researching your own organization

I really enjoy reading the Voices from the Field boxes, so you may notice that I blog about them often. In Box 15.2, the authors feature Jill McMillan discussing native organizational communication research in which scholars study the organizations in which they're embedded.

Several years ago one of my master's students, Kay Meidlinger, studies the stories of the organization where she worked, the office of her local Catholic church. Kay had attended Catholic church all her life and at the time of her study had worked as a member of the parish staff for some time. She collected stories during the regular staff lunches. Because of her extensive knowledge of her own parish and the larger organization in which the parish functioned, she could provide insight into the stories not possible from an outsider's viewpoint.

After she completed her thesis, we collaborated on two articles. The first, published in the American Communication Journal focused on the types of interpersonal stories the participants told. In the second, published in Management Communication Quarterly we took a critical view in examining how the stories supported (or didn't support) the status quo. Having both an insider's and outsider's view provided greater depth of analysis as we discussed our interpretations of the data.

~ Professor Cyborg