This book provides a practical definition and explanation of “communicative behavior” for use in understanding interaction in work settings. It clearly presents a model of the elements of a work system, and summarizes theories that explain how organizations function and how managers work within the work system. It also describes how to recognize and solve both communication and organization problems. Furthermore, the volume analyzes various processes that occur in the work system, such as disseminating and retrieving information, energizing employees to work smarter, using power and empowering others, facilitating groups and work teams, managing conflict and stress, and how to manage knowledge in the organization, among others. The book describes some of the most likely careers that graduates might enter upon graduation. It also highlights a variety of explanations of organization theory, management theory, culture theory, postmodern theory and critical theory so that the full range of ideas about communication and the places where people work and interact are explored.

This book brings together contributions from researchers within various social science disciplines who seek to redefine the methods and topics that constitute the study of work. They investigate work activity in ways that do not reduce it to a 'psychology' of individual cognition nor to a 'sociology' of societal structures and communication. A key theme in the material is the relationship between theory and practice. This is not an abstract problem of interest merely to social scientists. Rather, it is discussed as an issue that working people address when they attempt to understand a task and communicate its demands. Mindful practices and communicative interaction are examined as situated issues at work in the reproduction of communities of practice in a variety of settings including: courts of law, computer software design, the piloting of airliners, the coordination of air traffic control, and traffic management in underground railway systems.

Organizational communication as a field of study has grown tremendously over the past thirty years. This growth is characterized by the development and application of communication perspectives to research on complex organizations in rapidly changing environments. Completely re-conceptualized, The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Communication, Third Edition, is a landmark volume that weaves together the various threads of this interdisciplinary area of scholarship. This edition captures both the changing nature of the field, with its explosion of theoretical perspectives and research agendas, and the transformations that have occurred in organizational life with the emergence of new forms of work, globalization processes, and changing organizational forms. Exploring organizations as complex and dynamic, the Handbook brings a communication lens to bear on multiple organizing processes.

Communication and Control: Tools, Systems, and New Dimensions advocates a systems view of human communication in a time of intelligent, learning machines. This edited collection sheds new light on things as mundane yet still profoundly consequential (and seemingly “low-tech”) as push buttons, pagers, and telemarketing systems. Contributors also investigate aspects of “remote control” related to education, organizational design, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, drones, and even binge-watching on Netflix. In line with a systems view, the collection takes up a media ecological view. This work will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers in communication, new media, and technology.

Combines theory with practice to demonstrate how organizations work. Based on a non-hierarchical model of enterprises, it offers a framework in order to recognize the dynamics for successful organizations and to improve performances by highlighting and strengthening these dynamics. Provides excellent guidance for managers, encouraging them to reflect on their own experiences to avoid the chaotic detail of constant change and to concentrate on their true strategic intentions.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1980 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

An accessible undergraduate textbook introducing key fundamental principles behind modern communication systems, supported by exercises, software problems and lab exercises.