Reframing Difference in Organizational Communication Studies: Research, Pedagogy, and Practice

Given the increasingly diverse terrain of 21st century organizational life, researchA-ers and studentsA-are exploring theoretical frameworks and analytic tools that attempt to understand organizing procA-esses in all of their richness and complexity. As such, there is widespread recognition of the need to exA-amine organizations as constructed through, and repositories of, difference; that is, as complex intersecA-tions of discourses of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other markers of difference. In this sense, organiA-zations are one of the principal sites where A'differences that make a differenceA (Bateson) are produced and reproduced.Communication is not something that simply occurs in organizations; rather, organizing processes are constituted and made meaningful by the mundane communication practices of its members. The purpose of Organizing Difference, then, is to examine difference as a communicative phenomenon:A- The A'differences that make a differenceA are social and material constructions that can be productively understood by examining them as communicaA-tively accomplished. All of the scholars in this volumeA-explore difference from a variety of perA-spectives, each of which examines systematically the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference.KEY FEATURES &BAD:amp; BENEFITS:Organizing Difference explores the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference through three foci:A- (1) Research, (2) Pedagogy, and (3) Practice.··In Section I-Researching Difference, organizational communication scholars explore a number of ways in which differA-ence can be critically examined as a communicative phenomenon, with the goal being to demonstrate the importance of A'differenceA as a constructA1a sensitizing deviceA1through which the complexities of organizaA-tional communication processes can be examined and better understood.··In Section II-Teaching Difference, chapters move beyond A'teaching diversity in the workplaceA and instead explore how students can learn to appreciate difference as an endemic feature of work environments as well as organizing processes writ large.··In Section III-Practicing Difference, chapters explore difference not simply in terms of A'workplace diversityA initiatives, but examine it more broadly as a communicative mechanism through which organizations enable some possiA-bilities and exclude others.Contributors represent a Who's Who of both established and emerging scholars in this area, including Stan Deetz, Linda Putnam, Gail Fairhurst, Brenda Allen, Patrice Buzzanell, Karen Ashcraft, Sarah Dempsey, Erika Kirby, Lynn Harter, and William Rawlins.