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On
the first day of Nikki's undergraduate seminar, Organizing Work, she Oasks
students to list the idioms and phrases commonly used to make sense of the 'work' experience. She shares the example of her father repeat- edly using the phrase 'daily
grind' when she was growing up (important to note, he was not referring
to the ubiquitous Starbucks of today). Slowly but surely, the chalkboard fills
with an array of idiomatic expressions: 'on the clock,' 'work
like a dog,' 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' 'work
your fingers to the bone,' 'all in a day's work,' and a
host of others, including the Marxian favorite, 'a fair day's pay for
a fair day's work.' Students are asked to reflect on the meanings embedded
within the list and how language constitutes cultural meanings and values
of work. As such an exercise should make abundantly clear, work and meaning
would seem to be central to our study of organizational communication. Our
talk about work both embodies and structures individual and social under-
standings, attitudes, and actions. Yet, the meanings associated with work
and the notion of work as meaningful have not been foci of study within our
dis- cipline. Indeed, the term work is not even indexed in the New Handbook
of Organizational Communication (Jablin and Putnam, 2001), and a search
of the EBSCO database found not a single article with work and either meaning
or meaningful in the title in a communication journal. Given contemporary
devel- opments that make work more central to people's lives as well as less
secure, the question of what work means to people and how such meanings contribute
to or detract from a sense of purpose or dignity in people's lives is important
to consider.
View all 46 works published by Management Communication Quarterly |
Introduction to the Forum on Meaning/ful Work Studies in Organizational Communication
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0893318908318268
 access restricted (by the publisher) to members/subscribers/customers only
 peer-reviewed
Zorn, Theodore E. and Nikki Townsley
Management Communication Quarterly
2008
Abstract: On
the first day of Nikki's undergraduate seminar, Organizing Work, she Oasks
students to list the idioms and phrases commonly used to make sense of the 'work' experience. She shares the example of her father repeat- edly using the phrase 'daily
grind' when she was growing up (important to note, he was not referring
to the ubiquitous Starbucks of today). Slowly but surely, the chalkboard fills
with an array of idiomatic expressions: 'on the clock,' 'work
like a dog,' 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' 'work
your fingers to the bone,' 'all in a day's work,' and a
host of others, including the Marxian favorite, 'a fair day's pay for
a fair day's work.' Students are asked to reflect on the meanings embedded
within the list and how language constitutes cultural meanings and values
of work. As such an exercise should make abundantly clear, work and meaning
would seem to be central to our study of organizational communication. Our
talk about work both embodies and structures individual and social under-
standings, attitudes, and actions. Yet, the meanings associated with work
and the notion of work as meaningful have not been foci of study within our
dis- cipline. Indeed, the term work is not even indexed in the New Handbook
of Organizational Communication (Jablin and Putnam, 2001), and a search
of the EBSCO database found not a single article with work and either meaning
or meaningful in the title in a communication journal. Given contemporary
devel- opments that make work more central to people's lives as well as less
secure, the question of what work means to people and how such meanings contribute
to or detract from a sense of purpose or dignity in people's lives is important
to consider.
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