Cooperative Struggle: Re-framing Intercultural Conflict in the Management of Sino-American Joint Ventures

Sino-American economic joint ventures are most often studied through a lens of technical rationality that typically emphasizes organizational efficiency, reduces culture to a manageable resource, and views conflict as discrete disruptions requiring efficient handling. Here, we conceptualize Sino-American business partnerships as sites of struggle where co-managers\u27 accounts of intercultural disagreements reveal friction around action, voice, interests, and identity. We propose cooperative struggle as a critical management practice for working creatively with the multiple forms of difference that arise in this organizational form

Cooperative Struggle: Re-framing Intercultural Conflict in the Management of Sino-American Joint Ventures

Sino-American economic joint ventures are most often studied through a lens of technical rationality that typically emphasizes organizational efficiency, reduces culture to a manageable resource, and views conflict as discrete disruptions requiring efficient handling. Here, we conceptualize Sino-American business partnerships as sites of struggle where co-managers\u27 accounts of intercultural disagreements reveal friction around action, voice, interests, and identity. We propose cooperative struggle as a critical management practice for working creatively with the multiple forms of difference that arise in this organizational form

Overcoming the Dichotomy: Cultivating Standpoints in Organizations through Research

Feminist standpoint theories are seldom used by researchers. One possible reason is the ongoing debate between postmodern theorists and feminine standpoint theorists. The debate has been constructed in bipolar terms such that the issues are perceived as mutually exclusive. However, bipolar assumptions are damaging to women, both in general and in organizations. We contend that feminist standpoint theories should theorize similarities, material reality, and communal agency while being sensitive to differences, multiple realities, and individual agency. A study of academic women is used to illustrate how standpoints can develop around similarities while respecting differences. Using a creative narrative, participants’ organizational standpoints were developed around the common experiences of invisibility, overvisibility, isolation, energy dissipation, and a desire for community. Cultural differences, idiosyncratic differences, and differences in the evolution of a consciousness of oppression are discussed

Overcoming the Dichotomy: Cultivating Standpoints in Organizations through Research

Feminist standpoint theories are seldom used by researchers. One possible reason is the ongoing debate between postmodern theorists and feminine standpoint theorists. The debate has been constructed in bipolar terms such that the issues are perceived as mutually exclusive. However, bipolar assumptions are damaging to women, both in general and in organizations. We contend that feminist standpoint theories should theorize similarities, material reality, and communal agency while being sensitive to differences, multiple realities, and individual agency. A study of academic women is used to illustrate how standpoints can develop around similarities while respecting differences. Using a creative narrative, participants’ organizational standpoints were developed around the common experiences of invisibility, overvisibility, isolation, energy dissipation, and a desire for community. Cultural differences, idiosyncratic differences, and differences in the evolution of a consciousness of oppression are discussed

Women Managers and Gendered Values

In this study we interviewed 30 women managers to better understand ways in which they experience gendered values and behavior in organizational leadership and their responses to those experiences. The results, based on a constant comparison, thematic analysis, indicate the emergence of surprisingly strong and similar perceptions among the 30 women that there are distinct feminine and masculine power orientations in leadership communication with corresponding sets of gendered values: (a) open/closed and (b) supportive/intimidating. Their most common responses were: (a) rejection of masculine power, (b) self-doubt and blame, (c) competence, (d) confrontation, (e) isolation, and (f) resignation. These women judge masculine values to be harmful, overpowering, and ineffective and view feminine values much more favorably, yet they see themselves as isolated in both their values and numbers. Focusing on this sense of isolation, we suggest renewed discussion of ways in which women managers can connect through support for one another, and we offer to that discussion a suggestion for action-oriented networking

Chaos, Reports, and Quests: Narrative Agency and Co-Workers in Stories of Workplace Bullying

This study examined narratives that targets of workplace bullying told about their difficult work experiences along with how co-workers were framed in these narratives. Three different narrative types emerged from their accounts: chaos, report, and quest narratives. Co-worker responses of support or lack thereof were related to the construction of various narrative forms and the level of narrative agency evident in target accounts. The study has important implications for the difference co-workers can make in a target’s ability to withstand bullying and narrate his or her experience

“The Policy Exists but You Can’t Really Use It”: Communication and the Structuration of Work-Family Policies

Although work-family benefits are increasingly important organizational policies, limited research addresses the impact of communication on benefit utilization. However, communication is significant because the perceived appropriateness of work-family benefits emerges through interaction. For example, when coworkers complain about “picking up the slack” for those using family leave, their discourse may impact future decisions of other workers regarding whether they utilize the work-family benefits available to them. We apply Giddens’ (1984) Structuration Theory to examine organizational members’ discursive responses to conditions (and contradictions) present in utilizing work-family benefits in a governmental organization. We argue the daily discursive practices of individuals can either reinforce or undermine formally stated work-family initiatives, and in turn discuss the implications of this “structuration” of policy

The Experience and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace: A Study of a Corrections Organization

This study evaluated Rafaeli and Sutton’s (1989) model of emotional expression in the workplace by examining descriptions of emotional interactions occurring among members of a state government agency. The results indicated that qualities of felt emotions influenced emotional expression, which in turn yielded changed relational perceptions and changed communication behavior subsequent to the emotional event. Content analysis of the event descriptions resulted in preliminary generalizations about the types of emotions experienced by members, the nature of repressed emotional messages, and the dimensions of relationship changes stemming from the emotional events. The results are interpreted as evidence of the importance of emotional communication in relationship reformulation and are consistent with Van Maanen and Kunda’s (1989) recent depiction of emotional control as part of organizational culture

Women Managers and Gendered Values

In this study we interviewed 30 women managers to better understand ways in which they experience gendered values and behavior in organizational leadership and their responses to those experiences. The results, based on a constant comparison, thematic analysis, indicate the emergence of surprisingly strong and similar perceptions among the 30 women that there are distinct feminine and masculine power orientations in leadership communication with corresponding sets of gendered values: (a) open/closed and (b) supportive/intimidating. Their most common responses were: (a) rejection of masculine power, (b) self-doubt and blame, (c) competence, (d) confrontation, (e) isolation, and (f) resignation. These women judge masculine values to be harmful, overpowering, and ineffective and view feminine values much more favorably, yet they see themselves as isolated in both their values and numbers. Focusing on this sense of isolation, we suggest renewed discussion of ways in which women managers can connect through support for one another, and we offer to that discussion a suggestion for action-oriented networking

Chaos, Reports, and Quests: Narrative Agency and Co-Workers in Stories of Workplace Bullying

This study examined narratives that targets of workplace bullying told about their difficult work experiences along with how co-workers were framed in these narratives. Three different narrative types emerged from their accounts: chaos, report, and quest narratives. Co-worker responses of support or lack thereof were related to the construction of various narrative forms and the level of narrative agency evident in target accounts. The study has important implications for the difference co-workers can make in a target’s ability to withstand bullying and narrate his or her experience