Case Studies for Organizational Communication: Understanding Communication Processes

Rating:
Summary: Hyped title ¿ poor content
Review: I wanted cases for my communications students, and when I saw this title I obtained a copy based upon the author's website comments. Hype. All hype. I circulated the book to (female) associates to determine if I was missing something. According to them, I was "excessively kind -- and please do not waste my time with pretense like this again."

BUYER BEWARE
The cases are so below style and quality typical to Harvard Business as to be embarrassing. They read like teenage locker room novellas. As is all-too-typical in academe, the book serves one purpose: to help the author keep their job. This text does not help in "understanding the communication process." It is too bad these are such poor cases. My students could use something useful. This is not it. Avoid this text.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging descriptions of organizational life
Review: This is a terrific book! It's impossible to sum up succinctly, but I'll try. It contains 33 cases written by professors of organizational communication at schools ranging from Princeton University to the University of Southern California and just about every major center of communication studies in between.

Each case takes the reader into mind and heart and daily life of a person at work. Unlike the Harvard cases, which usually concern dilemmas faced by high-level business leaders, these protagonists range from new hires to retirees, and include women and men working in every kind of department, from manufacturing to IT to sales, engaged in turningpoint talk in face-to-face dyads and world-wide computer networks, in firms across the planet, some for-profit, some not-for-profit, in an astounding variety of industries.

The cases are well-written; the reader hovers over the action, hearing the dialogue, examining the documents, experiencing the dilemmas, considering the options, knowing the tactics, and discovering the outcome of the situations described.

Issues of organizational climate, teamwork, conflict, diversity, decision-making, training, leadership, change, and culture (among others), are included, and well-indexed. A comprehensive teacher's guide is available on line for faculty unused to using case studies to teach ideas.

Reading this book is a thought-provoking pleasure for the lay reader and would delight college students who know (or are told) the theory, but want to know how those ideas apply to day-to-day life in a wide range of organizational contexts. I highly recommend it!