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Organizational communication extends beyond communication that takes place in an organizational context to the ways communication is used to organize and facilitate activity. This article is designed to enhance organizational communication pedagogy practices by highlighting foundational concepts and content areas that should be included in undergraduate organizational communication courses. Additionally, four active learning assignments, including case studies, applied organizational communication theory papers, organizational audits, and media assignments, are described to enhance student engagement with class material and to assess student learning. Finally, the article includes common issues to help educators anticipate concerns and plan effective classroom strategies.

Play provides an opportunity for students to learn information and concepts in an active format while facilitating different ways of learning. This puzzle activity is designed to increase student engagement, leverage different learning styles, help students make connections in communication theories, and enhance memory of important communication concepts. As an active learning exercise, play requires students to coordinate behaviors and participate in the learning process differently than through traditional lecture formats. Considering the information on active learning strategies, this activity involves using puzzle pieces labeled with theory components to help students learn each theory term and better understand how the terms work together to form the theory. Courses: This single-class activity is appropriate for courses across the communication curriculum and is particularly well suited for classes with multi-part concepts and/or theories, including communication theory, organizational communication, interpersonal communication, persuasion, conflict communication, and the public-speaking/basic course, among others. Objective: As a result of participating in this single-class activity, students will demonstrate understanding of key theoretical terms/concepts and how those concepts work together to inform communication theory. Further, students will work together in teams to bring in outside examples of the theory in action and practice explaining the concepts to their classmates to enhance learning and long-term memory of class concepts.

Drawing on a national survey of 447 U.S. workers who transitioned to remote work during COVID-19, this study examined how different types of communication technologies (CTs) used for work and private life were associated with work/life conflicts and perceptions of social support across different relationship types (coworker, family, and friends). Findings indicated that work/life conflicts became aggravated when the use of CTs violated relational norms (e.g., mobile texting with coworkers and emailing with family and friends). On the other hand, uses of CTs that were perceived to offer access to social support (e.g., instant messaging with coworkers and friends) were related to lower work/life conflict. Social media (e.g., Facebook) had a direct relationship to higher work/life conflict, but an indirect relationship to lower work/life conflict through social support. Overall, findings suggest that individuals attempt to create work/life boundaries by selecting specific CTs when physical work/life boundaries are collapsed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tattoos historically have been considered taboo and viewed as unprofessional in workplace environments. However, tattoos are increasing in frequency as an avenue of self-expression, forcing organizations to create and enforce policies about tattoo displays. Human Resource (HR) professionals are on the front lines of enforcing organizational policies, such as tattoo visibility, regardless of their personal agreement with organizational values or policy. This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with seven HR professionals to understand policy communication related to tattoos and how value dissonance influences communication. Findings indicate that HR professionals informally and formally engage in unique policy enforcement communication tactics that evoke organizational and personal values through hypotheticals (authority), throwing the book down (security), and modeling (conformity). HR professionals who experience value dissonance use additional tactics including identification (benevolence) and changing the policy (self-direction). When HR professional's values align with perceived organizational values, they are less likely to experience value dissonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional labor research largely focuses on client-facing occupations. However, employees across occupations engage in emotional labor when they perceive that specific types of emotional communication are required to align with organizational expectations. The current two-week daily survey study of 42 employees was conducted at a small website development company to examine relationships between employees' emotional labor, physical health, and psychological well-being. Results indicated that daily emotional labor surface acting was significantly negatively related to daily psychological well-being and daily physical health. However, daily emotional labor deep acting was not significantly related to daily psychological well-being or daily physical health. After aggregating emotional labor across days, results revealed a significant positive relationship between emotional labor and burnout. This study enhances organizational awareness of the relationship between emotional communication expectations and employees' psychological and physical health. Research-driven practices are detailed to ameliorate the negative side effects of emotional labor communication demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With no national anti-discrimination law in place to protect LGBT community members (American Civil Liberties Union, 2016), it is vital to understand how marginalized leaders motivate others to enact change. Using participatory ethnographic methods, this study followed a LGBT Community Rights Group for five months. Two leadership communication strategies enabled LGBT leaders to act as community change agents: 1) cohesive communication encouraged collective discussion and leveraged individual group members' expertise, 2) proactive communication evoked tenacious defense strategies to counter opposition and facilitate outreach with external organizations. Collective leadership modeled by this LGBT Rights Group offers communication strategies for motivating community change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity can be challenging and uncomfortable to discuss with students, yet is a critical communication issue to explore. Our understanding of multiple types of diversity and self-awareness of implicit biases shape our communication. In this class activity, students increase sensitivity to their own biases related to diversity by seeing themselves and classmates in relation to research findings. Recognizing biases in a low risk environment allows students to make choices about their communication behaviors to communicate more intentionally and ethically. This activity can be incorporated into a range of communication classes including organizational, leadership, interpersonal, gender, nonverbal and research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the nexus of leadership and flow through the lens of two inherently positive psychological leadership approaches. In so doing, we examine how leaders can craft conditions to make work more conducive to followers’ flow, and the beneficial effects this has on well-being and performance. Data were collected from 40 employees who completed an initial survey and subsequent daily surveys over two weeks (273 data points). Results from hierarchical linear modeling (level-1 days; level-2 persons) suggest that transformational leaders and leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships impact employees’ work characteristics, subsequently impacting daily flow. In turn, followers’ daily flow predicted daily psychological well-being and performance on subsequent days, further evidencing the downstream importance of flow-facilitative leader behaviors. Both transformational leadership and LMX were also found to predict psychological well-being through leaders’ impact on flow preconditions and flow itself in a full multi-stage mediation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]