Communicating/organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety: special issue introduction

Joshua B. Barbour (Department of Communication Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA)
Patrice M. Buzzanell (Department of Communication, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA)
William J. Kinsella (Department of Communication, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA)
Keri K. Stephens (Department of Communication Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA)

Corporate Communications: An International Journal

ISSN: 1356-3289

Article publication date: 3 April 2018

1946

Citation

Barbour, J.B., Buzzanell, P.M., Kinsella, W.J. and Stephens, K.K. (2018), "Communicating/organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety: special issue introduction", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 154-161. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-01-2018-0019

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited


Communicating/organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety: special issue introduction

The organizations and interorganizational systems upon which we depend to keep us safe in a risky world rely on communication. Understanding the interplay between human beings, systems of interaction, and complex industrial and natural systems is the key to managing and mitigating the risks of modernity (Barbour and James, 2015; Beck, 1992; Kinsella, 2012; Lupton, 2013; Opdyke et al., 2017). Information flows and meaning making are at the core of this interplay (Buzzanell, 2010; Keyton et al., 2008; Maguire and Hardy, 2013; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015). Building on ideas developed at the International Communication Association’s 2016 Remembering, Regulating, and Resilience Preconference, this special issue called for theoretical and empirical submissions to investigate, engage, and/or critique the communicative and organizational accomplishment of reliability, resilience, and safety.

This focus reflects on a broad array of empirical scholarship and theorizing. For example, research has documented the centrality of communication processes for high reliability organizing (HRO) while at the same time highlighting the need for theory grounded in more robust notions of communication (e.g. Barbour and Gill, 2017; Jahn and Black, 2017; Scott and Trethewey, 2008). Reliable organizing is of particular importance in policy making for the regulation of complex industrial systems (e.g. Coan, 2002; Endres, 2012; Kinsella et al., 2013); in environmental protection, stewardship, and sustainability (e.g. Buttny, 2015; Endres et al., 2009; Kinsella et al., 2015; Mitra and Buzzanell, 2015; O’Connor and Gronewold, 2012; Rich, 2016); in healthcare settings (e.g. Apker et al., 2016; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Stephens et al., 2017); and in local and national security (e.g. Bean and Buikema, 2015; Bean and Keränen, 2007). Communication is central to effective disaster and crisis mitigation, preparation, and response (e.g. Agarwal and Buzzanell, 2015; Carlson et al., 2017; Coombs, 2011; Doerfel et al., 2010; Griffin Padgett and Allison, 2010; Heide and Simonsson, 2014; Houston, 2018; Novak and Sellnow, 2009; Seeger, 2006; Sellnow et al., 2012, 2017; Stephens et al., 2013; Theresa, 2009; Ulmer, 2012; Veil et al., 2011; Westerman et al., 2009; Williams and Ishak, 2017). Communication shapes the safety of our workplaces and work practices (e.g. Ford et al., 2016; Myers and McPhee, 2006; Powley, 2009; Real, 2008, 2010; Thackaberry, 2004; Ziegler, 2007).

Research across these domains addresses fundamental questions important in the study of communication. For example, this research makes clear the difficulty and importance of getting the right information to the right audiences at the right time, especially in times of crisis (Seeger et al., 2003; Sellnow et al., 2017; Stephens and Barrett, 2016). It also makes clear the challenges of managing the tensions and contradictions that complicate organizational communication (Ashcraft and Trethewey, 2004; Lewis et al., 2010; Mease, 2015; Putnam et al., 2016; Tracy, 2016). It emphasizes the need for clarity, accuracy, and transparency in information sharing, but also the communicative dynamics that can make such openness difficult or undesirable (Eisenberg and Witten, 1987; Thackaberry, 2004).

Inasmuch as communication processes are essential to developing and nurturing shared vigilance, communication scholarship can address the practical exigencies of day-to-day communicating for safety as well as the theoretical questions that arise in organizing for safety and reliability. For example, although HRO (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015) emphasizes the functionality of key communication processes (e.g. heedful interrelating), and normal accident theory (Clarke, 1999; Perrow, 1999; Sagan, 1995) emphasizes the inherent fragility of such processes over time, these theories concur on the importance of communication (Leveson et al., 2009). Although the centrality of communication is clear, how actual communication constitutes reliability, resilience, and safety is not yet sufficiently well understood (Barbour and Gill, 2017; Maguire and Hardy, 2013; Scott and Trethewey, 2008).

Communicating for reliability, resilience, and safety may depend on the temporal orientation of the work (Maguire and Hardy, 2013), which the design of communication processes for safety can and should take into account (Ballard and McVey, 2014). It may involve seemingly straightforward questions of who needs what information when, and more complex questions about the meaning making that occurs as individuals make decisions about what information to seek, share, and withhold (Mokros and Aakhus, 2002). Communication choices made in day-to-day work have important implications during emergencies, and the logics underlying those choices may have powerful effects on the forms that reliability, resilience, and safety take. Communicating for reliability, resilience, and safety may also depend on the audiences, internal and external, implied, and evoked. Individuals reference external audiences in their communication with each other, work across organizational boundaries, and must explain their actions to external stakeholder groups. Furthermore, these internal communication processes are linked with external communication processes in ways not yet well understood (Barbour et al., in press; Cheney et al., 2014). For example, individuals and organizations are also embedded in larger systems of discourse, power, and knowledge that inform meanings and possibilities for action.

The call for this special issue articulated 14 questions to spark the interrogation of these topics:

  1. What does or what could the communicative accomplishment of reliability, resilience, and safety entail?

  2. How does a communication perspective necessitate a reconceptualization of terms, such as reliability, resilience, and/or safety?

  3. How are reliability, resilience, and/or safety intertwined?

  4. How do micro-, meso-, or macro-social communicative action and the work practices they comprise contribute to, undermine, and constitute reliability, resilience, and/or safety?

  5. How do processes typically conceptualized as inside organizations (e.g. regulatory oversight) interact with processes typically conceptualized as outside organizations (e.g. policy making)?

  6. How does public and institutional memory of disaster (e.g. Bhopal, Chernobyl, Deepwater Horizon, Exxon Valdez, Fukushima, Love Canal) enable and constrain the communicative accomplishment of reliability, resilience, and safety?

  7. What tensions and tradeoffs characterize organizational enactments of reliability, resilience, and safety?

  8. How and to what degree are conceptualizations of reliability, resilience, and safety related to local, national, ethnic, organizational, and professional cultures?

  9. How are conceptualizations of reliability, resilience, and safety entrained into careers, occupations, and professions?

  10. How do people engage in and negotiate reliability, resilience, and safety expertise in team, organizational, and/or interorganizational engagements?

  11. How can reliability, resilience, and safety be cultivated at and across multiple levels of human experience simultaneously?

  12. How can research in this domain inform the design of communicative interventions?

  13. How might research in this domain have a positive influence on policy making?

  14. How do questions of justice, equity, and democracy play out around issues of reliability, resilience, and safety?

In responding to these questions and provoking others, the articles in the special issue have broad relevance for reliability, resilience, and safety and demonstrate the usefulness of communication research for addressing pressing societal problems.

The articles build theory and contribute to practice in this domain by reconceiving of resilience and integrating theories of reliability using communication theory. Jahn and Johansson studied a facilitated network of crisis communications specialists who compiled, organized, revised, and made available crisis information during the Västmanland wildfire, the largest in Sweden in 40 years. Their investigation prompted them to broaden the definition of resilience to include adaptive capacity. Applying and extending four flows theory (McPhee and Zaug, 2009), they analyzed responders’ coordinated construction of disaster response, shed light on the spaces between internal and external communication processes during crisis, and offered concrete advice for implementing useful communicative practices, such as stabilizing structuring practices, adaptive structuring practices, and responsive affiliation. Ishak and Williams sought to explain not just resilience processes as they are, but to explicate and predict variations in how organizations construct resilience. Their theorizing incorporates implications of an organization placing resilience at the core of its identity. Finding a common thread with Jahn and Johansson’s effort, they argue in favor of adaptive over anchored resilience. Applying Buzzanell’s (2010) communicative processes of resilience, they theorize that adaptation and resilience become impetus for talking about disruptive events and recovery, building and modifying interorganizational relationships, developing and drawing on alternative logics, and engaging emotion as a central facet of organizing. Jessica Ford develops the communicative mechanisms of HRO theorizing by reconsidering the core processes that make up the theory. Drawing on her own and others’ research exemplars, she conceptualizes obstacles, such as information accessibility, identity constructions, message fatigue, information environments, and generational differences. Each obstacle has a communicative basis and may be addressed through communicative intervention.

The articles also contribute to communication theory and practice focused specifically on stakeholders in the aftermath of crisis and disaster. Elizabeth Carlson analyzes a case of renewal discourse emphasizing preparedness as opposed to orthodox concerns with prevention or recovery. She analyzes the case of the Enbridge Enterprises Emergency Response Team Straits of Mackinac Exercise, which was organized after the 2010 Line 6B oil spill in the Kalamazoo River. Her analysis reconsiders the rhetorical and resilience-building opportunities in renewal efforts and offers an alternative conceptualization of renewal itself, not as peace, but as awakening. Eaddy and Jin consider the effects of crisis communication predicted in situational crisis communication theory (Coombs, 2007; Coombs and Holladay, 1996). Their experimental study examines how the source of information and publics’ knowledge about the relevant, previous actions of the organization can affect evaluations of crisis communication efforts.

The articles in this special issue further expand how individuals and organizations manage the tensions and contradictions that are both fundamental to organizational life and at the same time particularly challenging in organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety. Jacob Ford’s study of volunteers at an animal shelter investigates how they managed the difficulties of stigmatized work, known as dirty work, through identification and disidentification. His study contributes to our understanding of resilience labor by considering work that requires constant resilience as a routine matter of the work itself rather than as a response to a particular incident, thus extending resilience labor beyond disasters (Agarwal and Buzzanell, 2015) and into the everyday. Hagen, Bighash, Hollingshead, Shaikh, and Steves engage ethical questions surrounding video surveillance technologies. They theorize the tensions between safety and privacy with broad implications for questions about the security of the collective and the rights of the individual. They put communication at the center of their effort by focusing on communicative interventions to manage the tensions and contradictions emergent in each stage of the implementation of such technologies. In doing so, their work has implications not just for video surveillance but for the increasing number of technologies involved in the massive collection and analysis of data about our daily lives.

These papers address the concerns of the special issue and the broader theoretical and practical efforts at stake. They offer concrete ideas for changing existing and emerging communication practices inspired by their theorizing and empirical evidence. They bridge literatures that, though relevant to each other, are rarely in conversation with each other. These bridges span disciplines such as communication and allied organizational studies areas. They also address domains within communication such as organizational communication and public relations while linking contextual frames such as organizational and environmental communication. Taken together, they offer multi-level approaches to organizing and resilience that focus on processes and practices available to individuals, organizations, communities, and occupations (Buzzanell, 2018). The special issue makes clear that the problems of utmost importance in communicating and organizing for reliability, resilience, and safety cross disciplinary and contextual boundaries.

References

Agarwal, V. and Buzzanell, P.M. (2015), “Communicative reconstruction of resilience labor: identity/identification in disaster-relief workers”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 43 No. 4, pp. 408-428.

Apker, J., Ptacek, J., Beach, C. and Wears, R. (2016), “Exploring role dialectics in inter-service admission handoffs: a qualitative analysis of physician communication”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 399-414, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2016.1225164.

Ashcraft, K.L. and Trethewey, A. (2004), “Developing tension: an agenda for applied resaerch on the organization of irrationality”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 171-181.

Ballard, D.I. and McVey, T. (2014), “Measure twice, cut once: the temporality of communication design”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 42 No. 2, pp. 190-207, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2013.874571.

Barbour, J.B. and Gill, R. (2017), “Questioning and answering as regulatory work practice: the communicative accomplishment of reliability for the safety oversight of nuclear power plants”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 84 No. 4, pp. 466-487, doi: 10.1080/03637751.2017.1322212.

Barbour, J.B. and James, E.P. (2015), “Collaboration for compliance: identity tensions in the interorganizational regulation of a toxic waste facility”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 43 No. 4, pp. 363-384, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2015.1083601.

Barbour, J.B., Gill, R. and Barge, J.K. (in press), “Organizational communication design logics”, Communication Theory, doi: 10.1093/ct/qtx005.

Bean, H. and Buikema, R.J. (2015), “Deconstituting al-Qa’ida: CCO theory and the decline and dissolution of hidden organizations”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 512-538, doi: 10.1177/0893318915597300.

Bean, H. and Keränen, L. (2007), “The role of homeland security information bulletins within emergency management organizations: a case study of enactment”, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 1-23.

Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage, Los Angeles, CA.

Buttny, R. (2015), “Constesting hydrofrackgin during an inter-governmental hearing: accounting by reworking or challenging the question”, Discourse & Communication, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 423-440, doi: 10.1177/1750481315576842.

Buzzanell, P.M. (2010), “Resilience: talking, resisting, and imagining new normalcies into being”, Journal of Communication, Vol. 60 No. 1, pp. 1-14, doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01469.x.

Buzzanell, P.M. (2018), “Organizing resilience as adaptive-transformational tensions”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 14-18, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2018.1426711.

Carlson, E.J., Poole, M.S., Lambert, N.J. and Lammers, J.C. (2017), “A study of organizational reponses to dilemmas in interorganizational emergency management”, Communication Research, Vol. 44 No. 2, pp. 287-315, doi: 10.1177/0093650215621775.

Cheney, G., Christensen, L.T. and Dailey, S.L. (2014), “Communicating identity and identification in and around organizations”, in Putnam, L.L. and Mumby, D.K. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Communication, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 695-716.

Clarke, L. (1999), Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Coan, H. (2002), “Risk, error and blame in organizations: a communication approach”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 232-240.

Coombs, W.T. (2007), “Attribution theory as a guide for post-crisis communication resaerch”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 135-139, doi: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2006.11.016.

Coombs, W.T. (2011), Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding, 3rd ed., Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Coombs, W.T. and Holladay, S.J. (1996), “Communication and attributions in a crisis: an experiment study in crisis communication”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 279-295.

Doerfel, M.L., Lai, C.-H. and Chewning, L.V. (2010), “The evolutionary role of interorganizational communication: modeling social capital in disaster contexts”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 125-162, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01371.x.

Eisenberg, E.M. and Witten, M.G. (1987), “Reconsidering openness in organizational communication”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 418-426.

Eisenberg, E.M., Murphy, A.G., Sutcliffe, K.M., Wears, R., Schenkel, S., Perry, S. and Vanderhoef, M. (2005), “Communication in emergency medicine: implications for patient safety”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 72 No. 4, pp. 390-413.

Endres, D. (2012), “Sacred land or national sacrifice zone: the role of values in the Yucca Mountain participation process”, Environmental Communication, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 328-345.

Endres, D., Sprain, L. and Peterson, T.R. (2009), Social Movement to Address Climate Change: Local Steps for Global Action, Cambria Press, Amherst, NY.

Ford, J.L., Ford, J.S., Frei, S.S., Pilny, A. and Berkelaar, B.L. (2016), “A network under stress: using embeddedness to understand uncertainty management and resilience in campus emergencies”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 44 No. 3, pp. 316-335, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2016.1192288.

Griffin Padgett, D.R. and Allison, D.C. (2010), “Making a case for restorative rhetoric: mayor Rudolph Giuliani and mayor Ray Nagin’s response to disaster”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 77 No. 3, pp. 376-392.

Heide, M. and Simonsson, C. (2014), “Developing internal crisis communication: new roles and practices of communication professionals”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 128-146, doi: 10.1108/CCIJ-09-2012-0063.

Houston, B. (2018), “Community resilience and communication: dynamic interconnections between and among individuals, families, and organizations”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 19-22, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2018.1426704.

Jahn, J.L.S. and Black, A.E. (2017), “A model of communicative and hierarchical foundations of high reliability organizing in wildland firefighting teams”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 356-379, doi: 10.1177/0893318917691358.

Keyton, J., Ford, D.J. and Smith, F.I. (2008), “A mesolevel communicative model of collaboration”, Communication Theory, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 376-406.

Kinsella, W.J. (2012), “Environments, risks, and the limits of representation: examples from nuclear energy and some implications of Fukushima”, Environmental Communication, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 251-259, doi: 10.1080/17524032.2012.672928.

Kinsella, W.J., Collins Andreas, D. and Endres, D. (2015), “Communicating nuclear power: a programmatic review”, Communication Yearbook, Vol. 39, pp. 277-309, doi: 10.1080/23808985.2015.11679178.

Kinsella, W.J., Kelly, A.R. and Kittle Autry, M. (2013), “Risk, regulation, and rhetorical boundaries: claims and challenges surrounding a purported nuclear renaissance”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 80 No. 3, pp. 278-301, doi: 10.1080/03637751.2013.788253.

Leveson, N., Dulac, N., Marais, K. and Carroll, J. (2009), “Moving beyond normal accidents and high reliability organizations: a systems approach to safety in complex systems”, Organization Studies, Vol. 30 Nos 2-3 pp. 227-249, doi: 10.1177/0170840608101478.

Lewis, L.K., Isbell, M.G. and Koschmann, M. (2010), “Collaborative tensions: practitioners’ experiences of interorganizational relationships”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 77 No. 4, pp. 460-479.

Lupton, D. (2013), Risk, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York, NY.

McPhee, R.D. and Zaug, P. (2009), “The communicative constitution of organizations: a framework for explanation”, in Putnam, L.L. and Nicotera, A.M. (Eds), Building Theories of Organization: The Constitutive Role of Communication, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 21-47.

Maguire, S. and Hardy, C. (2013), “Organizing processes and the construction of risk: a discursive approach”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 56 No. 1, pp. 231-255, doi: 10.5465/amj.2010.0714.

Mease, J.J. (2015), “Embracing discursive paradox: consultants navigating the constitutive tensions of diversity work”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 59-83, doi: 10.1177/0893318915604239.

Mitra, R. and Buzzanell, P.M. (2015), “Organizing/communicating sustainably”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 130-134.

Mokros, H.B. and Aakhus, M. (2002), “From information seeking behavior to meaning engagement practice: implications for communication theory and research”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 298-312, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00810.x.

Myers, K.K. and McPhee, R.D. (2006), “Influences on member assimilation in workgroups in high-reliability organizations: a multilevel analysis”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 440-468, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00283.x.

Novak, J.M. and Sellnow, T.L. (2009), “Reducing organizational risk through participatory communication”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 349-373.

O’Connor, A. and Gronewold, K.L. (2012), “Black Gold, Green Earth: an analysis of the petroleum industry’s CSR environmental sustainability discourse”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 210-236, doi: 10.1177/0893318912465189.

Opdyke, A., Javernick-Will, A. and Koschmann, M. (2017), “Infrastructure hazard resilience trends: an analysis of 25 years of research”, Natural Hazards, Vol. 87 No. 2, pp. 773-789, doi: 10.1007/s11069-017-2792-8.

Perrow, C. (1999), Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Powley, E.H. (2009), “Reclaiming resilience and safety: resilience activation in the critical period of crisis”, Human Relations, Vol. 62 No. 9, pp. 1289-1326, doi: 10.1177/0018726709334881.

Putnam, L.L., Fairhurst, G.T. and Banghart, S. (2016), “Contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes in organizations: a constitutive approach”, Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 1-107.

Real, K. (2008), “Information seeking and workplace safety: a field application of the risk perception attitude framework”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 339-359.

Real, K. (2010), “Health-related organizational communication: a general platform for interdisciplinary research”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 457-464, doi: 10.1177/0893318910370270.

Rich, J.L. (2016), “Drilling is just the beginning: romanticizing rust belt identities in the campaign for shale gas”, Environmental Communication, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 292-304, doi: 10.1080/17524032.2016.1149085.

Sagan, S.D. (1995), The Limits of Safety, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Scott, C.W. and Trethewey, A. (2008), “Organizational discourse and the appraisal of occupational hazards: interpretive repertoires, heedful interrelating, and identity at work”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 298-317, doi: 10.1080/00909880802172137.

Seeger, M.W. (2006), “Best practices in crisis communication: an expert panel process”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 232-244, doi: 10.1080/00909880600769944.

Seeger, M.W., Sellnow, T.L. and Ulmer, R.R. (2003), Communication and Organizational Crisis, Praeger, Westport, CT.

Sellnow, D.D., Iverson, J. and Sellnow, T.L. (2017), “The evolution of the operational earthquake forecasting community of practice: the L’Aquila communication crisis as a triggering event for organizational renewal”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 121-139, doi: 10.1080/00909882.2017.1288295.

Sellnow, D.D., Lane, D.R., Sellnow, T.L. and Littlefield, R.S. (2017), “The IDEA model as a best practice for effective instructional risk and crisis communication”, Communication Studies, Vol. 68 No. 2, pp. 552-567, doi: 10.1080/10510974.2017.1375535.

Sellnow, T.L., Sellnow, D.D. and Venette, S.J. (2012), “The ethical imperative of significant choice: addressing learning styles in crisis messages”, in Groom, S.A., Fritz, J.M.H. and Mattson, C.E. (Eds), Communication Ethics and Crisis: Negotiating differences in Public and Private Spheres, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Plymouth, pp. 101-116.

Stephens, K.K. and Barrett, A.K. (2016), “Communicating briefly: technically”, Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 53 No. 4, pp. 398-418.

Stephens, K.K., Barrett, A.K. and Mahometa, M.J. (2013), “Organizational communication in emergencies: using multiple channels and sources to combat noise and capture attention”, Human Communication Research, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 230-251.

Stephens, K.K., Zhu, Y., Harrison, M., Iyer, M., Hairston, T. and Luk, J. (2017), “Bring your own mobile device (BYOD) to the hospital: layered boundary barriers and divergent boundary management strategies”, Proceedings of the 50th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp. 2175-2184.

Thackaberry, J.A. (2004), “‘Discursive opening’ and closing in organizational self-study: culture as trap and tool in wildland firefighting safety”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 319-359, doi: 10.1177/0893318903259402.

Theresa, C. (2009), “‘It’s just a process’: questioning in the construction of a university crisis”, Discourse Studies, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 179-197, doi: 10.1177/1461445608100943.

Tracy, S.J. (2016), “Practical application in organizational communication: a historical snapshot and challenge for the future”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 1-7, doi: 10.1177/0893318916675736.

Ulmer, R.R. (2012), “Increasing the impact of thought leadership in crisis communication”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 523-542, doi: 10.1177/0893318912461907.

Veil, S.R., Buehner, T. and Palenchar, M.J. (2011), “A work-in-process literature review: incorporating social media in risk and crisis communication”, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 110-122, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5973.2011.00639.x.

Weick, K.E. and Sutcliffe, K.M. (2015), Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World, 3rd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

Westerman, D., Spence, P.R. and Lachlan, K.A. (2009), “Presence and exemplification effects of disaster news”, Communication Studies, Vol. 60 No. 5, pp. 1-16.

Williams, E.A. and Ishak, A.W. (2017), “Discourses of an organizational tragedy: emotion, sensemaking, and learning after the Yarnell Hill Fire”, Western Journal of Communication, doi: 10.1080/10570314.2017.1313446.

Ziegler, J.A. (2007), “The story behind an organizational list: a genealogy of wildland firefighters’ 10 standard fire orders”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 74 No. 4, pp. 415-442, doi: 10.1080/03637750701716594.

Corresponding author

Joshua B. Barbour is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: barbourjosh@utexas.edu

About the authors

Joshua B. Barbour is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, a faculty affiliate of the Center for Health Communication, Moody College of Communication and Dell Medical School, and a faculty affiliate of the Health Informatics and Health Information Technology Program, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, USA. His research interests center on the confluence of the macromorphic and communicative in organizing.

Patrice M. Buzzanell is the Chair and a Professor of the Department of Communication, University of South Florida. She researches career, resilience, engineering design, and gender on micro-meso-macro levels with attention to social change, policy, and identity.

William J. Kinsella is a Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University, where he is affiliated with interdisciplinary programs in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media; Environmental Sciences; Genetic Engineering and Society; and Science, Technology and Society. His research examines intersections among environmental, energy, science, technology, and organizational communication contexts.

Keri K. Stephens is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies, an Associate Director with Center for Health Communication, Moody College of Communication and Dell Medical School, and a faculty affiliate with the Center for Health and Social Policy, LBJ School of Public Affairs. Her research and teaching interests bring an organizational perspective to understanding how people interact with communication technologies and she focuses on contexts of crisis, emergency, disaster, and healthcare.

Related articles