General Research Interests
I study nonstandard work arrangements (out-sourced/contingent labor, self-directed work teams, geographically dispersed workers, volunteers, etc.) and examine how these alternative work relationships impact our understanding of what it means to be or communicate as an organizational member -- specifically with respect to issues of identification, power, and control.
Publications
- Social media and the modern worker: The use of Facebook as an organizational monitoring and management tool. (in Press) In T. Beuchamp, N. Bowie, & D. Arnold (Eds). Ethical theory and business (9th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- Charitable giving in the workplace: A framework to understand employees’ philanthropic performance. (2012) Public Performance & Management Review.
- Fired over Facebook: Issues of employee monitoring and personal privacy on social media websites. (2012) In S. May (Ed). Case Studies in Organizational Communication: Ethical Perspectives and Practices (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- “Alone in a crowd: Organizational identification in the temporary help industry.” (2010) Research Spotlight Section – included in Cheney, G., Christensen, L. T., Zorn, T. E., & Ganesh, S. Organizational communication in an age of globalization: Issues, reflections, practices (2nd Ed). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
- Occupational websites as locations for remote and mobile worker culture: An examination of temporary worker websites. (2008) National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA) Bulletin: Special issue on the culture of remote and mobile work.
* LINK TO VIDEO PRESENTATION OF PAPER AT 2008 SFAA CONFERENCE: http://sfaapodcasts.net/2008/05/22/mobile-work-mobile-lives-cultural-accounts-of-lived-experiences
- “Alternative Times: The Temporal Perceptions, Processes, and Practices Defining the Non-Standard Work Relationship.” (2007) (pp. 273-320). In C. Beck (Ed). Communication Yearbook, 31.
- “My Job Sucks: Examining counter-institutional websites as locations for organizational member voice, dissent, and resistance.” (2006) Management Communication Quarterly, 20(1). 63-90. *Winner - MCQ Article of the Year
- “Falling between the cracks: Control challenges of a contingent workforce.” (2006) Management Communication Quarterly, 19(3). 376-415.
- “Kept at arm’s length: Questioning the desirability of organizational identification” (2002) Communication Monographs, 69(4). 385-404.
*Nominated for NCA Org Comm Article of the Year.
- “The long-term impact of short-term workers: The work life concerns posed by the growth of the contingent workforce. (2001) Management Communication Quarterly, 15(1). 115-120.
- “Community as a means of Organizational Control” (2001) (pp. 111-133). In G. J. Shepherd & E. W. Rothenbuhler (Eds). Communication and Community. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Research in Progress - Volunteer management
Most of my research to date has focused on organizational identification and control issues within the temporary help industry. While temps and volunteers may initially seem to have little in common, both occupy nonstandard roles in the organization. However unlike temps, volunteers are often “high status” nonstandard members and therefore may have fundamentally different methods for negotiating their place within the larger system. I believe that it will be interesting to compare the communicative experiences of these two groups in order to better understand how organizations manage nonstandard work relationships.
Over the past three years I have collected data at the American Red Cross of Central Texas. This organization was uniquely impacted by the 2005 Hurricane season. The Central Texas branch responded to both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita; requiring this chapter's volunteers and staff to mobilize for two significant relief efforts within a few weeks of each other. The Central Texas branch had to quickly recruit and train hundreds of new, spontaneous volunteers in order to cope with the short term challenge of sheltering over 20,000 people during these two hurricanes. Since 2005, I have been examining how this chapter has gone about redesigning its volunteer recruitment and management practices in light of their experiences during the 2005 Hurricane season. In 2008, I was able to participate in the chapter's Hurricane Ike relief effort. This experience allowed me to observe the chapter's new volunteer training and management program in action.
The goal for this research project is to write a book examining volunteer training and management programs. This book will focus on the challenges of simultaneously managing spontaneous volunteers, established volunteers, and paid staff members -- particularly during disasters (when training time is short and effective communication can have life or death implications). This book will allow me to pull together several of my research interests: non-standard labor (volunteers), virtual organizing (disaster relief), geographically dispersed workers (volunteers working in a variety of areas), and organizational identification (motivating and controlling different types of organizational members in ambiguous work environments).
Current format of the book:
(Forthcoming) Communication and the Volunteer Experience: Exploring the Organizational Dynamics of Volunteering in Multiple Contexts. Peter Lang Publishing Group.
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