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This chapter explores the multiple communication problems that arise normally among groups of people and that are exacerbated under the impact of recurrent stress. Under conditions of chronic stress, breakdowns in organizational communication networks occur. The feedback loops that are necessary for consistent and timely error correction no longer function. Without adequate networks of communication, the normal conflict that exists in human groups will escalate and increasing amounts of important information become “undiscussable” while the organization as a whole becomes increasingly alexithymic–unable to talk about the issues that are causing the most problems and that remain, therefore unsolvable. One of the consequences of this is the emergence of collective disturbances that may turn into chronic unresolved conflict and violence. Without the ability to discuss vital subjects, the organizational grapevine becomes poisoned, conflict compounds and without adequate communication, collective disturbances emerge and if not stopped, will lead to violence.

This chapter focuses on the importance of the use of language, both verbal and written. It provides direction for how managerial supervisors may better understand communication and what strategies can be used to enhance this critical aspect of organizational culture. It begins with a brief overview of the importance of communication, then focuses more specifically on understanding and skill building.

This chapter examines how social network analysis can be used as a diagnostic technique for better understanding myriad organizational challenges, ranging from improving communication between functional organizations to identifying key knowledge-sharing roles and responsibilities. A research program is described that aims to determine how organizations can better support work occurring in informal networks of employees. Working with a consortium of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, collaboration and work in over forty informal networks from twenty-three different organizations was assessed. In all cases, the networks studied provided strategic and operational value to the embedding organization by enabling employees to effectively collaborate and integrate disparate expertise.

This chapter discusses effective communication in hospitals. Hospitals offer a multitude of challenges for effective communication, but good communication is possible when it is recognized that the challenge needs time, commitment, and resources; when formal processes and structures exist and are used effectively; and, particularly, when the importance of informal communication channels is recognized and exploited.

This chapter dispels six commonly held assumptions about networks in organizations. These myths include: (i) to build better networks, we have to communicate more; (ii) everyone should be connected to everyone else; (iii) we can't do much to aid informal networks; (iv) how people fit into networks is a matter of personality (which can't be changed); (v) central people who have become bottlenecks should make themselves more accessible; and (vi) I already know what is going on in my network.

This chapter considers the sources of information available to British Railways (BR) staff as well as health and safety training courses and different types of information. Most BR employees were aware that information about health and safety was available to them. Numerous sources were cited, but these were mainly written sources and there was a general perception that verbal communication was much more effective. The main source of unwritten health and safety information was training. This was not perceived as being generally available and when it was, it was not regarded as being high quality.

The NHS is divided into a purchasing arm, which commissions, monitors, and pays for care; and a provider arm, which delivers care in hospitals and the community. This chapter discusses the importance of establishing sound processes for relationship management and communications between these two organizational arms for efficient NHS organization and care delivery. The relationship between providers and commissioners is structured through a series of timetabled meetings throughout the year. Commissioning for Quality is now central to the relationship between purchasers and providers with financial incentives to provide high-quality, safe care through Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN).

Studying language and communication at work implies that we connect them to the very processes, activities, and practices that constitute organizations or organizational phenomena. This chapter demonstrates that language and communication at work can mean many things and that there are a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches that can be used for such analysis. Four characteristic features of such studies are highlighted: (1) interest in the communicative constitution of organization, (2) focus on discursive or communicative practices, (3) emphasis on temporal aspects and dynamics, and (4) placing language and communication in its sociomaterial context. Not all studies can focus on all these aspects, but these features are central in this nascent stream of research.

The so-called “linguistic turn” purportedly has allowed scholars to demonstrate why it seems so important to focus on language, discourse, and social interaction when studying organizational phenomena. However, it could be argued that it also led them to neglect some key aspects of the role material agency plays in organizational processes, a negligence that the more recent “material turn” could be said to be addressing. This chapter proposes to show, both theoretically and empirically, that analysts do not actually need to keep turning in one direction or another, that is, choose between materiality and discourse, so to speak, but that they should rather focus on the multiple ways by which various forms of reality (more or less material) come to do things and even express themselves in a given interaction.

NHS Trusts were established in the 1990s with governance frameworks modelled on private sector organizations. This included each Trust having a Board with overall responsibility for future direction, the boundaries within which the Trust operates, its values, and its results. This chapter discusses the role of NHS boards, effective Board communications, board papers, and common problems with communications to boards and their committees.

This chapter analyzes organizations’ communications on their websites. Specifically, it explores the extent to which organizations work to build an interactive, discursive space in which information is shareable between individual members and where those members have the opportunity to develop some degree of communicative autonomy—features in line with the actualizing civic information style. It also looks at the types of actions in which members are asked to participate, contrasting relatively more conventional, dutiful activities such as contacting government officials and contributing financially to the organization against emerging, networked, and expressive activities such as posting one’s own views to social media spaces. Results are not hopeful from the perspective of a revitalization of civic communication through websites. The style of communication displayed by civic organizations was overwhelmingly dutiful, with most websites used as little more than advertisements for strategically crafted information

This chapter discusses expertise in an engineering space both by providing an extended example of a global multidisciplinary engineering design team and by focusing on project-based design both as practice in learning and an employment context. Drawing from organizational communication, professional communication, and human-centered design, we provide a three-pronged framing of expertise that links the communicative constitution of expertise in project-based work, professional development of normative understandings through texts, and engineering design expertise formation and enrichment. This framing enables scholars and practitioners to converse about the dialogic tensions and possibilities that surface when attention is centered on particular discourses and materialities within and between these frames. Taken together, we propose that expertise “becomes” through and transcending these three processes within design that is team-based, multidisciplinary, and community-embedded. This chapter contributes to understandings of the tensions, ambiguities, and ambivalences around experts, expertise, and accomplishment of new knowledge.

Delilah is a mother of three who works the phones in dispatch at a metropolitan police department. She enjoys her job, but her new boss is ruffling some feathers. Complaining that he gets too many emails, he wants their team to start communicating through text messages. But he forgets that mobile service plans are fairly expensive for many of his employees. What happens in the “Flicked Her a Nickel” story sets the stage for how employees, managers, organizations, friends, and family negotiate for control over mobile communication. This chapter introduces a focus on how communication happens around mobile devices and shows how this research contributes to three fields: mobile communication, organizational communication, and management information systems. It introduces key terms, previews the chapters, and teases the reader with a few of the unexpected findings.