Journal Articles by Rahul Mitra
Journal of Applied Communication Research, 2024
Given intensified calls to attend to mental health in academia, we sought to understand how gradu... more Given intensified calls to attend to mental health in academia, we sought to understand how graduate students in the communication discipline anticipate, respond to, and resist institutional stressors via their resilience processes. Drawing on interviews with 50 graduate students, we examined how graduate students' resilience communication processes enacted adaptive-transformative possibilities for resistance across micro, meso, and macro organizational levels in higher education. Our findings show how participants' resilience processes, in response to co-occurring stressors of academic norms, institutional restraints, and experiences of marginalization, aligned with specific modes of resistance (viz., individual infrapolitics, insubordination, collective infrapolitics, insurrection). Ultimately, we extend theorizing on resilience to illuminate its intersections with resistance and offer practical interventions to build both individual and collective resilience among graduate students in higher education.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2024
The COVID-19 crisis severely impacted entrepreneurs worldwide, so that policy dispatches like the... more The COVID-19 crisis severely impacted entrepreneurs worldwide, so that policy dispatches like the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) September 2020 special report, Diagnosing COVID-19 Impacts on Entrepreneurship: Exploring Policy Remedies for Recovery, were crucial for governments devising economic policies. Our paper examines how the GEM used institutional storytelling to craft anticipatory resilience, by drawing on the Communication Theory of Resilience and (ante)narrative approaches to anticipatory resilience. Findings demonstrated intersections of the GEM's role of resilience storyteller, as well as how resilience action by entrepreneurs and policymakers was narrated by the GEM. We uncover key tensions within the GEM's positioning as diagnostician and fortuneteller, between the resilient processes of normalizing and pivoting for everyday entrepreneurs, and in the institutionalizing work of policymakers through reacting and prospecting. We end by discussing key implications of our narrative approach to how institutions craft anticipatory resilience in response to global crises.
Journal of Professions and Organization, 2023
Professionalism has been widely criticized for its biased standards modeled around dominant ident... more Professionalism has been widely criticized for its biased standards modeled around dominant identities while excluding minoritized groups. Nevertheless, it remains a powerful social discourse, adopted widely by workers and organizations, and frontline workers-who became particularly salient during the COVID-19 pandemic-are no different, even as they are mainly Black and Brown. Our exploratory study, based on in-depth interviews with 15 Black frontline workers, examines how they use discourses of professionalism to navigate everyday tensions stemming from both their minoritized racial identity and the precarious nature of frontline work. Participants described three intersecting communicative practices-bottling their emotions, striving for (elusive) excellence, and navigating (in)visibility. Our research thus addresses the communicative practice of professionalism among an important yet undeserved category of workers, showing how it is both hegemonic and exclusionary, but may nevertheless be subverted strategically by precarious workers.
New England Journal of Entrepreneurship, 2023
Purpose-To understand how narratives used by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in Detr... more Purpose-To understand how narratives used by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem shape transitional entrepreneurs' social reality. We offer theoretical and practical insights to elicit critical support, formulate policies and programs and guide ongoing empirical examination of transitional entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach-We adopt a multi-case study approach, looking at two ESOs in Detroit: one focused on promoting high-growth entrepreneurship and securing financial capital for technology entrepreneurs, the other focused on promoting everyday entrepreneurship (especially among underserved communities) and amassing a more diverse array of resources. We conduct a thematic analysis of organizational texts and interview data with ESO leaders. Findings-ESO narratives shape Detroit's transitional entrepreneurs by constructing entrepreneurs' social identity, orienting them to the ecosystem and envisioning a collective future in which transitional entrepreneurs are key. Originality/value-This study offers insight into the definition of transitional entrepreneurs by extending existing conceptions by highlighting the role of institutional actors, like ESOs, and the narratives they adopt in shaping opportunities and challenges for transitional entrepreneurs. Moreover, we push the boundaries of transitional entrepreneurship, including technology start-up entrepreneurs in the definition and call attention to the role of transitional entrepreneurs in post-industrial cities by showcasing their role in community and urban development.
Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 2018
Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The compan... more Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
Journal of Professions and Organization, 2019
Studies of emerging professions are more and more at the crossroad of different fields of researc... more Studies of emerging professions are more and more at the crossroad of different fields of research, and field boundaries thus hamper the development of a full-fledged conversation. In an attempt to bridge these boundaries, this article offers a 'generative dialogue' about the redefinition of the professionalization project through the case of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioners. We bring together prominent scholars from two distinct academic communities-CSR and the professions-to shed light on some of the unsolved questions and dilemmas around contemporary professionalization through an example of an emerging profession. Key learnings from this dialogue point us toward the rethinking of processes of professionalization, in particular the role of expertise, the unifying force of common normative goals, and collaborative practises between networks of stakeholders. As such, we expand the research agenda for scholars of the professions and of CSR.
Journal of Applied Communication Research, 2018
This study examines religious disengagement among African-American young adults through a communi... more This study examines religious disengagement among African-American young adults through a communicative lens. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we unpack the tensions between organizational and institutional disengagement in participants’ accounts and trace the relational factors shaping their use of specific stigma management strategies. Participants’ religious disengagement unfolded through encounters with new information that contradicted institutional teachings, ongoing struggles with institutional ideologies they found problematic, localized conflicts with specific church experiences, and family circumstances. Stigma management strategies were chosen to
keep the peace within their social circles, protect loved ones from being hurt, care for themselves to ensure their best and most authentic self, defend themselves from perceived attacks and social censure, and come to a mutual understanding with confidants about disengagement. Theoretical implications pertaining to religious membership, organizational vis-à-vis institutional disengagement, and stigma management were discussed, along with practical recommendations to empower congregants to grow spiritually.
This study advances a theoretical framework of sustainable organizing, grounded in the communicat... more This study advances a theoretical framework of sustainable organizing, grounded in the communicative practices of key organizational actors. I situate this study in the enactment of natural resource management (NRM) in the U.S. Arctic, drawing on qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework hinges on four iterative sensitizing concepts— stakeholder embeddedness in local–global ecologies, constitutive role of d/ Discourse, rhetoric–practice tensions, and systemic risk–resilience—that guided data analysis. Findings revealed that participants communicatively constituted NRM in terms of structural challenges and best practices. NRM's structural challenges were rooted in discursive closure of key perspectives through past events, routinization, and design; othering of important stakeholders; and framing institutional tension as conflict. Nevertheless, participants emphasized key decision-making, relationship-building, and risk-managing clusters that enabled NRM best practices benefiting both human and natural stakeholders. The empirical study thus extends the proposed theoretical framework by demonstrating context-specific practices that enact sustainable organizing.
This article examines the negotiation of organizational tensions by purpose-driven consultancies,... more This article examines the negotiation of organizational tensions by purpose-driven consultancies, for-profit firms also motivated by social change agendas in their implementation of organizational development for corporate clients. Using two case studies – APCom training ethical corporate leaders, and GreenD communicating environmental sustainability programs – we trace how such consultancies negotiate these tensions, and how their underlying purpose might accordingly transform. Our multi-case study suggests two broad tensions related to purpose and impact that are experienced in context-specific ways by the
consultancies. Although members sought to frame these tensions in positive ways, as complementary dialectics or contradicting the dominant capitalist system, they were also at risk of devolving into more paradoxical contradictions and even debilitating double binds, without sustained discussion to ‘repurpose’ the firms. We close by discussing theoretical and practical implications for purpose-driven consultancies, given that their pursuit of social change is often at odds with the status quo.
Management Communication Quarterly, 2018
Although largely espoused by contemporary organizations, implementing sustainability is often vag... more Although largely espoused by contemporary organizations, implementing sustainability is often vague and ineffective. In contrast to most studies that employ resource-based or institutional perspectives to study sustainable organizing, we draw on discursive positioning theory to examine how sustainability practitioners make sense of and enact their work on the ground. Interviewing 45 practitioners and analyzing 35 curriculum vitae (CVs), we traced four subject positions – discovery, enlightenment, legitimacy, and consumption – constructed via 12 discursive resources. These positions emphasized 12 strategic messages, depending on participants’ work contexts. Findings also indicated four ways that politics shaped participants’ subject positions through government collaborations, regulatory environments, vested political agendas, and dominant sociopolitical discourses. We close by discussing some key theoretical and practical implications related to discursive positioning, the political implications of work practices, and sustainability policy making
Human Relations, Sep 30, 2017
This study, based on in-depth interviews with 45 practitioners in the emerging field of environme... more This study, based on in-depth interviews with 45 practitioners in the emerging field of environmental sustainability, argues for a more nuanced approach to studying the meaningfulness of work. Drawing from the tension-centered approach, we posit that sustainability practitioners derived meaningfulness in tensional ways from circumstances and factors that were both enabling and constraining, stemming from various organizational, professional, and political structures. This occurs through ongoing negotiation that spans everyday work processes, the perceived impact of such work, and participants’ career positioning. In addition to examining meaningfulness as a dynamic and contested negotiation, rather than a purely positive outcome, the political implications of such meaning-making are traced. We close by discussing some implications for future research on meaningfulness of work.
This paper unpacks the communicative constitutions of resilience and sustainability in global com... more This paper unpacks the communicative constitutions of resilience and sustainability in global communication through research exemplars that address grand challenges for engagement of new generational workforce, better inclusion of professional immigrants, sustainable organizational development and leadership, and infrastructure design for global water supply and safety. Specifically, we discuss how resilience emerges in communicative processes whereby (a) Chinese Post80s workers construct career discourse to contend with changing global and local career dynamics; (b) immigrant professionals in the United States negotiate identities and deal with tensions in everyday work interactions; (c) NGOs in China employ alternative logics to do the needed human service work and promote democratic practices; (d) Chinese Banks actively frame their leadership to contribute to productive action and national resilience; and (e) design team members in Ghana shift expertise and identifications in human-centered design for water safety. Guided by communicative theorizations of resilience (Buzzanell, 2010), this paper contributes to greater understanding and development of sustainability and resilience for self and others, now and in the future, and in local through global contexts. Keywords: resilience, career, immigrant workers, NGO, identity negotiation, leadership, design, sustainability, global challenges.
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2008
Queering and transgendering practices have been visible across the Internet since the time of mul... more Queering and transgendering practices have been visible across the Internet since the time of multiuser domains (MUDs), MUD object oriented domains (MOOs), e-mail lists, and Web bulletins. This article maps some themes of queering in the Indian digital diaspora through an intergenerational lens, produced in the acts of online and offline coauthoring, weblogging, and reading of instances of such online queering relationally. By way of a dialogic encounter on their own blogs and employing performative writing that simulates the blogsphere, the authors look at the interplay of codes of identity through the employment of themes, language, symbols, and cultural influences in their writing. Examining the themes emerging from the specific blogs they study, the authors ask how power is shifted and relayered in these articulations and what the inviting interactional features of their writer-audience communities are that allow for certain kinds of self-expression while also shaping their performance of sexuality in these spaces.
Management Communication Quarterly, 2015, 29 (1), 130-134, Feb 2015
Introductory essay for the Management Communication Quarterly Special Forum on "Organizing/Commun... more Introductory essay for the Management Communication Quarterly Special Forum on "Organizing/Communicating Sustainably" (Vol. 29, issue 1, pp. 130-134)
Communication Theory, 2013, 23 (4), 395-416.
Noting overlaps between leadership and transformation processes, I outline a critical digital per... more Noting overlaps between leadership and transformation processes, I outline a critical digital perspective that shifts focus from transformational leadership behaviors to how leadership “trans-formations” occur. Specifically, this article avers that naming particular identities, processes, and concepts by leaders and change participants enacts transformation. These three domains are “co-named” by leaders and participants in ongoing communicative sequences of acting/re-acting, attuned to the discursive flows and material conditions/actants shaping various contexts. I illustrate this framework via the U.S.-based climate change nonprofit 350.org and its founder Bill McKibben, focusing on how leaders or participants acquire and mobilize voice, organize in different forms, and how “new” forms intersect with traditional institutions. Implications for leadership, dialogue, and practical accomplishments of transformation are discussed.
This article examines the “hybrid” discourses of neo-capitalism at play in the emerging economy c... more This article examines the “hybrid” discourses of neo-capitalism at play in the emerging economy context of India through the case study of a prominent Indian company, which launched an ambitious organizational project in 2006-2008: the cheapest car in the world. I critically analyze the company’s media releases with attention to the genre, social construction of actors, and macro relations between them. Findings address how the organization was crafted as a social actor, the organization-State relationship, and the organization’s engagement with opposing interests. The results contribute to global business communication studies by problematizing the “neocapitalist firm” in the emerging economy context and focusing on the peculiar socio-politico-economic organizational processes herein.
Companies operating and located in emerging economy nations routinely couch their corporate socia... more Companies operating and located in emerging economy nations routinely couch their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work in nation-building terms. In this article, I focus on the Indian context and critically examine mainstream CSR discourse from the perspective of the culture-centered approach (CCA). Accordingly, five main themes of CSR stand out: nation-building facade, underlying neoliberal logics, CSR as voluntary, CSR as synergetic, and a clear urban bias. Next, I outline a CCA-inspired CSR framework that allows corporate responsibility to be re-claimed and re-framed by subaltern communities of interest. I identify such resistive openings via interrogations of culture (I focus on oft-cited Gandhian ethics here), structure (State policy, organizational strategy, and global/local flows), and agency (subaltern reframing of institutional responsibility, engagement with alternative modes of agency, and deconstructive vigilance).
Public Relations Review, (2013), 39 (5), 587-90
This article presents an exploratory study—based in the emerging economy context of India—which e... more This article presents an exploratory study—based in the emerging economy context of India—which examines the relationships among citizens’ perceptions of economic globalization, their country’s “emerging influence,” other key nations, and large international organizations. Demographic and socioeconomic factors influenced respondents’ perceptions of economic globalization and emerging influence. Perceptions of economic globalization influenced emerging influence. Perceptions of international organizations were influenced by views of emerging influence, key nations, and economic globalization. Perceptions of key nations were influenced by views of emerging influence and international organizations. The findings are relevant for extended engagement in global public relations and public diplomacy.
This essay answers the call for intersectional examinations of difference constitution/negotiatio... more This essay answers the call for intersectional examinations of difference constitution/negotiation. I outline a dialogic framework of difference, actively accomplished via communication in conjunction with material conditions of object, site and body. The essay draws from an ethnography with Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India. It finds that the refugees use dialogic domains of segregation–assimilation, safety–risk, and agency–passivity to make sense of their tenuous social position as outsiders within. The project adds to our understanding of difference as multi-layered, simultaneously straddling agency/structure, and discourse/materiality.
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Journal Articles by Rahul Mitra
keep the peace within their social circles, protect loved ones from being hurt, care for themselves to ensure their best and most authentic self, defend themselves from perceived attacks and social censure, and come to a mutual understanding with confidants about disengagement. Theoretical implications pertaining to religious membership, organizational vis-à-vis institutional disengagement, and stigma management were discussed, along with practical recommendations to empower congregants to grow spiritually.
consultancies. Although members sought to frame these tensions in positive ways, as complementary dialectics or contradicting the dominant capitalist system, they were also at risk of devolving into more paradoxical contradictions and even debilitating double binds, without sustained discussion to ‘repurpose’ the firms. We close by discussing theoretical and practical implications for purpose-driven consultancies, given that their pursuit of social change is often at odds with the status quo.
keep the peace within their social circles, protect loved ones from being hurt, care for themselves to ensure their best and most authentic self, defend themselves from perceived attacks and social censure, and come to a mutual understanding with confidants about disengagement. Theoretical implications pertaining to religious membership, organizational vis-à-vis institutional disengagement, and stigma management were discussed, along with practical recommendations to empower congregants to grow spiritually.
consultancies. Although members sought to frame these tensions in positive ways, as complementary dialectics or contradicting the dominant capitalist system, they were also at risk of devolving into more paradoxical contradictions and even debilitating double binds, without sustained discussion to ‘repurpose’ the firms. We close by discussing theoretical and practical implications for purpose-driven consultancies, given that their pursuit of social change is often at odds with the status quo.
Cite as: Mitra, R., Lucas, A., Johnson-Fambro, S., Van Raaphorst, C., & Lasky, S. (2022). A mosaic of researcher “back-stories” and oral history “front-stories”: COVID-19 and Metro Detroit BIPOC entrepreneurs’ resilience. In L. Browning, J-O Sørnes, & P.J. Svenkerud (Eds.), Organizational communication and technology in the time of coronavirus: Ethnographies from the first year of the pandemic (pp. 307-326). London: Palgrave.
bringing the State under purview, probe the emerging public sphere(s), consider how corporate reputation constitutes strategic management, and critique corporate dialog.