The silent potential: A study of coworkers’ voicing in workplace meetings
(2024) SKOM12 20241Department of Strategic Communication
- Abstract
- Much of contemporary organisational life is enacted in meetings. Yet, our understanding of meetings and coworkers’ role in them remains limited and influenced by the dominant functionalist and linear perspectives on communication. Such an approach is, however, problematic as it obscures the constitutive role of coworker’s voicing in meetings and how it produces and reproduces work teams, organisations, and societies. Thus, this thesis explores the dynamics of voicing from the communication-centric and coworkers’ perspectives, along with the social, cultural, and organisational norms that guide it. It aims to understand how coworkers engage in voicing and how meetings can activate or in contrast silence their performances. The qualitative... (More)
- Much of contemporary organisational life is enacted in meetings. Yet, our understanding of meetings and coworkers’ role in them remains limited and influenced by the dominant functionalist and linear perspectives on communication. Such an approach is, however, problematic as it obscures the constitutive role of coworker’s voicing in meetings and how it produces and reproduces work teams, organisations, and societies. Thus, this thesis explores the dynamics of voicing from the communication-centric and coworkers’ perspectives, along with the social, cultural, and organisational norms that guide it. It aims to understand how coworkers engage in voicing and how meetings can activate or in contrast silence their performances. The qualitative study is based on empirical material collected through 11 observations and 16 semi-structured interviews at a Swedish multinational corporation within the transportation and infrastructure sector. It uses Goffman’s dramaturgy approach to understand how coworkers perform voicing on the stages of internal work meetings. The results indicate a significant rupture between organisational theories and collected material: work meetings remain largely silent even though coworkers perceive their workplace as safe, open, and transparent. Coworker’s voicing is therefore postponed or transformed into a form of pseudo-communication, influenced by a discourse of productivity, effectivity, and efficiency, hybrid ways of organising, and both enabling and constraining character of a meeting structure. Additionally, the study uncovers a new form of unobtrusive managerial control, i.e. wellbeing talk, which pushes coworkers further toward blending their personal and professional identities. Taken together, the thesis presents coworker’s voicing as a complex communication process, influenced by a variety of social, cultural, organisational, individual, and team-based norms. Finally, it stresses the importance of nuanced research, which does not overplay one aspect of the voicing dynamic over others and does not view voicing and silence as mutually opposing concepts. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9156749
- author
- Bohacova, Karolina LU
- supervisor
-
- Mats Heide LU
- organization
- course
- SKOM12 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- meetings, coworker communication, voicing, employee voice, coworkership, internal communication, silence, control, communicative organization, performance
- language
- English
- id
- 9156749
- date added to LUP
- 2024-06-03 15:01:00
- date last changed
- 2024-06-03 15:01:00
@misc{9156749,
abstract = {{Much of contemporary organisational life is enacted in meetings. Yet, our understanding of meetings and coworkers’ role in them remains limited and influenced by the dominant functionalist and linear perspectives on communication. Such an approach is, however, problematic as it obscures the constitutive role of coworker’s voicing in meetings and how it produces and reproduces work teams, organisations, and societies. Thus, this thesis explores the dynamics of voicing from the communication-centric and coworkers’ perspectives, along with the social, cultural, and organisational norms that guide it. It aims to understand how coworkers engage in voicing and how meetings can activate or in contrast silence their performances. The qualitative study is based on empirical material collected through 11 observations and 16 semi-structured interviews at a Swedish multinational corporation within the transportation and infrastructure sector. It uses Goffman’s dramaturgy approach to understand how coworkers perform voicing on the stages of internal work meetings. The results indicate a significant rupture between organisational theories and collected material: work meetings remain largely silent even though coworkers perceive their workplace as safe, open, and transparent. Coworker’s voicing is therefore postponed or transformed into a form of pseudo-communication, influenced by a discourse of productivity, effectivity, and efficiency, hybrid ways of organising, and both enabling and constraining character of a meeting structure. Additionally, the study uncovers a new form of unobtrusive managerial control, i.e. wellbeing talk, which pushes coworkers further toward blending their personal and professional identities. Taken together, the thesis presents coworker’s voicing as a complex communication process, influenced by a variety of social, cultural, organisational, individual, and team-based norms. Finally, it stresses the importance of nuanced research, which does not overplay one aspect of the voicing dynamic over others and does not view voicing and silence as mutually opposing concepts.}},
author = {{Bohacova, Karolina}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The silent potential: A study of coworkers’ voicing in workplace meetings}},
year = {{2024}},
}