Strategic Ambiguities : Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity

by Eric M. Eisenberg

• ISBN13: 9781412926874
• ISBN10: 1412926874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-07
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc

Summary

"This collection of essays is insightful, thought-provoking, and forward-looking. Eric Eisenberg takes on challenging positions, writes in a cogent and accessible manner, and always stimulates new scholarship. This work will be an important teaching tool, not just for the innovative content of the writing, but also for the historical narrative of organizational communication embedded in it." -Steve May, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity , Eric Eisenberg, an internationally recognized leader in the theory and practice of organizational communication, collects and reflects upon more than two decades of his writing. Strategic Ambiguities is a provocative journey through the development of a new aesthetics of communication that rejects fundamentalisms and embraces a contingent, life-affirming worldview. Strategic Ambiguities : Explores the role of language and communication in the construction of social structures and personal identities. Provides a useful intellectual and historical context for students through framing chapters and head notes developed especially for this volume. Chronicles the historical development of an important argument about communicating and organizing through the sustained focus on a single theorist. Intended Audience : This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Organizational Communication, Communication Theory, and Organizational Behavior in the fields of Communication, Business & Management, and Educational Leadership.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Laying Down a Path in Walking

Embracing Ambiguity

Ambiguity as Strategy in Organizational Communication

Meaning and Interpretation in Organizations

Conflict at Disneyland: A Root-Metaphor Analysis

Reconsidering Openness in Organizational Communication

Transcendence and Transformation

Jamming: Transcendence Through Organizing

Miscommunication in Organizations

Dialogue as Democratic Discourse

A Communication Perspective on Interorganizational Cooperation and Inner-City Education

From Anxiety to Possibility: Poems 1987-1997

Openness and Decision Making in the Search for a University Provost

Transforming Organizations Through Communication

Flirting With Meaning

A New Communication Aesthetic

The Kindness of Strangers: Hospitality in Organizational Communication Scholarship

Building a Mystery: Communication and the Development of Identity

Creating Clearings for Communication

Karl Weick and the Aesthetics of ContingencyConclusion

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