The research conducted in ‘The Internal podcast’ aims to answer how podcast could be used for internal communication in organizations and what its weakness and strength is. The study has gathered theories such as storytelling, affordance and sensemaking and combined them into a unique framework for this study. Based on multimodal analysis we have studied three podcasts content and content design to help answer the questions of the study. The three podcasts: Kackellackan, Fast forward and Radio Samhall all have their coworkers as the primary target group. From these podcasts the study analyzed at a total of 60 episodes (20 from each podcast). The results showed that all three podcasts have different content design that suggests multiple possibilities for organizations to form the content for their own needs. Because of its intimate and close character, it also suggests a usefulness for sensemaking in organizational changes. But one of the weaknesses that the result pointed at is the lack of interaction between producer and listener, because one key part in empowerment is the possibility for feedback.

During this session, participants will reflect on the pivotal points in their own educational process and select moments of clarity or misunderstanding which shaped the course of their academic or professional career. Whether positive or negative, these teachable moments made us who we are, and remain relevant to understanding how and what we teach. As a group, we will share some of our personal stories and discuss how to incorporate them into specific courses, how they demonstrate empathy in a relatable way, and what we hope to evoke in our students through this exchange. The handout for this session will serve as a template for participants to refer to, and build upon. This presentation relates directly to the conference theme of validating emotion as an intrinsic component of the educational process and specifically, to the concept of self-disclosure in Chapter 3 of Dr. Cavanagh’s book, The Spark of Learning.

Most formal training programs in librarianship do not stress the nuts and bolts of leadership and professional development. Understanding this process is essential for current managers as well as those interested in pursuing a management path. Using empathy as a starting point, I will discuss the simple, sequential steps of performing a self-assessment of strengths and skills, how to identify and remedy weak areas, and how to promote yourself in a reality-based, practical way which will benefit your community. This process is applicable to librarians of all types and all levels of experience.

This is the story of a financial literacy endeavor that sputtered, surged, and then died. While it did not succeed at my institution, I share the story and the resources in the hope that its successes and failures might be of use to others. Although I had already been a professional librarian for seven years when I took my new position as Graduate Research and Instruction Librarian at East Tennessee State University near the beginning of fall semester 2014, I had never worked in public services. Fortunately, I had been a teacher, received professional training in pedagogy, and was comfortable with the instruction piece of my job. “Outreach” was a little more difficult. For my first effort, I chose something I believed would appeal to a wide diversity of students: money.

Finding a mentor who works well for you can be both challenging and frustrating. Mentor-mentee matching programs are a great idea and work beautifully for some librarians in specific contexts. What happens when you outgrow, mismatch or need specialized or temporal mentoring? How do you understand the scope of your need? How do you get to the "why" behind building this relationship? In this program, audience members will assess their resources and needs, develop a short list of possible mentors for those needs, identify their personal goals and what they hope to provide a mentor through this relationship. Further, audience members will consider how to build an effective relationship with both accountability and an assessment plan to help both the mentor and mentee understand if goals have been met. Finally, time will be given to ensure audience members consider how best to share the skills and understanding they acquire through this relationship.

The purpose of this research project is to answer the question, "How and with what effects does Logan Aluminum, Inc. translate and implement the principles of socio-technical and team management theory into its organizational culture and operational activities?" To answer this question the researcher first examined the literature related to those theories and then conducted on-site interviews and ethnographic research to witness their implementation. The researcher found strong evidence to prove the validity and accuracy of many of those theories when practiced in an organizational setting. Theories particularly proven were those relating to the necessity of constant training, the role of leadership, team and team member capabilities, employee morale and team maturation.

In light of research that suggests that formal needs analysis leads to efficient and productive training programs, managers and a sampling of non-management employees from a mid-size manufacturing company participated in a needs assessment to determine future training needs for the company's mangers. The information was collected through focus group interviews and a Q-sort technique was developed to categorize the issues raised in the interviews. The categories of training issues and related concerns identified as a result of the focus group interview process were compared to a list of training topics generated by managers through an informal survey prior to the needs assessment. The comparison indicated that the training issues generated by managers in the informal survey were not congruent with the issues identified as a result of the needs assessment process. Comparisons were made between the major issues addressed by various departments, management levels, and functional groups. These comparisons indicated that some concerns were identified by all departments, management levels, and functional areas and could be defined as organizational concerns while other concerns were identified by specific departments, management levels, or functional areas.

The purpose of the present study was to examine organizational practices related to exit interviewing techniques. Prior research has neglected the study of the variables which cause the use of the exit interview to fluctuate, focusing rather on the study of the validity and format of the exit interview. The present study, by means of a questionnaire, cross-tabulated certain independent variables with the dependent variables contained in the questionnaire and found that at least three independent variables significantly affected use of the interview: (1) the size of the company (2) unionization of the company and (3) the annual turnover rate of the company. These findings were then interpreted in light of present theory, and the researcher suggested some directions for future investigations. The present study concluded that rather than prescribing use of the exit interview based upon prior research, utilization of the exit interview varied in relation to the independent variables which impinge upon the situation.

Organizations have traditionally accomplished connectivity among their workers by co-locating them in shared organizational workplaces. However, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are offering alternative ways to accomplish this kind of connection. This change raises important questions about what it is possible to accomplish through such mediated communicative connections, and if there are work activities that are best accomplished face-to-face. Practitioners and researchers have historically identified informal communication as a process essential to organizational success that is difficult or impossible to accomplish outside of shared physical environments. This study documents the ways full-time teleworkers are accomplishing informal communication without being in shared work environments. In doing this, this work also identifies for what purposes these participants find shared organizational workplaces important and/or essential for successful informal communication. To complete this study required that two additional questions needed to be addressed: 1) defining full-time telework in the context of modern ICT-mediated corporate work environments, and 2) a re-examination of the parameters of telework to define them for modern workplace environments, so as be able to use effectively to examine past and present telework research efforts. In order to document the context of each of the participants as fully as possible, a narrative case study based research protocol was used. Participants were engaged through two active interviews and a journaling exercise so as to identify and document instances of informal communication and their purposes or roles in their workdays. This study’s key finding is that among this group of full-time teleworkers, all were engaging in informal communication to accomplish bonding and learning, both in ways that paralleled those communicative practices commonly accomplished in shared environments, but also in new ways that were made possible because of emergent sociomaterial practices supported by new information and communication technology affordances. While all the study’s participants indicated that their work processes, including informal communication, could be entirely accomplished virtually, nearly all noted the importance of face-to-face communication for key aspects of bonding and learning. Additionally, the successful work practices of these teleworkers were strongly dependent on the ubiquitous adoption of ICT tools and platforms throughout these participants’ organizations, and by the distribution and mobility of increasing numbers of workers, in these organizations and others, that are using these technologies as a routine part of their daily work practices.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Purpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to map out how the communication is organized at the Bällstabergs School in Vallentuna. The purpose with the essay is to illuminate the pros and cons with their system so that a communicationstrategy could be worked out from the basis of the results. The aim is devided into three different questions at issue: What does the organizational structure look like and how does it concide with the communication? What does the present communicative work look like? Which communicative needs can be identified?</p><p>Method: The methodology contains two parts. The first part is an analysis of the present organization. The analysis could be used to map out the communication in an organization convex and see how it coincide with the organizational structure. The material comes from the webpage of the Bällstaberg school, different documents, the schools communication plan and from conversations. To complete the analysis there are interviewes that show the present communicative work and identifyable needs.</p><p>Main results: The structure of the communication is formal and coincides with the structure of the organization. The information goes from the principal to the managementgroup and then through the supervisor to the workgroups. The intranet is mentioned in the communication plan as a channel but hasen´t been applied more than usage of e-mail. The results show that the persons interviewed are pleased with the formal communication system, but point out minor shortages and problems. The system takes time and can not handle information that must reach members quickly. The interviewed persons inquire about an alternative channel that gives a general view and is accessible. The meetings play an essental part in the communicative work but there is a wish for formality and a more distinct structure in these. The management plays a great role and wishes for a more developed cooperation between each other to be able to make their work easier. The intranet is used limited where the only function that is used is the e-mail. All together is a need of a communication plan that works as direction in the communicative work.</p><p>Keywords: communication, organization, organizational communication,research traditions, internal communication, formal and informal systems, qualitative interviews, formal systems</p>