Organizational Communication

How people negotiate the work–life interface remains a popular topic for scholars and the public. Work–life research is a large body of interdisciplinary scholarship that considers how people experience, navigate, and negotiate different roles, commitments, and boundaries within and across life domains—often with the goal of improving individual, organizational, and social well-being and success. Spurred by demographic, social, economic, and technological changes, scholars take difference perspectives on overlapping research areas which include work–life balance, work–life conflict, work–family conflict, boundary management, work–life enrichment or facilitation, as well as positive or negative spillover. Key issues addressed include the implications of framing work–life as a dichotomy, drivers of work–life outcomes, how ideals shape work–life negotiations, how individuals negotiate everyday work–life challenges and opportunities, and the influence of evolving information and communication technologies on the work–life interface. Research from multiple disciplines highlights the demographic, economic, moral, cultural, and national factors that affect work–life practices, processes, policies, tactics, and outcomes. This multidisciplinary perspective provides relevant insights for generative research and resilient practice for individuals, groups, organizations, or societies.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Please check back later for the full article.

Organizational socialization is the process by which people learn about and adjust to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors needed for a new or changing role within an organization. Thus, organizational socialization focuses on organizational membership. This includes how people move from being organizational outsiders to being organizational members and how people move between organizational roles within and across organizations over time. To date, research has focused on the ways in which organizations encourage individuals to learn and to adjust to existing expectations for particular roles via tactics that encourage assimilation into a particular role. However, organizational socialization is a dynamic process. Individuals can also influence and shape the organization to align with what they want for the organization, via tactics that allow for personalization (or individualization) of the role. Thus, organizational socialization helps an individual assume a new or changing role that meets the organization’s needs as well as his or her own needs.

Most of the research on organizational socialization focuses on how newcomers enter into paid work environments. Much attention has been given to the tactics used by organizations to encourage people to assimilate into the organization. Research also focuses on the early stages of organizational socialization, in particular anticipatory socialization and entry and initial participation. Until very recently, less attention has been given to later stages in socialization, active participation, metamorphosis, and exit; non-work organizations; and transitions between roles within particular organizations. However there is a growing body of research on organizational socialization into volunteer roles; new or changing roles, within the same organization; and later stages of socialization, such as exit and disengagement. Scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize how individual, organizational, and contextual factors, including socioeconomic class, race, gender, new media technologies, globalization, and others, may alter how organizational socialization works; they offer insight into the underlying processes implicated in organizational socialization. Future areas of research related to context, time, boundaries, and communication are highlighted.

Expressions of scientific uncertainty are normal features of scientific articles and professional presentations. Journal articles typically include research questions at the beginning, probabilistic accounts of findings in the middle, and new research questions at the end. These uncertainty claims are used to construct clear boundaries between uncertain and certain scientific knowledge. Interesting questions emerge, however, when scientific uncertainty is communicated in occasions for public science (e.g., newspaper accounts of science, scientific expertise in political deliberations, science in stakeholder claims directed to the public, and so forth). Scientific uncertainty is especially important in the communication of environmental and health risks where public action is expected despite uncertain knowledge. Public science contexts are made more complex by the presence of multiple actors such as citizen-scientists, journalists, stakeholders, social movement actors, politicians, and so on who perform important functions in the communication and interpretation of scientific information and bring in diverse norms and values.

A past assumption among researchers was that scientists would deemphasize or ignore uncertainties in these situations to better match their claims with a public perception of science as an objective, truth-building institution. However, more recent research indicates variability in the likelihood that scientists communicate uncertainties and in the public reception and use of uncertainty claims. Many scientists still believe that scientific uncertainty will be misunderstood by the public and misused by interest groups involved with an issue, while others recognize a need to clearly translate what is known and not known.

Much social science analysis of scientific uncertainty in public science views it as a socially constructed phenomenon, where it depends less upon a particular state of scientific research (what scientists are certain and uncertain of) and more upon contextual factors, the actors involved, and the meanings attached to scientific claims. Scientific uncertainty is often emergent in public science, both in the sense that the boundary between what is certain and uncertain can be managed and manipulated by powerful actors and in the sense that as scientific knowledge confronts diverse public norms, values, local knowledges, and interests new areas of uncertainty emerge. Scientific uncertainty may emerge as a consequence of social conflict rather than being its cause. In public science scientific uncertainty can be interpreted as a normal state of affairs and, in the long run, may not be that detrimental to solving societal problems if it opens up new avenues and pathways for thinking about solutions. Of course, the presence of scientific uncertainty can also be used to legitimate inaction.