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Preface / Robert Craig -- An introduction to some distinctive qualities in communication research / by Patrice Buzzanell & Donal Carbaugh -- Distinctive qualities in communication research: a dialogic approach to interpersonal/family communication / by Leslie A. Baxter -- The promise of communication in large-scale, community-based research / by Michael Hecht -- Politically attentive relational constructionism (parc): making a difference in a pluralistic, interdependent world / by Stanley Deetz -- The importance of communication science in addressing core problems in public health / by Joseph N. Cappella and Robert Hornik -- Researching culture in contexts of social interaction: an ethnographic approach, a network of scholars, and illustrative moves / by Gerry Philipsen -- Reflections on distinctive qualities in communication research / By Donal Carbaugh and Patrice Buzzanell.

Through our case study of a Brazilian not-for-profit focused on sustainability initiatives, we expand knowledge about communicative labor in different Brazilian organizational environments, especially in the third (nonprofit/nongovernmental) sector. Based on a case study for which thematic analyses of in-depth interviews with the entire nongovernmental organization (NGO), including its board and staff, were conducted, we found three communicative labor processes that displayed how members entered into, thought about, performed, embodied, and sustained interaction in ways that are considered to be a hallmark of the particular Brazilian third-sector organization that we studied. The three processes of communicative labor—depicting NGO work as meaningful labor, producing commonality and difference, and transcending contradictions—enabled NGO members to withstand difficulties and engage productively in the tensions of doing communicative labor in Brazilian environmental work. Despite the volatile political-economic and diverse cultural environment in Brazil, the NGO's communication enabled them to adapt to and proactively shape environmental efforts, thus modeling sustainability and resilience.

Through our case study of a Brazilian not-for-profit focused on sustainability initiatives, we expand knowledge about communicative labor in different Brazilian organizational environments, especially in the third (nonprofit/nongovernmental) sector. Based on a case study for which thematic analyses of in-depth interviews with the entire nongovernmental organization (NGO), including its board and staff, were conducted, we found three communicative labor processes that displayed how members entered into, thought about, performed, embodied, and sustained interaction in ways that are considered to be a hallmark of the particular Brazilian third-sector organization that we studied. The three processes of communicative labor—depicting NGO work as meaningful labor, producing commonality and difference, and transcending contradictions—enabled NGO members to withstand difficulties and engage productively in the tensions of doing communicative labor in Brazilian environmental work. Despite the volatile political-economic and diverse cultural environment in Brazil, the NGO's communication enabled them to adapt to and proactively shape environmental efforts, thus modeling sustainability and resilience.

This study, based on in-depth interviews with 45 practitioners in the emerging field of environmental sustainability, argues for a more nuanced approach to studying the meaningfulness of work. Drawing from the tension-centered approach, we posit that sustainability practitioners derived meaningfulness in tensional ways from circumstances and factors that were both enabling and constraining, stemming from various organizational, professional and political structures. This occurs through ongoing negotiation that spans everyday work processes, the perceived impact of such work, and participants' career positioning. In addition to examining meaningfulness as a dynamic and contested negotiation, rather than a purely positive outcome, the political implications of such meaning-making are traced. We close by discussing some implications for future research on meaningfulness of work.

Mentoring centers on the development of another person through career, psychosocial and role modeling support. As popular cultural portrayals and gendered critiques of mentoring show, not all can be categorized as rational, instrumental and positive. There often are unconscious forces that drive particular mentoring arrangements and offer entrée points into mentorship analyses that contrast with rational approaches. Popular culture images provide an arena to critique dominant mentoring practices. Towards this end, we critically examine the award-winning drama Mad Men (Weiner, 2007) and uncover how non-rational mentoring practices are depicted. We argue that characters engage in intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring processes in which loyalties shift and neuroses reflect the nature of workplace social relations. Our critique displays characters' complicity in perpetuating asymmetrical gendered workplace relations through practices that are seemingly non-rational, presumably meritocratic and/or captured by archetypal mentoring relationships.

Feminist organizations today must maintain their distinctive organizational identities in a competitive marketplace in which feminism has become one choice amidst many social change causes. Alignment among organizational identity, stakeholder images, and organizational culture can give feminist organizations a competitive advantage. However, feminist theory and practice have surfaced alignment challenges that can undermine organizational success. This article extends understandings of identity, image, and culture alignment by accounting for the role of ideology. In particular, this article explores how an independent media business that publishes a feminist popular culture magazine localizes feminist ideology discursively to enable alignment and satisfy diverse stakeholders. In doing so, this article fills a gap in feminist organization research by looking at how and where ideological lines are drawn by an organization trading in the economies of popular culture, image, and branding. Lessons for organizations faced with similar identity challenges are offered.

How people talk about their work and careers matters. Desiring meaningful work, people increasingly describe work and careers as a calling. Such callings may be secular or sacred. Popular ways of talking about calling often create problematic, rather than positive, career and life outcomes. In this article, we examine five common, historically influenced assumptions underlying contemporary talk about secular and sacred callings: necessity; agency and control; inequality; temporal continuity; and neoliberal economics. We showcase some of the likely downsides of calling as these underlying assumptions interact with people's everyday lives. We suggest possible solutions for rehabilitating calling to help people find some of the career and quality-of-life benefits that calling promises. In sum, this essay contributes to a more nuanced understanding of calling and agency in contemporary careers while also offering a framework and direction for developing research and practice on calling.

Given corporate scandals, organizational crises, and accounting irregularities (e.g. Citigroup, BP oil spill, Enron, Arthur Andersen), leadership ethics has grown in relevance. The current study takes a discursive approach to engage in a multimethod case study of a consulting and leadership development firm that takes Conscious Capitalism as the impetus for, and target of, leader development. Using constructivist grounded theory and critical discourse analysis, we reveal themes and 'best practices' voiced by consultants and clients for cultivating mindfulness and developing ethical leaders, as well as micro- and macro-level paradoxes, tensions, and challenges: structuring-releasing; expanding-contracting; opening up-closing; and collaborating-competing. Our critical approach contributes (a) a critique of Conscious Capitalism as a Discourse that appears to offer hope for business ethics and societal transformation and (b) a critique of ethical leadership development through embedded power relations and the complex discursive processes within and driven by leadership development and ethics at the intersection of various d/Discourses. This research helps explain some of the challenges involved in developing ethical leaders. We reveal that although Conscious Capitalism appears to offer solutions to many of today's social problems, including leadership ethics, developing ethical leaders ironically leads to problems that are 'wicked.'

The combined forces of China's reforms, resurgent traditional values, and problematic labor market have led the Chinese Post80s generation to reconstruct their careers. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews, this study examines how Post80s professionals communicatively constitute resilience as they utilize and transform meanings of chengyu (成语, Chinese four-word idiom encapsulating shared values). Guided by chengyu, Post80s construct resilience processes from temporal (past-present-future), relational (self-other-collective), and introspective perspectives (passion-practice). As discursive cultural resources of resilience, chengyu legitimize choices, frame actions, inspire ways of managing change and expectations, and offer comfort in difficult times. This study expands resilience research to a non-Western context and highlights how cultural and generational discourses can mobilize agency in the constitution of resilience. Findings offer practical implications in promoting and cultivating resilience.

The present study examined how identity is affectively organized online in an online men's rights community, responding to calls to explore how sites like Reddit serve as spaces that host and support varied misogynist language and communities. We utilized scholarship of affective organizing and communicative constitution of organizations to study the identity construction through the social and communicative processes that facilitate and limit online communication. We analyzed 35,643 comments from a popular men's rights community to interrogate how affective and gendered organizing contributed to identity construction using text mining, semantic network analyses, and qualitative analyses. Our findings revealed that affect was not merely prominent in the forum but served as a constitutive means through which the members of the men's rights community constructed their identity individually and within their Reddit community. We advance an affect-centered approach within organizational communication scholarship, theorizing how masculinity is constituted through the interplay of affective contradictions, affective sensemaking, and affective identification.