Offers six personal "passing" strategies the author uses to "pass" for heterosexual in organizational settings: distancing, dissociating, dodging, distracting, denying, and deceiving. Suggests that the price for passing was the prevention of authentic, healthy relationship development within the workplace. (PA)

Uses a case study based on interviews and documents to apply narrative theory and methods to "garbage can" decision theory. States that narrative approaches to organizational action offer insight into how decisions occur in organizations and that organizational decision making may be understood as the interweaving of multiple, ongoing,…

Examines organizational symbolism that is reflected in corporate discourse. Describes types of symbols and the functions symbols serve over time. Demonstrates how symbolic analysis can provide a better understanding of, and make contributions to, existing research on organizational concepts such as organizational change, leadership, and…

Analyzes (using flight attendants) hidden transcripts--interactions, stories, myths, and rituals in which employees participate beyond direct observation--to provide an avenue to identify resistance and change in the organizing process. Challenges the outdated ideal of transmissional meaning, questions organizational power by including the…

Argues for a contingency view of communication clarity and effectiveness based on the impact that an organization's language customs have on perceived effectiveness. Examines the psychological-social function of organizational language and discusses the role that language has in creating new knowledge in organizations. (KEH)

Provides a critical ethnographic account of how members of a small design company experienced a work environment riddled with ambiguous communication. States that although management's objective in providing vague goals was to spark creative freedom, employees experienced the environment as paradoxical and constraining. Contends that interplay of…

Introduces, through a conversation with computer-system designers from the Netherlands, the Language/Action Perspective on modeling business workflow and communication processes. Describes their attempts to develop system models that go beyond data flow to incorporate the communicative actions or transactions that result in the creation of a…