Drawing on the positive connotations associated with home from humanistic geography (Relph 1976; Tuan 1977; Cresswell 2015) and Western culture (Rybczynski 1986; Mallett 2004), this paper explores how and why workers engage in placemaking activities to make their workspaces into homes. Using photo elicitation interviews with workers in many occupations, the results show that workers use various practices including personalization and reconfiguration of one's workspace, creating positive meanings, carving out private spaces, and creating community to create home at work. The humanistic geography literature suggests that workers undergo these activities in order to thrive and live an authentic human existence. In light of changes to work, organizations, and society, it seems that work may be an increasing source of attachment for workers and that homemaking at work facilitates this connection.

One question not addressed in communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) literature is where an organization is located. As more workers work on the road, at coffee shops, from home, and in coworking spaces, it is important to consider the relationship of these spaces to the organization. In this study, I argue that when someone appropriates features of a space to do work, that space becomes organizational. This process allows spaces like coffee shops and homes to become at least partially and temporarily organizational, rendering these workspaces as organizational contributors (to a certain extent). Using photo-elicitation interviews with workers in a variety of fields and organizations, I demonstrate gradients of spatial organizationality and show how, through appropriation, some spaces are more clearly organizational than others.

The ideas of this forum germinated at the Organizational Communication Division’s pre-conference at the 106th annual convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) in 2020. A group of scholar-teachers, committed to addressing various critical social issues, came together to challenge dominant ideas, paradigms, and structures within and beyond organizational communication. We engaged with decolonization and social justice as an ongoing project that cultivates scholarship, pedagogy, and public engagement. Our discussions left us with a sense of urgency and inspiration to work substantively toward thinking differently about organizational communication. Our goal in this forum is to present the collective as a sharp provocation to decenter the spaces of theorizing and pedagogical practices in organizational communication and beyond.

Many experiential management and organization behavior classes require that students participate in an ongoing workgroup that is faced with the necessity of completing a variety of tasks, dividing work, making decisions, and rewarding performance. These groups serve as vehicles for learning about organization behavior firsthand and create opportunities for developing managerial skills.Typically, two kinds of activities are assigned to these groups. The first includes structured in-class exercises that highlight relevant course material. For example, the familiar NASA Lost in Space exercise and its many derivatives are used to compare individual versus group problem solving strategies. In the second kind of activity, student workgroups are assigned projects to complete out of class and are required to submit a final product that is graded. These group projects may include, for example, case analyses, oral presentations on a selected topic and observation exercises in which groups may go to fast-food firms and study the impact of technology on internal operations. Our emphasis here is on the second type of activity.These projects serve two useful purposes. First, they provide substantive learning through problem analysis or in-depth study of a relevant organization behavior topic. Second, they challenge group members to organize themselves for completing the project. Groups must confront the dilemmas of coordinating individual contributions, resolving conflicts, and motivating members. Through this, participants accumulate data on how they function as a group. These data are often used for process discussions and analyses done on an ongoing basis or later in the term.We have observed a significant weakness in these projects. Namely, while the properties of interdependence should be highlighted, it is often artificially contrived, imposed by the evaluation system rather than by the task requirements. For example, having groups write case analyses entails minimal skill differentiation. Often the problems experienced in doing such projects do not center on actual task accomplishment but rather on devising ways to give each member a piece of the action, a result of strong normative pressures for equal participation and of an evaluation system based on individual contributions.While the intent of such projects is to learn about the payoffs that can at DALHOUSIE UNIV on June 26, 2015 jme.sagepub.com Downloaded from

No abstract