Communication
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Item The Public Sphere and the Political Sphere: Rhetorical Interconnections(2002) Klumpp, James F.Exploration of the relationship between the public sphere and the political sphere. Key rhetorical concepts that mediate the relationship between them are explored.Item Understanding Chinese public relations education: A critical and cultural perspective(2009) Zhang, Ai; Toth, Elizabeth; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Public relations entered China in the 1980s. Formal education in public relations started in the 1980s. The field has experienced evolutionary changes over the past 2 decades. However, not much scholarly attention has been paid to this area of research. The most notable article that examines Chinese public relations education was published in 1994. After more than 10 years, it is disheartening to note that no published works have updated the status quo of Chinese public relations education. Within this context, the present study undertakes the initiative to offer a rich account of and a critical and cultural analysis of Chinese public relations education. Specially, the purpose of this dissertation was to understand how Chinese public relations educators, students, and practitioners make meaning of Chinese public relations education through the theoretical lens of the circuit of culture model and within the context of Confucianism. The present study adopts qualitative methodology as the means to explore the study's research questions. It employs two concrete qualitative methods--in-depth interview and focus groups. Participants were selected from three major cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, and Hang Zhou, which host the major of universities and colleges that offer public relations programs, majors, or concentrations. Forty-nine people took part in the present study, including 34 in-depth interviews--20 interviews with public relations educators, 7 with practitioners, and 7 with students--and two focus groups with 7 students and 8 students in each group. Specifically, the study aims to answer two research questions: 1) How does the circuit of culture model help explore and understand the tensions, complexities, and contradictions implicit in Chinese public relations educators', practitioners', and students' meaning making of Chinese public relations education? How does the model help understand the interplay of culture, power, and identity, within which context participants negotiate and construct meanings and identities for Chinese public relations education? 2) What is the role of Confucianism in Chinese public relations education? To what extent and in what aspects have Confucian values influenced participants' understanding of Chinese public relations education? Research findings offer insights into the above research questions. Most interestingly, the findings help identify a hybrid identity for Chinese public relations education, which is neither purely Chinese nor American but a combination of values from both countries. This finding calls for a changed mindset to approach the relationship between Chinese and U.S. public relations scholarly communities from a dichotomous either-or to an embracing both-and mindset. The findings also help update and enrich the existing literature on Chinese public relations education, respond to the timely call for diversifying public relations scholarship in the U.S., and complicate and modify the existing circuit of culture model. The culmination of the study also helps identify possible avenues in which Confucianism can serve as a potential philosophy guiding public relations education and practice.Item A MODEL OF WORK-LIFE CONFLICT AND QUALITY OF EMPLOYEE-ORGANIZATION RELATIONSHIPS: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, PROCEDURAL JUSTICE, AND FAMILY-SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACE INITIATIVES(2009) Jiang, Hua; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Good relationship management between organizations and their strategic employee publics contributes to organizational effectiveness. This dissertation built and tested a new model of employee-organization relationships by introducing time-based and strain-based work-life conflict as variables leading to employee-organization relationship outcomes, and by investigating the possible effects of transformational leadership, organizational procedural justice, and family-supportive workplace initiatives upon employees' perceived work-life conflict and relationships with their employers. This dissertation is an example of multilevel research in which all the theoretical constructs were conceptualized at the individual level, but data were gathered by conducting a survey of 396 employees in 44 U.S. organizations. The multilevel structure of collected data was addressed by using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as the major analytical method. The findings suggested that the amount of time-based work-life conflict employees perceived significantly predicted their perceived quality of relationships with their employers. The lower the level of time-based work-life conflict that employees perceived, the better the quality of employee-organization relationships they had. When immediate supervisors respected their subordinates as individuals with unique characters and needs and treated them differently but fairly, employees perceived high levels of trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality. In addition, employees who perceived that they were treated fairly by their organizations developed quality relationships with their employers. This dissertation also identified fair formal procedures used to make work-life policies and decisions as a significant antecedent leading to high trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality that employees perceived. Moreover, the extent to which organizations administered fair procedures for work-life conflict-related policies and decisions greatly affected employees' perceptions of the time-based and strain-based interferences between work and nonwork. Lastly, it was revealed that time-based work-life conflict partially mediated the association between quality of employee-organization relationships and procedural justice referencing work-life policies, decisions, and procedures. Interpretations and implications of the findings, the limitations of the dissertation, and directions for future research were discussed.Item Public meetings and communication excellence: Exploring the intersection of public affairs and public involvement(2009) Patterson, Michael Aaron; Toth, Elizabeth L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores how public meetings are currently used by government agencies and examines the meetings' effects on agency-public relationship outcomes (Hon and Grunig, 1999). The data consisted of 20 in-depth telephone interviews with public affairs practitioners in government agencies. The results suggest that practitioners perceive a fundamental incongruence in public affairs and public involvement efforts which extends to their frequent non-involvement in public meetings. The data suggests that this relates to contending responsibilities to both specific and general audiences. The discussion seeks to link these perceptions of publics and communication responsibilities to the relevant contextual factors of the public sector in order to examine theoretical prescriptions. The relevant theory suggests that the segregation of public affairs and the vehicles for public engagement limits the informational value of public input and relegates agency-public relationships to the role of process measures rather than communication goals.Item CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AMONG STUDENTS IN A COMMUNICATION COURSE: A CASE STUDY(2009) Lamm, Erica Jane; Wolvin, Andrew D.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the thoughts about civic engagement of six unique undergraduate communication students as they take an upper-level argumentation and debate course. Although some scholars (Putnam, 2000) lament the drop in civic engagement in the United States, Jacoby (2009) and others argue that the 1990s "saw a dramatic increase in efforts to bring college and university resources to bear on both broad social issues and local problems" and that campus-community engagement has become increasingly important in recent years (p. 13). As communication scholars, one of our missions is, or should be, to enhance the communication skills that students need to be engaged citizens (Hogan, Andrews, Andrews, and Williams, 2008). To understand the role communication courses may play in the enhancement or creation of a sense of civic engagement in students, this case study followed six undergraduates through the course of their upper-level argumentation and debate course. Through interviews and journals, thick descriptions were written of these students' experiences, and themes were discovered. Several key themes emerged from the interviews. Students mentioned the importance of listening, though they did not explore the ethics of listening. Whether or not Americans are more or less civically engaged today met with mixed views. Definitions of civic engagement led students to the importance of local community. Interestingly, national or global efforts were not identified, even though President Obama was mentioned as the most prominent proponent of civic engagement. Attributes of civic engagement extended beyond listening to confidence and to media/technology literacy. Finally, audience, an important component of public speaking, was recognized as a critical skill necessary for civic engagement. Surprisingly, the students in this study were unable to articulate how to translate their considerable skills into the public arena, to actually become civically engaged.Item The Rhetorical Origins of the African Colonization Movement in the United States(2009) Stillion Southard, Bjorn Frederick; Klumpp, James F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)From the introduction of slavery to British North America, the concurrent presence of freedom and slavery fostered much tension. Still, in the early 1800s, slavery was not yet the intransigent issue that would lead to civil war. Amidst mounting tensions and declining, yet still viable, possibility for resolution, a nationwide effort to colonize free blacks to Africa began. Positioned as neither immediate emancipation, nor the continuation of the status quo, colonizationists framed their scheme as a solution to the problem of slavery. With the discourse generated at a germinal meeting on December 21, 1816, the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States (later called the American Colonization Society) was created and motivations for African colonization were set forth. This project explores the rhetorical development of the national African colonization movement in The United States. To begin, this project traces the discursive tensions between discourses of security and morality to which colonizationists would need to attend to advance their scheme. Driving this tension was an emerging antagonism between instrumental and pathetic dimensions of rhetoric. The project then illuminates the potential to overcome such tensions that had been cultivated in political economic (i.e., legislative) discourse about slavery. This potential resolution was defined by the development of moderate rhetorical strategies to address the problem of slavery. Turning to the initial meeting of the Colonization Society, this project attends to how colonizationists negotiated the discursive tensions and used the rhetorical resources of the moment to motivate colonization. Ultimately, this project argues that the motivations offered by colonizationists in support of African colonization failed in their attempt to use moderate rhetorical strategies and thus, failed to overcome the discursive tensions of slavery.Item ORGANIZATION-EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIPS MODEL: A TWO-SIDED STORY(2009) Shen, Hongmei; Toth, Elizabeth L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to develop a theory of internal relationship management, and to propose a new way of measuring organization-public relationships by simultaneously examining the organizations' as well as their employees' perceptions of the quality of their relationships. It sought to contribute to theory-building on the process of relationship management from its maintenance through its quality to the consequences. An online survey was used to collect data. Usable questionnaires totaled 785 from 30 organizations. Data analytic methods included missing value analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, multivariate regression, polynomial regression, surface response tests, mediation tests, and reliability tests. The proposed measures of symmetrical relationship maintenance strategies, asymmetrical relationship strategies, organization-employee relationship characteristics, turnover intention, and contextual performance were found to be valid and reliable. The major findings included: first, the more organizations used symmetrical relationship maintenance strategies with their employees, the more likely both employees and the organizations reported greater trust, control mutuality, commitment, satisfaction, and less distrust in the relationship; and vice versa for asymmetrical strategies. Second, employees would have higher turnover intention when both employees and their organizations perceived higher distrust and lower trust, control mutuality, commitment, and satisfaction. Also, when employees were more optimistic than their organizations about their relationships, employees were more likely to leave the organization. Third, employees' contextual performance would rise as both these employees and their organizations reported greater level of commitment and satisfaction. However, employees' level of contextual performance would drop when incongruence increased. Lastly, mediation tests showed that the effects of symmetrical and asymmetrical relationship maintenance strategies on turnover intention and contextual performance were partially mediated by congruence of perceived relationship characteristics, excluding the dimension of distrust regarding the effect of relationship maintenance strategies on contextual performance. This study contributed to public relations theory by 1) clarifying and refining the conceptualizations and operationalizations of relationship maintenance strategies, congruence of perceived relationship characteristics, and organizational effectiveness, 2) proposing a new way to evaluate two sides of organization-public relationships, and 3) empirically testing a relationship-building model within organizations to develop a theory of internal relationship management.Item PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SENSEMAKING DURING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN CHINA(2009) Luo, Yi; Toth, Elizabeth L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explored the role public relations plays in the sensemaking process during planned organizational change within multinational organizations in China. Three areas were examined. First, this study examined the sensemaking process during change within the participating multinationals. Second, this study explored how the multinationals used public relations to communicate about change with their employees. Third, the influence of uncertainty avoidance upon sensemaking during change within the multinationals was probed. Weick's (1995) sensemaking framework was used to explain the individual differences in the way events are understood and how those differences are translated into sensible collective behaviors. A total of 60 face-to-face interviews were conducted with managerial and non-managerial employees from nine multinational corporations. Several significant findings emerged from the study. First, change management can be viewed as management of meanings. This view helped explain why some change programs are accepted over others. The acceptance of change is both facilitated and constrained by the extent to which management is able to impose a plausible sense of change on events. Second, power plays a major role in creating an environment ready for change as well as resolving disparities of meanings. Top management sort out information and highlight it to employees so that their mental frameworks are framed to see the environment in certain ways. Third, negative expressions or behaviors by employees need not be perceived as acts of rebellion against change. Rather, these negative expressions reflect the difficulty that organizational members have while switching rapidly their sense of the organization during change. This study also found that the public relations function can facilitate sensemaking during change. Poorly planned communication programs during change can result in confusions from employees regarding change as well as distrust of management. Findings also suggested that cultivating dialogic communication with employees during change can help managers develop a shared understanding with front-line employees about change. Findings also showed that when employees could not reduce their uncertainties, they stopped processing information from the organizations. This study demonstrated the value of public relations to change management. It illustrated how public relations can help members of an organization understand the meaning of change.Item INTEGRATING STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: EVALUATING PUBLIC RELATIONS AS RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN INTEGRATED COMMUNICATION(2009) Smith, Brian G.; Toth, Elizabeth L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is a gap in public relations and marketing communication literature. In spite of increasing professional use of integrated communication--a process by which organizations coordinate the communication functions and activities for stakeholder impact--public relations roles have been under-developed in scholarship. In fact, most insights on public relations and integration appear to be opinion-based and normative. Hallahan (2007) has argued that the literature is "fragmentary and hardly conclusive" (p. 308), and other scholars claim that integrated communication research is still in its pre-paradigmatic stages of development (Kerr, et al., 2008) as research emphasizes definitions and perceptions (Kliatchko, 2008, p. 133). This research--a multi-case study of three organizations that carry out varying levels of integration--addresses the need to outline and evaluate public relations and integrated communication from a theoretical perspective. This study considers public relations a strategic relationship management function, consistent with Grunig (2006a), Ledingham (2006) and other public relations scholars. This perspective is in contrast with that of marketing communication scholars, who consider public relations a marketing support function (Keh, Nguyen, Ng, 2007; Debreceny & Cochrane, 2004; Hendrix, 2004). This study demonstrates that concerns that integrating public relations and marketing may lead to marketing imperialism and "an inferior technical role" for public relations, as Hallahan's (2007) review of the literature discovered (p. 305), may be based in opinion only, and may not represent professional practice. In fact, higher levels of integration yield a greater emphasis on public relations as a strategic relationship management function. This research also demonstrates that integration occurs naturally, regardless of organizational structure. In spite of varying levels of integration evident at each organization (based on the structure outlined by Duncan and Caywood [1996] and Caywood [1997]) integration is a natural process based on internal relationships and connections--a process I refer to as "organic integration." This multi-case study fulfills three challenges facing public relations and integrated communication proposed by Hallahan (2007). It provides a research-based definition of integrated communication, considers the theoretical convergence of public relations and integrated communication, and it conceptualizes organizational communication and department structures (p. 309-313).Item Attributional processes in accounting for conflict behaviors(2009) Yao, Shuo; Cai, Deborah A.; Fink, Edward L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One simple way to handle interpersonal conflict is to use accounts to explain one's behaviors. Although accounts play a significant role in managing conflict, relatively little research has explored the processes offenders use to determine the accounts selected in conflict situations. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the attributional processes offenders use that determine their accounts in conflict. Ten hypotheses were proposed about how the severity of the conflict outcome and the closeness between the parties involved in the conflict influence offenders' choice of accounts. A structural equation model was developed and tested based on the proposed hypotheses. An experiment was conducted, with two levels of outcome severity and three levels of relational closeness. Offenders' attributions (i.e., the degree of internal attribution, the degree of external attribution, controllability, and uncontrollability), anticipated consequences (i.e., expected responsibility and expected anger), and offenders' expected choice of accounts (i.e., the likelihood of selecting concessions, justifications, excuses, and refusals) were measured. Two hundred thirty-eight participants were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. Participants read a hypothetical conflict scenario, imagined that they were the offender in the scenario, and completed a questionnaire that had the dependent measures. Results indicated that outcome severity influenced offenders' choice of accounts directly and indirectly. Offenders tended to choose a more defensive account when they perceived the outcome to be severe than when the outcome was not severe. The influence of outcome severity on offenders' choice of accounts was also mediated by the attributions offenders made, the responsibility expected to be assigned to offenders, and anger expected to be felt by victims. When offenders perceived the outcome to be severe, offenders made more attributions, expected more responsibility to be assigned to them, and expected that victims felt angrier about offenders' behavior than when the outcome was not severe. Consequently, when offenders expected more anger from victims, they tended to be less defensive. Interpretations and implications of results, the limitations of the study, and future directions were discussed.