Katie R. Sullivan and April A. Kedrowicz
The purpose of this paper is to draw from the authors’ experiences, as women teaching Communication in a College of Engineering and mechanical engineering students’ evaluations…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw from the authors’ experiences, as women teaching Communication in a College of Engineering and mechanical engineering students’ evaluations, to highlight student resistance to both practices and bodies deemed “feminine.”
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine how the masculine discipline of engineering might construct a learning environment that is incompatible with feminist ideals. This is illuminated when engineering students are required to learn communication skills from female instructors.
Findings
The authors’ analysis suggests that students’ resistance to communication instruction is gendered. Students often constructed hierarchical relationships where communication was considered “soft” in relation to the “hard” science of engineering instead of integral to the discipline and profession. Students resisted by expressing a lack of utility of information, devaluing feedback and instruction, degrading communication teachers, and questioning their bodies.
Originality/value
The paper discusses implications of a gendered educational context and suggests ways interdisciplinary instruction can be utilized to enhance gender diversity.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of identification and disidentification processes of individuals who perform dirty work. Specifically, this study seeks to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of identification and disidentification processes of individuals who perform dirty work. Specifically, this study seeks to understand how identification creates resilience for volunteer workers to endure dirty work.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study examines the resilience of volunteers in dirty work roles by interviewing 37 volunteers at an animal shelter and observing volunteers for 72 hours. The transcripts and field notes were analyzed using a grounded theory analysis.
Findings
Volunteers construct multiple identifications and disidentifications as part of the resilience process to engage dirty and dangerous work. Volunteers switched between different (dis)identifications and communicatively reinforced (dis)identifications to overcome the physical and social stigma associated with their work.
Originality/value
The present study extends research on resilience into a new context: dirty work. The findings bring into question assumptions regarding resilience and how a disruption is defined in the resilience literature. Disruptions are communicatively constructed and future studies should continue to research alternative contexts to study resilience labor.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro‐, meso‐, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore narratives in a new nonprofit arts center. It includes the macro‐, meso‐, and personal narratives that keep the center organized in the midst of the chaotic everyday activities. It advocates the explanatory force of narrative as an alternative to organizational life cycle theory for understanding organizational startups.
Design/methodology/approach
This narrative ethnography involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews over a three‐year period. Using grounded theory, narratives were examined to discover how they engendered and maintained order.
Findings
This paper contributes to the understanding narratives as a constitutional organizing and sensemaking process, including the narratives of “do it yourself,” and economic production, family and home, and personal narratives that constitute community, community boundaries, and identity, adding to our knowledge of organizing.
Research limitations/implications
The research examined only one local nonprofit arts center, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same types of narratives may not necessarily be found in other nonprofits.
Originality/value
This paper examines a nonprofit during start‐up. It validates support for the examination of organizations through narrative ethnography and narrative interviewing. It purports that narratives constitute social identity, rather than being the evidence of social identity.