Management Communication Quarterly

Most prior media use research has assumed that people use information and communication technologies (ICTs) independently of other ICTs, that is, as discrete media. This study uses cross-organizational, in-depth interview data to uncover the important role that ICT sequences play in persuasion, information exchange, and documentation. The primary occasions for sequential ICT use were (a) preparing for meetings, (b) performing daily tasks, and (c) following up to persuade. When people need to follow up initial communication episodes, the overall groupings of ICTs represent two underlying attributes: degree of connection with others and extent of synchroneity. These findings support an expanded perspective on media richness theory and information theory by illustrating that ICT sequences can expand cues and channels and provide error-reducing redundancy for equivocal and uncertain tasks.

The authors describe the work experiences of in-home day care providers, particularly their relationships with the parents of the children for whom they care throughout the day. The authors identify two unintended consequences of the providers' organizing structures and policies: feelings of stress and underappreciation in potential interactions. Ironically, the providers also instituted these same structures and policies to stay home with their own children and meet their own financial needs. This double bind of agency and constraint produced stress, which in turn compromised their interactions with their family and friends. Findings highlight the difficulties involved in managing work and family from a home-based business and draw particular attention to the relational challenges faced by the providers.

The increasing time requirements and perceived value of occupations raises concerns about creating and managing positive occupational identities. The author explains how individuals pursue moments of micro emancipation and empowerment as they negotiate the positive and negative discourses and material realities of occupational identity within the fund-raising occupation. Interviews with higher education fund-raisers reveal six power-laden and discourse-influenced ways of understanding (framing) fund-raising. The findings suggest that the potential for an empowered occupational identity resides in an individual's ability to shift among framings, managing and maintaining material and discursive tensions surrounding the framings rather than eliminating or avoiding these tensions. Implications of these identity negotiations for various occupations and particularly the nonprofit sector are discussed.

The present study explored the possibility that McGregor's (1960) Theory X/Y assumptions serve as cognitive determinants of superior communicator style, a multidimensional set of style variables that can have considerable effects on subordinate well-being and organizational viability. A total of 279 superiors completed an online survey that measured Theory X/Y orientation and superior communicator style. Correlational tests revealed that Theory X assumptions were positively related to the Dominant and Impression Leaving styles. In contrast, Theory Y assumptions were negatively related to the Anxious style, and positively related to the Supportive, Impression Leaving, and Nonverbally Expressive styles. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential psychological effects of each style profile as well as the implications of the findings for screening job applicants.

This essay describes the authors' efforts to engage disciplinary calls for greater diversity through the construction of an international online community and conference, COMMUNEcation. They describe the commitments and goals of the community and conference, the construction of the COMMUNEcating space, and their encounters with disciplinary, geographically, and linguistically diverse scholars in their mutual exploration of global and organizing practices in their local contexts. The conference contributions and conversations prompted the authors to ask three salient questions around scholarly understandings of the Other and Othering practices of organizing and communicating across the globe—Where is the Other? Who is the Other? and What is the Other? The second half of the essay discusses these questions in detail and concludes with the authors' reflections on creating “spaces inbetween” through technology and an introduction to the multiauthored collaborative essay and conference product from the Scholars of the COMMUNEcation Network that follows.

This collaboratively multiauthored essay presents diverse tales of organizing and communicative practices in our global context. Authors from India, Nepal, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the United States, and Nigeria present individual contributions that coalesce around three clear thematic concerns regarding issues of organizing and communicating: (1) silence and voice, (2) the limits and consequences of linguistic and theoretical translations, and (3) the communal considerations of research politics and participation. The essay concludes with communal reflections on how it is that in attempting to engage with diversity we begin to see remarkable similarities not only in expressing a desire to be heard but also in making a commitment to let others be heard, not only in breaking boundaries and building alliances but also in moving towards a collective, inclusive, and participative conceptualization of the myriad shapes of organizing and communicating that exist in the contemporary global context.