Managing Risk in Communication Encounters: Strategies for the Workplace

Managing Risk in Communication Encounters: Strategies for the Workplace focuses on the types of risky interactions that threaten identities, relationships, and sometimes careers, including voicing dissent, repairing broken relationships, managing privacy, responding to harassment, offering criticism, and communicating emotion. Each chapter is grounded in real-life organizational scenarios, includes recent research, applies a standard theoretical framework, and illustrates a full range of communicative tactics and discourse practices. Throughout the book, authors Vincent R. Waldron and Jeffrey W. Kassing provide examples to spur thinking, raise questions, and help readers understand how organizations benefit when employees communicate in ways that manage risk.

Key Features

Risky work situations are examined closely to help readers understand the types of situations they may encounter in their working lives.

Vivid examples and narratives illustrate the inevitable tensions that emerge among ethical, relational, and performance obligations in the workplace.

The roles of discourse, interaction, and communication tactics in managing risk, constructing role identities, and promoting ethical workplaces are explained.

Real-life organizational scenarios and research on the lived experiences of workers help readers understand how individual, organizational, and cultural forces shape workplace communication.

A theoretical model helps students and scholars integrate existing research, analyze situations, and generate new questions.

Intended Audience

Managing Risk in Communication Encounters: Strategies for the Workplace is intended for use as a supplemental text for undergraduate and graduate courses in organizational communication, business and professional communication, leadership communication, managerial communication, and supervisory communication.

This book focuses on the types of risky interactions that threaten identities, relationships, and sometimes careers, including voicing dissent, repairing broken relationships, managing privacy, responding to harassment, offering criticism, and communicating emotion. Each chapter is grounded in real-life organizational scenarios, includes recent research, applies a standard theoretical framework, and illustrates a full range of communicative tactics and discourse practices. Throughout the book, authors Vincent R. Waldron and Jeffrey W. Kassing provide examples to spur thinking, raise questions, and help readers understand how organizations benefit when employees communicate in ways that manage risk.

Vincent R. Waldron is Professor of Communication Studies at Arizona State University, where he teaches courses on communication in work and personal relationships. Professor Waldron received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1989. Dr. Waldron’s research explores how employees manage difficult workplace encounters, such as expressing intense emotion, exercising upward influence, and repairing damaged relationships. The author of two previous books on these subjects, Professor Waldron has published his work in such outlets as the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Management Communication Quarterly, and Communication Yearbook. Vince Waldron has been recognized as a Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is chair-elect of the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association. With his wife Kathleen and daughters Emily and Laura, Vince Waldron resides in Phoenix, Arizona.

Jeffrey W. Kassing is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Arizona State University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate organizational, applied, and environmental communication courses, as well as research methods. He earned his Ph.D. from Kent State University with an emphasis in organizational communication in 1997. Dr. Kassing’s primary line of research concerns how employees express dissent about organizational policies and practices. This work, which began with his dissertation and development of the Organizational Dissent Scale, now spans over a decade and appears in numerous scholarly outlets including Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, The Journal of Business Communication, and The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Before seeking a career as an academic, Dr. Kassing worked as an office manager in the real estate industry, as an area coordinator in residence life at a state college, as sales agent in the bicycle business, and as a professional house painter.