Challenging the notion that digital media render traditional, formal organizations irrelevant, this book offers a new theory of collective action and organizing. Based on extensive surveys and interviews with members of three influential and distinctive organizations in the United States - The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn - the authors reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon in which technology enhances people s ability to cross boundaries in order to interact with one another and engage with organizations. By developing a theory of Collective Action Space, Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl explore how people's attitudes, behaviors, motivations, goals, and digital media use are related to their organizational involvement. They find that using technology does not necessarily make people more likely to act collectively, but contributes to a diversity of participatory styles, which hinge on people s interaction with one another and the extent to which they shape organizational agendas. In the digital media age, organizations do not simply recruit people into roles, they provide contexts in which people are able to construct their own collective experiences.

Recipient of the 1995 Best Book Award from the Organizational Communication division of the Speech Communication Association "I have just finished reading Organizational Communication. This is a magnificent piece of work bringing together current and past scholarship to form a persuasive argument for awareness. I will bring this work to the attention of a graduate class I'm teaching on organizational change and team building. . . . Above all, I recommend it to instructors of organizational communication." --William Gorden, Kent State University The lines between our personal and professional lives are blurred--naturally, one affects the other. Organizational Communication is the first book on the subject to take into account the personal context we bring into an organization. In addition to the connections between home life, social life, and professional activities, author Cynthia Stohl asserts that we must pay close attention to the linkages that individuals develop and maintain within their organizational contexts. Each chapter illustrates the ways in which today's changing social patterns, the increasing diversity of the workforce, the introduction of new communication technologies, and the challenges of global integration and competition create organizational and interpersonal networks that are intricately interwoven and complex. By reframing the network metaphor, the author challenges us to examine the ways in which organizational communication is always embedded in, and influenced by, overlapping systems of relationships. Organizational Communication is the ideal text for courses in organizational communication that focus on the organization as an integrated aspect of our lives, our culture, and our global society.