Book Review: Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies: Research,Pedagogy,Practice

Organizational communication, in spite of being a relatively new entrant in the field of management studies, has grown immensely in significance and impact in the recent times. The ethos of organizational communication is multi-strand and interdisciplinary and it is a unique amalgamation of established fields like psychology, sociology, philosophy, organizational behaviour, linguistics and others, thus communication researchers initially had to work really hard to establish it as a formal field of management. The area is presently evolving from an emphasis on managerial concerns to an interest in everyday interactions among organizational actors and has seen inclusion of gender, race, class and other related constructions of difference as medium and product of everyday organizational sense-making and reality construction.

This volume Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies: Research, Pedagogy, Practice appears at an opportune time in the field of organizational communication and provides the necessary fillip for further growth of the area by showcasing the research of communication scholars using various methodologies, perspectives and approaches. The volume systematically examines ‘difference’ as a critical feature of organizational life and is a must read for communication scholars, researchers, management students and would be of great help to communication faculty at premier business schools in India who are planning to start a Fellow Programme in Management with specialization in Communication.

The genesis of this brilliantly edited volume is a doctoral pre conference where a number of prominent organizational communication scholars and PhD students gathered to examine the complexities that repose in the intersection of organizing and difference. Dennis K. Mumby, an eminent award winning researcher himself zealously protects the scholarly approach and the volume stands out in its lucidity and flow. Though the essays are synergistically linked to one another but still the freedom of reading the essays in any sequence gives a unique advantage to the reader and the book.

The volume is structured in three different but related sections.

Part I titled Theorizing Difference and Organization explores numerous ways in which differences can be critically examined as a communicative phenomenon. Karen Lee Ashcraft in her essay ‘Knowing Work through the Communication of Difference’ rather than asking the question of how diversity can be enhanced in professional workplaces reverses the inquiry by asking how communication organizes work through difference. The authors of second chapter ‘Intersecting Difference’ recommend how embracing difference can remove discriminatory practices and also conclude that ‘through dialectical tensions actors can resist fixed meanings, open up space for middle voice, and create opportunities to reframe or transform their organizational lives’.

Dempsey in her incisive essay ‘Theorizing Difference From Transnational Feminisims’ illustrates the transnational feminist perspective and the dilemmas involved with organizing across multiple differences and how complexities are further enhanced within a transnational context. The section ends with ‘Leadership Discourses of Difference: Executive Coaching and the Alpha Male Syndrome’ where the authors provide interesting insights into gender subtexts and assert that it is just a matter of time and soon women executives will provide long overdue alternatives to alpha leadership in today’s organizations.

Part II titled Teaching Difference and Organizing addresses how to teach difference in the classroom and includes practical suggestions for instructors on how to make it relevant to the learner’s personal life and profession. Brenda in her article on ‘Critical Communication Pedagogy as a Framework for Teaching Difference and Organizing’ shares her complete class approach and the unique challenges she faces as a non-traditional teacher as this pedagogical approach demands that the teacher takes the role of a facilitator and is flexible to incorporate new perspectives and resources provided by the students as the course progresses.

In her thought provoking essay Kirby sets on a difficult but admirable path of sensitizing students on issues of privilege and oppression and persuades them to be reflective about the critical determinants of institutional oppression. In the next essay ‘Teaching Difference as Institutional and Making it Personal’ Mease guides the students further to appreciate how to respond to difference as institutional and illustrates the point by using a beautiful analogy of a conveyor belt to make the students understand and analyze the power their position offers and to challenge the limitations of human difference imposed on them. In the final essay of the section ‘Difference and Cultural Identities in Aotearoa New Zealand’ Shiv Ganesh provides an interesting example of teaching difference in Aotearoa, New Zealand through a powerful real life case of Josie Bullock. Josie stood against gender bias and discriminatory practice of her times and I would urge the readers to go through the article to read about the exemplary story of Josie’s courage and determination. She went to the media in 2005 and said ‘… whatever sugar coating people want to put on it, the women are definitely subordinate. Clearly, lots of aspects of Maori culture aren’t good and should be done away with’. The author pitches for progressive pedagogy on cultural identities’ issues and philosophically shares his personal reflections as a teacher that he has on ‘who am I’ while teaching this particular case.

Part III titled Applying Difference to Organizational Change is the final section of the book and focuses on difference as a constitutive feature of organizational life. The first essay ‘Different Ways of Talking About Intervention Goals’ not only examines how institutions intervene in diversity efforts but goes on to the more ambitious aim of exploring the consequences of different ways of talking about intervention and the critical role language plays in this endeavour. The way in which language predisposes the listener to look at a message and encourages different logics is wonderfully described by the authors. Creativity in conversations is a unique area and can be probed by further research. In a sensitive reflective heart talk the authors/activists of the next chapter ‘Intersecting Differences: Organizing [Ourselves] for Social Justice Research With People in Vulnerable Communities’ pose more question than they answer on how collaborative social justice work is to be done and represented in a traditional academic text and persuasively force the readers to contemplate on the ethics of the situation.

In the penultimate chapter of the book, authors Patricia Buzzanell, Rebecca Dohrman and Suzie D’Enbeau add a different lens of political economies as a means of understanding workers everyday experiences and provide recommendation on how work-life issues can be more equitably addressed without marginalizing anybody. In the last essay, Harter and Rawlins bring to life for the readers ‘Passion Works’ a non-profit artists’ studio sponsored by Athens County Board of Mental Retardation and Development Disabilities (ATCO) which is not merely accommodating difference but celebrating it by its openness to emergent possibilities. The authors aesthetically conclude that the ‘extent to which we grasp another’s lifeworld largely depends on poetically exercising our imagination’.

I have personally enjoyed reading the book not only for the rigorous research orientations of the authors but also for thought provoking pieces such as this which made me close the book and do some soul searching as to who am I and what do I want to become. A must read I must say.