Discursively Constructing and Managing Failure: A Case Study of a Committee Tasked With Organizational Change of Educational Space and Technology

• In Event: Organizational Communication Research Escalator - Extended Session

Abstract

“Where did it all go wrong?” is a reverberating question for the members of a change committee at a regional US university tasked with reinventing classroom technology and furnishing. This case study examines the experiences and documentation of a diverse group of university employees who either voluntarily served or were conscripted by supervisors to participate in a university-wide effort to change educational space. The driving question behind this inquiry seeks to understand committee perceptions of the committee’s purpose and what they perceived as the point of deviation from that purpose. Thus, the study builds a dysfunctional case of organizational change and group communication to examine how failure discourse was constructed and managed in group communication. Participant observation of meetings, semi-structured interviews with members, and review of committee electronic communication was used to generate a timeline, identify critical points of failure, and analyze (re)framing of failure.

Authors

• R. Tyler Spradley, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Elizabeth L. Spradley, Stephen F. Austin State University