treat both synchronic and diachronic perspectives on the meaning of work and bring into view matters of difference, such as race, nationality, gender, and class, particularly to the extent that the extant literature treats these dimensions. Third, we consider contemporary discourses in and around workplaces concerning meaningful work—especially in advanced industrial societies. In particular, we interpret recent trends in work and workplace restructuring and how stakeholders discuss them in various parts of

Communicating emotion in everyday life: Cues, channels, and processes

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an account of emotional cues, cue combinations or channel combinations, and emotion as a process. . Cue and channel combinations depend on sex and ethnicity and whether the emotion is expressed in public or private. The information carried by cues does not break out into categories of cues and channels. Emotion as a process has some emotion-eliciting event or events that generate certain appraisals (novelty, valence, control), action tendencies, expressions, and processes by which events are then dominated. More often, the emotion falls in between anger and fear, or is a combination of envy and hate, or is vague, ill defined, and hard to label. Implication of the process perspective is that emotions are not snapshots that “click” on and off. They may come on gradually, evolve, dissipate, return, and just generally make interpretation more difficult because they change.

Thinking/Feeling about Social and Personal Relationships

Traditionally it has been assumed that cognition and emotion are separate and competing forces, with cognition representing rationality and emotion representing irrationality. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these complementary ways of apprehending and understanding the world. In this review, we discuss the functionality and logic of emotions and their impact on perception, cognition, and memory in social and personal relationships. Theory and research on the nature and development of emotion knowledge structures and emotional intelligence in relationships is also discussed, along with a consideration of cross-cultural differences in peoples understandings about the nature of, and relationship between, thinking and feeling. The article closes with a call for a more integrated understanding of and feeling for the dynamics of social and personal relationships.

Not to Change the Topic But …: A Cognitive Approach to the Management of Conversation

A cognitive approach to the management of conversation is sketched and exemplified in a series of three studies of topic change strategies. The first study establishes that naive subjects can relia...

Communication Issues at the End of Life: Reports from Hospice Volunteers

The central goal of this study was to inventory and understand difficult communication issues or dilemmas that arise among hospice volunteers, patients, and their families. Hospice volunteers reported, based on their observations and experience, that denial was the most common communication issue or dilemma for patients, family, and caregivers, followed by negative feelings and family conflicts. Volunteers reported that for themselves, the most common problem was patient impairments such as Alzheimers or Parkinsons disease that made conversation difficult. Powerful and wide-ranging emotions were also challenging for dying patients and their caregivers. Problematic integration theory and terror management theory could be developed further by expanding the role of emotions, and trauma management theories could be enhanced by developing deeper understanding of how the loss of social bonds may be as traumatic as the loss of life.

Reasons for Starting and Continuing to Volunteer for Hospice

The purpose of this study was to find out from hospice volunteers how they first heard of opportunities to volunteer, what motivated them to volunteer when they first began, and why they continue. A total of 351 volunteers from 3 states in the western United States participated in a questionnaire study. Three open-ended questions addressed how they heard of hospice, why they started, and why they continued. Their intentions to continue were also measured on rating scales. Responses to the open-ended questions were coded with acceptable intercoder reliability. Findings were that volunteers heard of opportunities through hospice and health care contacts, personal contacts, print and electronic sources, and other nonhospice organizations. They began volunteering primarily to be of service and because of a personal experience with the death of someone to whom they were close. Most volunteers chose to continue because they found it personally rewarding, helpful to others, or both, but many reported that they continue because of the quality of their own hospice organization and its staff. Demographic influences were noted but were generally small.

Ethical Issues for Hospice Volunteers

Health care professionals usually receive professional education in ethics, but the half million hospice volunteers in the United States may receive only brief training that is limited to confidentiality and the volunteer role. The purpose of this study was to explore ethical issues hospice volunteers confront in their work. Interviews with 39 hospice volunteers were conducted, audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using qualitative methods. Prominent themes were dilemmas about gifts, patient care and family concerns, issues related to volunteer roles and boundaries, and issues surrounding suicide and hastening death. Suggestions for training include discussions of ethics after initial training once volunteers had confronted ethical issues, with special emphasis on strategies for negotiating their uneasy role positioned between health care professional and friend.

Analyzing Social Interaction: Some Excruciating Models and Exhilarating Results

Considerable controversy exists among alternative approaches to the analysis of social interaction. Part of this controversy is due to the use of overly simple, inflexible, and imprecise models. Th...

Messages of Shame and Guilt

U.S. society seems to be experiencing a dramatic wave of interest and public debate about shame and guilt. On one side, scholars decry the destruction of pride and self-esteem that shame and guilt can wreak on individuals, relationships, organizations, and nations; on the other side, scholars argue that aretum to shame and guilt represents an attitude of awe or respect toward the values that are central to culture and to all human interaction. This review draws on the scholarly and popular literature on messages about shame and guilt to address this debate. Specifically, the authors review the grounds or bases for inducing shame and guilt in messages and then the consequences that messages of shame or guilt have for esteem, control, and connection at four levels of analysis: intimate dyads, families, organizations, and public messages. Finally, the authors pose a series of questions that can be used to frame the discussion of an ethics of shame and guilt messages.

Assessing the need for communication training for specialists in poison information.

Introduction. Effective communication has been shown to be essential to physician–patient communication and may be even more critical for poison control center (PCC) calls because of the absence of visual cues, the need for quick and accurate information exchange, and possible suboptimal conditions such as call surges. Professionals who answer poison control calls typically receive extensive training in toxicology but very little formal training in communication. Methods. An instrument was developed to assess the perceived need for communication training for specialists in poison information (SPIs) with input from focus groups and a panel of experts. Requests to respond to an online questionnaire were made to PCCs throughout the United States and Canada. Results. The 537 respondents were 70% SPIs or poison information providers (PIPs), primarily educated in nursing or pharmacy, working across the United States and Canada, and employed by their current centers an average of 10 years. SPIs rated communication skills as extremely important to securing positive outcomes for PCC calls even though they reported that their own training was not strongly focused on communication and existing training in communication was perceived as only moderately useful. Ratings of the usefulness of 21 specific training units were consistently high, especially for new SPIs but also for experienced SPIs. Directors rated the usefulness of training for experienced SPIs higher for 5 of the 21 challenges compared to the ratings of SPIs. Discussion. Findings support the need for communication training for SPIs and provide an empirical basis for setting priorities in developing training units.