Invisibility and Visibility in Alternative Organizing: A Communicative and Cultural Model

Abstract

This study reengages organizational communication scholarship on invisibility and visibility through a cultural lens. Departing from Western-centered approaches, I deploy African feminisms to examine how organizational members communicatively negotiate invisibility and visibility in a different cultural logic and context. I focus on market women’s susu groups—grassroots organizations—in postconflict Liberia, West Africa. I conducted 100 hr of participant observation and 40 interviews with susu group members in Monrovia, Liberia. I unearth a communicative situational model to culture. At a micro-level, the model uncovers three situational dimensions—temporal, relational, and structural—that shape how organizational members negotiate invisibility and visibility. At a macro-level, the model contributes to emerging work on culture and organizing. In conclusion, the study moves past understandings of culture as a factor to consider underlying assumptions shaping how we conceptualize communicative processes, here invisibility and visibility.

Debunking Eurocentrism in Organizational Communication Theory: Marginality and Liquidities in Postcolonial Contexts

“…For example, Dutta-Bergmann (2004) anchors the subaltern voices of the Santali tribe-a disenfranchised community in India-to destabilize dominant health communication theories. We take a situational approach (Cruz, 2014(Cruz, , 2015a(Cruz, , 2015b(Cruz, , 2017 by resisting the tendency to construct the margins in an essentializing fashion. We thus update a generic postcolonial stance by acknowledging various intersections of neoliberalism, globalization, indigeneity, and locality (Hanchey & Berkelaar, 2015;Yousfi, 2014).…”

“…This assumption is problematic on two levels. First, liquid organizing is normative in many non-Western contexts and anchored in alternative cultural logics (Cruz, 2014(Cruz, , 2017. Second, prior to recent societal shifts, marginal actors in Western and non-Western contexts relied on liquidity to escape multidimensional violence.…”

“…In the first vignette, solvency is enabled by the absence of material resources such as buildings and equipment. The ability to blend into settings unremarkably is characteristic of environmental isomorphism (Cruz, 2017). Solvency is an intrinsic property of liquidity in marginal contexts because it is tied to neoliberal policies and governmental measures-economic, political, and cultural-which specifically target the disenfranchised.…”

Tension between visibility and invisibility: Science communication in new information environments

“…Additionally, in organizational communication research, the concept of visi-bility has gained prominence (Cruz, 2017;Jonkman, Trilling, Verhoeven, & Vliegenthart, 2020). Here, the notion of visibility ranges from an organization being identifiable and recognizable (Cruz, 2017;Scott, 2013) to the notion that it is part of the public discourse (e. g., it is covered in the media; Jonkman et al, 2020). This paper focuses on the visibility of scientists as actors and not on scientific organizations.…”

Mejoramiento de comunicación interna en empresas de calzado en Tungurahua-Ecuador

“…Aun cuando existen investigaciones que confirman la incidencia de ciertos factores en la comunicación organizacional, tales como: la visibilidad e invisibilidad de los miembros (Cruz, 2017), los efectos de los canales de comunicación (Meléndez-Labrador, 2016), las nuevas tecnologías de información (Berkelaar, 2017), la posición estructural de los miembros dentro de las redes de la comunicación (Koohborfardhaghighi, Bum Lee, y Kim, 2016), ética organizacional (Kim y Krishna, 2017), entre otros; es necesario recalcar la PODIUM No. 36, Diciembre 2019, pp.…”