International and Intercultural Communication Commons^™

[The Development Of Public Relations In] Kenya, Dane M. Kiambi

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

This chapter traces the practice of PR from pre-independence Kenya to the 21st century. It emerges that the practice of PR is closely tied to major national events and to social, cultural, political and economic forces. PR roles as understood by the pre-independence colonial government: keeping the public informed on government development projects, assessing public opinion and advising government, endearing government to Kenyans and building the awareness of Kenya abroad have continued to modern-day Kenya.

Cooperative Struggle: Re-Framing Intercultural Conflict In The Management Of Sino-American Joint Ventures, Kathleen J. Krone, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Sino-American economic joint ventures are most often studied through a lens of technical rationality that typically emphasizes organizational efficiency, reduces culture to a manageable resource, and views conflict as discrete disruptions requiring efficient handling. Here, we conceptualize Sino-American business partnerships as sites of struggle where co-managers' accounts of intercultural disagreements reveal friction around action, voice, interests, and identity. We propose cooperative struggle as a critical management practice for working creatively with the multiple forms of difference that arise in this organizational form.

Negotiating Tensions Across Organizational Boundaries: Communication And Refugee Resettlement Organizations, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Voluntary non-profit organizations play a critical role in mediating the transition of refugees into their new host communities in the United States. Furthermore, mediation is fundamentally a communicative phenomenon, as social services are provided in through communication between nonprofit workers and clients. Critically, for voluntary mediating organizations to create empowering spaces for refugees, communication is central. In this study, I emphasize the tensional processes inherent to mediating interactions and explore how refugee resettlement organizational staff members and refugee-clients describe and manage the communicative tensions which emerge when they interact with one another.

I conducted eighteen in-depth interviews with fifteen organizational …

Dialectic Tensions Experienced By Resettled Sudanese Refugees In Mediating Organizations, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

An increasing number of global migrants are refugees who have fled religious, racial, ethnic, or other political persecution. As these refugee populations have grown, governmental and nonprofit organizations have emerged to help mediate the resettlement experience. The current study explores the dialectical tensions Sudanese refugees face in communicating with the organizations designed to make their resettlement successful. Sudanese refugees participated in semistructured interviews about their experiences communicating with mediating organizations. Four dialectical tensions emerged from participants’ stories about their communication in and with mediating organizations: (a) dissemination and dialogue, (b) emancipation and control, (c) empowerment and oppression, and (d) integration …