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Conrad, Charles, and Marshall Scott Poole. Strategic Organizational Communication in a Global Economy. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2004.) An excellent exploration of communication in organizations, this book is sophisticated yet accessible.
Kegan, Robert. In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. Kegan, a developmental psychologist, argues that as societies become more complex, so must our ways of thinking. He describes five different modes of thought or levels of consciousness, but points out that two of the highest levels are in short supply at a time in history when they are needed most. We’ve included this book as appropriate for this chapter because many of Kegan’s examples are derived from the workplace. He demonstrates in a very clear manner how global organizations demand very different communication strategies from us, and that if we don’t enlarge our way of thinking, we may find ourselves “in over our heads" more often than we wish to be.
Lappé, Frances Moore, and Paul Martin DuBois. The Quickening of America: Rebuilding Our Nation, Remaking Our Lives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994. Two of America’s leading activists for community involvement and social change demonstrate how to master the arts of public conversation and active citizenship. This is a workbook that really helps you think about the range of possible roles in public life and how to have your voice heard in the neighborhood as well as across the nation.
Martin, Judith. Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. New York: Warner Books, 1988. A very humorous, but nonetheless excruciatingly correct, discussion of “proper” public communication. This book and Miss Manners’ newspaper columns have gone a long way to restoring the perception that it’s OK to be mannerly.
Papa, Michael J., Tom D. Daniels, and Barry K. Spiker. Organizational Communication: Perspectives and Trends, rev. ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007). A clear, well-written, foundational text on organizational communication, updated and revised since its original publication.
Sennett, Richard. Respect in a World of Inequality. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003). Sennett challenges us to overcome what he calls modern society’s profound lack of positive ways to express respect and recognition for others, especially when our economic standing and talents differ dramatically.
Stewart, Thomas. Human Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations. New York: Bantam Books, 1998. Stewart identifies one of the key assets of contemporary organizational communication—the ability of an organization to harness what its people know (human capital) and create or nourish knowledge networks (structural capital) within and across organizations and in conjunction with customers (customer capital). Stewart argues that organizations have only scratched the surface in terms of developing the best tools for competing in the knowledge economy.
Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate: 1870–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Reconstructing the lives of middle-level managers from the personnel files of five major corporations of the time, Olivier Zunz has shown how their social relationships with one another and the workers they directed formed the corporate bureaucracies that still dominate much of the American workplace. A fascinating look at how many of the communication patterns of supervisor and subordinate were originally shaped.