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Strategic Ambiguities
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Strategic Ambiguities
Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity



December 2006 | 328 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

"Eisenberg's book is refreshing, in addition to its theoretical merits, for the presence of a distinctive human voice, unafraid to express passion, anger and hope. Readers will benefit enormously from the substance of his book, but also from its form."
—HUMAN RELATIONS

In Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity, Eric M. 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.


"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

"Lay audiences will find the text rich with evocative narratives even as the theoretical moves will engage students and teacher-scholars. This edited compilation is likely to serve as a springboard for future inquiry and an invaluable resource for teaching and learning in undergraduate and graduate communication courses." —
THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION




 
Introduction: Laying Down a Path in Walking
 
PART I. EMBRACING AMBIGUITY
 
1. Ambiguity as Strategy in Organizational Communication
 
2. Meaning and Interpretation in Organizations
 
3. Conflict at Disneyland: A Root-Metaphor Analysis
Eric M. Eisenberg and Marsha G. Witten
4. Reconsidering Openness in Organizational Communication
 
PART II. TRANSCENDENCE AND TRANSFORMATION
 
5. Jamming: Transcendence Through Organizing
Eric M. Eisenberg and Steven R. Phillips
6. Miscommunication in Organizations
 
7. Dialogue as Democratic Discourse
 
8. A Communication Perspective on Interorganizational Cooperation and Inner-City Education
 
9. From Anxiety to Possibility: Poems 1987-1997
 
10. Openness and Decision Making in the Search for a University Provost
Eric M. Eisenberg, Linda Andrews, Alexandra Murphy, and Linda Laine-Timmerman
11.Transforming Organizations Through Communication
12. Flirting With Meaning
 
PART III. A NEW COMMUNICATION AESTHETIC
 
13. The Kindness of Strangers: Hospitality in Organizational Communication Scholarship
 
14. Building a Mystery: Communication and the Development of Identity
 
15. Creating Clearings for Communication
 
16. Karl Weick and the Aesthetics of Contingency
 
Conclusion
Key features
  • Shows for students and scholars the sustained development of an important argument about communicating and organizing. 
  • The framing chapters help situate the essays historically and methodologically, and show connections to other areas both within and outside of the field of Communication.
  • Part-opening transitional essays provide context for the essays that follow, and headnotes to individual essays further explain Eisenberg's thinking and development.
  • The collection responds to a common pedagogical desire to have students read a body of work from a single scholar and report on it. 

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