In the 21st century, shifting workplace demographics, globalization, and the flattening of the world via new communication technologies has ushered in radical changes in our understandings of organizations and their members. Given the interest in engaged scholarship and more flexible and virtual forms within organizational communication, cases in this volume cross over different areas within the field and related disciplines. Furthermore, they cover topics and populations that are increasingly being seen in organizational communication literature. Cases delve into organizing structures, relationships, and visions for global not-for-profits, hybrid, creative industry, and entrepreneurial organizations. Some cases are "positive" in orientation and display exemplars of organizations that have qualities to emulate. Others display "destructive" elements and processes (e.g., dysfunctional leadership, workplace bullying). Furthermore, the cases reflect an awareness of the necessity of intercultural communication competencies, emphasizing communication in multicultural contexts (e.g., China, India, Africa, Russia). This book can benefit instructors and students in at least four ways. First, it provides instructors with an application-based teaching tool to help spark discussion. Second, students often find case studies interesting and applicable to their current and future work lives, especially undergraduates who anticipate graduating within the next year or two and entering full-time membership in the labor force. Third, students and instructors note that cases help students grasp course materials that may be otherwise challenging. In their case study learning, students sometimes derive insights, lessons, and strategies that broaden the theoretical and practical implications for which instructors plan. Finally, for graduate students, the book encourages reflection on important topics for future research and provides a resource for making their lessons come alive in classrooms and in other settings.

In the 21st century, shifting workplace demographics, globalization, and the flattening of the world via new communication technologies has ushered in radical changes in our understandings of organizations and their members. Given the interest in engaged scholarship and more flexible and virtual forms within organizational communication, cases in this volume cross over different areas within the field and related disciplines. Furthermore, they cover topics and populations that are increasingly being seen in organizational communication literature. Cases delve into organizing structures, relationships, and visions for global not-for-profits, hybrid, creative industry, and entrepreneurial organizations. Some cases are "positive" in orientation and display exemplars of organizations that have qualities to emulate. Others display "destructive" elements and processes (e.g., dysfunctional leadership, workplace bullying). Furthermore, the cases reflect an awareness of the necessity of intercultural communication competencies, emphasizing communication in multicultural contexts (e.g., China, India, Africa, Russia). This book can benefit instructors and students in at least four ways. First, it provides instructors with an application-based teaching tool to help spark discussion. Second, students often find case studies interesting and applicable to their current and future work lives, especially undergraduates who anticipate graduating within the next year or two and entering full-time membership in the labor force. Third, students and instructors note that cases help students grasp course materials that may be otherwise challenging. In their case study learning, students sometimes derive insights, lessons, and strategies that broaden the theoretical and practical implications for which instructors plan. Finally, for graduate students, the book encourages reflection on important topics for future research and provides a resource for making their lessons come alive in classrooms and in other settings.

This timely volume provides an in-depth look at why the field of communication is so central in initiatives for social impact around the world. In Distinctive Qualities in Communication Research, editors Donal Carbaugh and Patrice M. Buzzanell bring together scholars with varied and productive approaches to communication to address the question of what distinguishes communication research from similar studies in other disciplines. Each contributor responds to the question: "What makes your research communication research? How does your program of inquiry treat communication not simply as data, but as its primary theoretical concern?" Their responses are the heart of this book. The questions addressed and answered herein define the qualities that set research in communication apart from work in related fields, such as social psychology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The book begins and ends by looking across these studies generally, bringing into view not only the specific possibilities in the study of communication today, but also what such study contributes generally to understanding human problems, social relations, and communities. This volume provides an invaluable resource for graduate students beginning their study in communication; academics needing to define the distinctive contributions that communication research makes; and administrators who want to understand the scope and breadth of work in communication. It provides an invaluable resource for defining the role of communication research in the academic community and the contributions it makes to the study of human interaction.

Mental Health among Higher Education Faculty, Administrators, and Graduate Studentsaddresses how many academics who experience mental distress or mental illness are afraid to speak out because of cultural stigma and fears of career repercussions. Many academics' reluctance to publicly disclose their struggles complicates attempts to understand their experiences through research or popular media, or to develop targeted mental health resources and institutional policies. This volume builds on the existing studies in this greatly under-researched area of mental health among faculty, administrators, and graduate students in higher education. The chapters' research findings will help institutions communicate about mental health in culturally-competent and person-centered ways; create work environments conducive to mental well-being; and support their academic employees who have mental health challenges. This book argues that discussions of health and wellness, equity, workload expectations and productivity, and campus diversity must also cover chronic illness and disability, which include mental health and mental illness.

In From Theory to Practice: Examining Millennials Reshaping Organizational Cultures, contributors to the collection focus on several interrelated issues. They examine the ways in which the members of the millennial generation influence how we work and communicate with our millennial students, colleagues and employees. They also elaborate on how to create work-life balance for the members of the millennial generation and explore ways in which millennials can be open and responsive to others in a society who don't necessarily share the values, political views or desires of the millennial generation, nor the ways in which they prefer to communicate. This collection engages in a scholarly dialogue about millennials and how their actions within the workplace and needs within organizational cultures and everyday performances influence our communication with them. With equal importance, it addresses the question of how millennials can become more adaptable in their communication with others in society, especially within organizations with different generations, or cultures that may or may not communicate the way they do. Contributors suggest that the millennial culture should be carefully studied by employers, instructors, and researchers to create a better workplace experience, and to also improve the level of communication among different generations in the workplace.

As portrayals of heroic women gain ground in film, television, and other media, their depictions are breaking free of females as versions of male heroes or simple stereotypes of acutely weak or overly strong women. Although heroines continue to represent the traditional roles of mothers, goddesses, warriors, whores, witches, and priestesses, these women are no longer just damsels in distress or violent warriors. In Heroines of Film and Television: Portrayals in Popular Culture, award-winning authors from a variety of disciplines examine the changing roles of heroic women across time. In this volume, editors Norma Jones, Maja Bajac-Carter, and Bob Batchelor have assembled a collection of essays that broaden our understanding of how heroines are portrayed across media, offering readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about women. Contributors bring fresh readings to popular films and television shows such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Weeds, Mad Men, and Star Trek. The representations and interpretations of these heroines are important reflections of popular culture that simultaneously empower and constrain real life women. These essays help readers gain a more complete understanding of female heroes, especially as related to race, gender, power, and culture. A companion volume to Heroines of Comic Books and Literature, this collection will appeal to academics and broader audiences that are interested in women in popular culture.

Despite the increasing number and variety of older characters appearing in film, television, comics, and other popular culture, much of the understanding of these figures has been limited to outdated stereotypes of aging. These include depictions of frailty, resistance to modern life, and mortality. More importantly, these stereotypes influence the daily lives of aging adults, as well as how younger generations perceive and interact with older individuals. In light of our graying population and the growing diversity of portrayals of older characters in popular culture, it is important to examine how we understand aging. In Aging Heroes: Growing Old in Popular Culture, Norma Jones and Bob Batchelor present a collection of essays that address the increasing presence of characters that simultaneously manifest and challenge the accepted stereotypes of aging. The contributors to this volume explore representations in television programs, comic books, theater, and other forms of media. The chapters include examinations of aging male and female actors who take on leading roles in such movies as Gran Torino, Grudge Match, Escape Plan, Space Cowboys, Taken, and The Big Lebowski as well as The Expendables, Red, and X-Men franchises. Other chapters address perceptions of masculinity, sexuality, gender, and race as manifested by such cultural icons as Superman, Wonder Woman, Danny Trejo, Helen Mirren, Betty White, Liberace, and Tyler Perry's Madea. With multi-disciplinary and accessible essays that encompass the expanding spectrum of aging and related stereotypes, this book offers a broader range of new ways to understand, perceive, and think about aging. Aging Heroes will be of interest to scholars of film, television, gender studies, women's studies, sociology, aging studies, and media studies, as well as to general readers.

As portrayals of heroic women gain ground in film, television, and other media, their depictions are breaking free of females as versions of male heroes or simple stereotypes of acutely weak or overly strong women. Although heroines continue to represent the traditional roles of mothers, goddesses, warriors, whores, witches, and priestesses, these women are no longer just damsels in distress or violent warriors. In Heroines of Film and Television: Portrayals in Popular Culture, award-winning authors from a variety of disciplines examine the changing roles of heroic women across time. In this volume, editors Norma Jones, Maja Bajac-Carter, and Bob Batchelor have assembled a collection of essays that broaden our understanding of how heroines are portrayed across media, offering readers new ways to understand, perceive, and think about women. Contributors bring fresh readings to popular films and television shows such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kill Bill, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Weeds, Mad Men, and Star Trek. The representations and interpretations of these heroines are important reflections of popular culture that simultaneously empower and constrain real life women. These essays help readers gain a more complete understanding of female heroes, especially as related to race, gender, power, and culture. A companion volume to Heroines of Comic Books and Literature, this collection will appeal to academics and broader audiences that are interested in women in popular culture.

The goal of Essays on Communication & Spirituality is to expand students' understanding of communication theory and inquiry. The editor and contributors aim to present the beginning position of an emerging discourse in the communication field. The collection's essays explore the potential contribution of spirituality for the study of communication. They also examine and illustrate how scholarly work that is premised on such spiritual assumptions reshapes our understanding of communication. Essays on Communication & Spirituality is intended as a supplemental text for any foundational communication course that explores different understandings of communication.

Rethinking Organizational Communication From Feminist Perspectives reconsiders organizational and managerial communication theories, research, and practice from multiple feminisms. Part I consists of theoretical analyses that reconceptualize and extend boundaries in our thinking about work and organizing processes. The chapters propose an alternative view of public-private discourse, stakeholder ethics, socialization processes, and negotiation by contrasting traditional approaches with feminist values. Part II presents women?s voices through interview excerpts, poems, diary entries, and stories and explores the ways in which these concrete details of ordinary lives represent missing facets and nuances of our organizational and managerial communication work. Part III contains chapters that rewrite organizational and managerial constructs. The authors not only offer alternative reconceptualizations, but also suggest specific tactics and long-term strategies devised from feminisms for revising organizational and managerial communication processes and practices. The final section of the book draws together the themes of the book and encourages a continuing dialogue on the issues.

Rethinking Organizational Communication From Feminist Perspectives reconsiders organizational and managerial communication theories, research, and practice from multiple feminisms. Part I consists of theoretical analyses that reconceptualize and extend boundaries in our thinking about work and organizing processes. The chapters propose an alternative view of public-private discourse, stakeholder ethics, socialization processes, and negotiation by contrasting traditional approaches with feminist values. Part II presents women?s voices through interview excerpts, poems, diary entries, and stories and explores the ways in which these concrete details of ordinary lives represent missing facets and nuances of our organizational and managerial communication work. Part III contains chapters that rewrite organizational and managerial constructs. The authors not only offer alternative reconceptualizations, but also suggest specific tactics and long-term strategies devised from feminisms for revising organizational and managerial communication processes and practices. The final section of the book draws together the themes of the book and encourages a continuing dialogue on the issues.

This timely volume provides an in-depth look at why the field of communication is so central in initiatives for social impact around the world. In Distinctive Qualities in Communication Research, editors Donal Carbaugh and Patrice M. Buzzanell bring together scholars with varied and productive approaches to communication to address the question of what distinguishes communication research from similar studies in other disciplines. Each contributor responds to the question: "What makes your research communication research? How does your program of inquiry treat communication not simply as data, but as its primary theoretical concern?" Their responses are the heart of this book.

The questions addressed and answered herein define the qualities that set research in communication apart from work in related fields, such as social psychology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The book begins and ends by looking across these studies generally, bringing into view not only the specific possibilities in the study of communication today, but also what such study contributes generally to understanding human problems, social relations, and communities.

This volume provides an invaluable resource for graduate students beginning their study in communication; academics needing to define the distinctive contributions that communication research makes; and administrators who want to understand the scope and breadth of work in communication. It provides an invaluable resource for defining the role of communication research in the academic community and the contributions it makes to the study of human interaction.