Research Insights

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Noshir Contractor Organizational communication as a field of study has grown tremendously over the past thirty years. This growth is characterized by the development and application of communication perspectives to research on complex organizations in rapidly changing environments. Completely re-conceptualized, The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Communication, Third Edition, is a landmark volume that weaves together the various threads of this interdisciplinary area of scholarship.

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate Hyperlink networks are dynamic systems of representational communication. In order to understand the varied influences on processes that produce these systems, this research examines the evolution of a HIV/AIDS nongovernmental organization (NGO) hyperlink network over one year. The results demonstrate that different factors influence the rate of variation, selection, and retention of hyperlinks. The presence of a greater number of corporate or government hyperlinks to

View the Resource By Amy O’Connor, Michelle Shumate  Informed by the symbiotic sustainability model, this theory-building research compares a stratified subsample (N = 66) from 695 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have relationships with U.S. Fortune 500 companies in 11 industries (N = 155). Using network analysis and centering resonance analysis, the research compares the “about us” statements of three groups of NGOs with different indegree centralities. The results of this study

View the Resource By Andrew Pilny, Michelle Shumate Many nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) instrumental collective action networks exist to produce tangible public goods. Moreover, these organizations’ hyperlinks function to express collective identity. The extent to which both types of collective action are related is unknown. To examine this gap in the research, hyperlinks from 181 NGO websites were analyzed to determine if instrumental collective action offline is related to expressive collective

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Amy O’Connor We introduce the Symbiotic Sustainability Model (SSM) as a macrolevel explanation of nongovernmental organization (NGO)-corporate alliances. The SSM presents NGO-corporate alliances as distinct interorganizational communication relationships, symbolized to stakeholders to influence the mobilization of capital. We contend that alliance partners communicatively co-construct the alliance with stakeholders in order to mobilize economic, social, cultural, and political capital. By focusing on the communication of

View the Resource By Katherine R. Cooper, Michelle Shumate This research proposes a bona fide network perspective for examining interorganizational collaboration. This perspective emphasizes that (a) network boundaries are fuzzy and membership is dynamic, (b) interorganizational networks are embedded in a complex environment that enables some configurations and constrains others, (c) interorganizational networks are multiplex and different types of relationships are mutually influential, (d) these networks are dynamically restructured over