Browsing by Subject "dialectics"
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Item Buying into the Business Case: A Bona Fide Group Study of Dialectical Tensions in Employee Network Groups(2010-10-12) Baker, Jane StuartObjectives for managing diversity in organizations include reducing lawsuits, responding to changing employee demographics, enhancing image, attracting and retaining a variety of talent, reaching new customer bases, and improving group effectiveness. Diversity management also emphasizes strategies to help retain and promote minority members once they have been hired. One of these ways is through employee network groups. This research adopts a case approach to describing and comparing a Black and a Hispanic employee network group at a United States affiliate of the Fortune Global 100 energy corporation, Summit International. This study applies bona fide group theory and dialectics to examine the complex intergroup relationships that employee network groups have in their organizations. The study offers three key contributions to communication theory. In connection with dialectics, bona fide group theory helped to reveal the multiple units from which group tensions emerge and the complex decisions that group members must make in managing them. The application of bona fide group theory also revealed an unexpected finding: that the network groups were engaged in concertive control with each other through interdependence with the organizational context. The bona fide group theory uncovered these processes because it revealed the norms and expectations that groups formed based on the corporate values regarding diversity.Item Managing Tensions In A Globalizing Environment(2010-10-12) Shoemaker, Martha McArdellGlobalizing processes often place the social cohesion of organizations at risk when multinational people experience and exhibit tensions from their diverse cultural and language norms. This study uses discourse analysis and dialectical theory to understand the intersection of organizational tensions and multinationalism as they appear at a bilingual Swiss higher education institution. I define multinationalism as the intersection of communities who self identify with a national heritage and perpetuate that identity through daily communication and interaction. This case study is approached from a social constructionist perspective. I use grounded theory and dialectical analysis to analyze the fifty-nine interviews in order to identify the tensions that intersect with multinationalism and how they are managed. The tensions identified include: choosing a language where two are privileged, providing an intercultural environment as described by the mission statement, and managing pedagogy/co-teaching practices. Choosing a language is often described in a dual dimension between choosing French/choosing English where language groups are sometimes seen as oppositional and vying for privileged status even though the organization privileges both languages. Providing an intercultural environment is described as a global endeavor and yet sometimes becomes dialectical when balancing how the organizational environment is actually managed/not managed based on national and organizational cultural perspectives. Practicing pedagogy/co-teaching activities are often framed as oppositional and dialectical when trying to reconcile French pedagogy/Anglo-Saxon pedagogy and co-teaching practices, especially in regard to American influence. Multinationalism emerges when participants use group identity descriptors and intersects in a variety of ways depending on the intensity of the tensions. Managing tensions result in ambiguity because of undefined language fluency and competency. While ambiguity allows for social cohesion and time for interpreting messages, it sometimes is used strategically to deny messages and retain privileged positions. Disorienting interactions for some employees result in paradoxical situations, and in some extreme cases, participants reported schizophrenic behavior when paranoid statements are made which reflect their paralysis, uncertainty and loss of power. This study advances dialectical theory by redefining totality as including regional, national, and global contexts that also influence organizational agency and discourse. In addition this study adds to the understanding of knots of contradictions by illustrating how tensions evolve in their own right and also spin off simultaneous and interconnected tensions. Finally, results from this study suggest that using ambiguity could be seen as another management option as well as a result when dealing with dialectical and paradoxical tensions.Item Redefining Entrepreneurship: The Discursive Constructions and Dialectics of Women's Sole-Proprietorship, Business-Ownership and Direct Sales Business-Ownership(2014-08-11) Jacocks, Cara WhitneyThis study examines the discursive constructions of women entrepreneurs related to their roles as sole-proprietors, business-owners and direct sales business-owners as well as the communicative contradictions experienced by these women in the leading and organizing of different business enterprises. Relying on social dialectics theory to unpack the tensions associated with entrepreneurial practice, this study illuminates definitions, descriptions and struggles related to enacting gender and various forms of entrepreneurship. By examining the discursive tensions experienced via the direct accounts of sole-proprietors, business-owners, and direct sales business-owners, this research contributes to a larger understanding of gender, communication and entrepreneurship. Findings from this study demonstrate that women define entrepreneurship in different ways depending on a host of factors including their personal work history, differential treatment faced in previous occupations, the type of entrepreneurship practiced, the type of industry or business, and family status. Results also demonstrate that women who enact different forms of entrepreneurship experience distinct relational tensions and enact varying management techniques as they seek to balance these tensions.