This dissertation examines how teams experience and co-construct hope for one another through storytelling and shared imaginings of possible futures during facilitated, future-focused workshops. I conducted a total of 38 qualitative, semi-structured interviews and performed two observations of facilitated workshops. This study reveals how hope in teams is a shared, complex, and emergent state that motivates team members toward accomplishing future-oriented change through empowered action. Using a gestalt framework of emotions, findings suggest hope in teams is greater than the sum of its parts and is rife with tensions and contradictions. In fact, this study suggests that hope in its latent state may first present as jadedness in team members, wherein they are guarded and seek to protect themselves from re-experiencing past pains and failures. This study found teams engage in a five-step hope emergence process during facilitated, future-focused workshops and that teams who emerged from the workshop hope-filled were able to sustain that hope by accomplishing meaningful progress toward ideas they had created in the workshop. This research expands understanding of positive emotions in the workplace and, specifically, the understanding of hope in teams by: (a) elucidating hope in teams using a gestalt emotion framework, (b) uncovering jadedness as a latent state of hope, (c) highlighting how teams experience hope as an ebb-and-flow of organizational life, (d) identifying five steps in a co-construction process of hope emergence, (e) recognizing the need for meaningful progress to be made in order for hope to persist in the team, (f) illuminating the role of disempowerment and the potential darker sides of hope, and (g) surfacing practical implications for co-constructing and sustaining hope for teams, leaders, and facilitators in the workplace.

In 2016, the United Nations reported a historical high of 65.6 million globally displaced people. Within the current protectionist and isolationist climate, the U.S is accepting a fewer number of refugees for resettlement than ever before and less governmental funding is being allocated to resettlement organizations, which provide support services for refugee resettlement and integration.

Increased migration and the advancement of communication technologies with affordable access to these technologies have produced extensive communication networks and complex relational ties across the globe. While this is certainly true of all migrants, building and maintaining relational ties has added complexity for refugees whose journey to resettlement, economic insecurity, political disenfranchisement, and vulnerability impact the motivating factors for digital engagement.

This dissertation seeks to understand to what extent Diminescu’s (2008) concept of the connected migrant addresses the lived experience of resettled refugees in Phoenix, Arizona. The connected migrant through Information Communication Technology (ICT) use maintains transnational and local networks that produce mobility and belonging. Connected migrants are able to produce and maintain socio-technical sociality abroad and in the country of settlement to create and access social capital and resources. Using a grounded theory approach and qualitative methods, this research project explores concepts of mobility, connectivity, and belonging in relation to resettled refugees. The research indicates that age, imagined affordances, digital literacy, language, and time moderate connectivity, belonging, and mobility for resettled refugees. Finally, I offer the concept of transnational contextual relationality to understand refugee communication strategies with the transnational and local network.

The purpose of this study is to explore the way mindfulness informs how leaders make sense of and navigate paradoxical tensions that arise in their organizations. This study employs a qualitative research methodology, based on synchronous, semi- structured, in-depth interviews of leaders who hold a personal mindfulness practice. Qualitative interviews illuminate how leaders’ communication about paradoxical tensions (e.g., through metaphorical language) reflects the way they experience those tensions. Findings extend the constitutive approach to paradox by demonstrating the way mindfulness informs awareness, emotion, pausing, and self-care. Specifically, this study (1) empirically illustrates how higher-level, dialogic more-than responses to paradox may be used to accomplish both-and responses to paradox, (2) evidences the way discursive consciousness of emotion may generatively inform paradox management, (3) suggests the appropriateness and use of a new paradox management strategy that I term ‘mindful dis/engagement’, and (4) highlights self-care as an others-centered leadership capability.

Organizations are hiring prospective employees with more transformational leadership qualities because of the organizational benefits associated with those leadership skills (Men, 2014). While current research examines the effects of transformational leadership in the workplace and the effects of hiring standards on organizational success, this research lacks an understanding of how to promote these hireable transformational leadership skills in education. In this study, we examine how students at the collegiate level are taught to enact leadership skills from two different methods and how they are perceived as hireable or not by human resource managers. To do this, we hired human resource professionals to code for hireability in the actions of the participants in a leadership scenario conducted at the end of the semester. By testing how students from each class are perceived as more or less hireable by human resource professionals, we contribute to the overall study of the benefits of transformational leadership in the workplace.

This online course is designed to educate students on the most popular yet conflicting generations: Millennials and Generation Xers. The lectures discuss what is a generation, what makes someone a Millennial or Generation Xer, and explains how to communicate with each generation. Whether you are a manager, coworker, or student, this course will teach you how each generation views the world, and how you can effectively communicate and relate to both generations. Below is a link to take this course at a discounted price: https://www.udemy.com/generational-communication-in-the-workplace/?couponCode=COMMUNICATE

The following study applies research on Implicit Person Theory (IPT) to the context of organizational communication. IPT scholars argue that most individuals ascribe to one of two groups regarding perceptions of ability: entity or incremental theorists. Entity theorists believe abilities are fixed, unchanging, and constant, whereas incremental theorists believe abilities are changeable, malleable, and subject to development. Incremental theories are a predictor of success, while entity theories can stifle development (e.g., Dweck, 2006). This study explores the relationship employees' mindsets have on the organization, including learner empowerment, impression management, organizational dissent, and guilt. The present study reasons that incremental (versus entity) theorists will exhibit higher perception of learner empowerment, lower expression of impression management behaviors, higher expression of organizational dissent, and a lower perception of organizational related guilt. No significant results were found on the directional relationships predicted; however, this study presents implications for future research in the area of IPT and organizational communication.