Here are a couple of papers that should enlighten you more than most. One is hard to find... on purpose. Some folks you have to watch like a hawk. Especially those who fancy themselves to be messiahs. Fabulists. Here’s an article placed “strategically” in a fourth-rate predatory “journal” that publishes garbage literally 10 days after being received (can you say, review?) for a few hundred dollars. No way a decent journal would be willing to publish such an atheoretical diary. I also noticed the author did not put this one on his vitae. Hmm. In it, it comes close to slandering colleagues in the name of “organizational communication” scholarship. IRB? The victims probably will not see it. That’s why it is placed in a backwater venue. So why bother? So they can get a little tingle every time they meet the unsuspecting victim, thinking “I fucked you good, and you don’t even know it.” Reminds me of Bill Cosby. It’s a double insult. I’ve got a few blades in my back too. Beware of treachery. Often it comes with a button-down shirt, tie and a smile.
World
Journal of Education and Humanities ISSN 2687-6760
(Print) ISSN 2687-6779 (Online)
Vol. 2, No. 3, 2020
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjeh
Original Paper
Addressing Doctoral Student
“Failure”: Catching Lost Souls
Michael W. Kramer1*
1 Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma, Norman,
OK, U.S.A.
* Michael W. Kramer, Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma, Norman,
OK, U.S.A.
Received: May 6, 2020 Accepted: May 25, 2020 Online
Published: May 30, 2020 doi:10.22158/wjeh.v2n3p97 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/wjeh.v2n3p97
Abstract
Statistics indicate that 45-50% of
doctoral students who finish their course work never finish their degrees
(https://www.statisticssolutions.com/almost-50-of-all-doctoral-students-dont-graduate/). This essay examines this
problem as an example of fundamental attribution error and suggests that in
some cases, but not all, success
rates can be improved by making changes in the situation instead of blaming the students. It illustrates this point
with examples of successful efforts to prevent students from failing to finish their degrees by advisors
serving as process experts instead of content experts. It also points out that while being a process expert may
increase the percentage of students who complete their degrees, it does not always lead to success. Rethinking this issue may assist educators
as they attempt to help college students at all levels finish their degrees.
Keywords
attribution theory,
A.B.D. status, degree
completion, process expert
1. Introduction
Each year, bright
new students enroll in Ph.D. programs across the country. They often excel in
their coursework and pass their
written and oral comprehensive or general exams within a few years. As such, they reach the official
status of doctoral
degree candidate, although
they are known more frequently by their unofficial status,
A.B.D. (All but dissertation? All but done? All but dead?). They seem destined for distinguished careers
when suddenly they get lost. Instead of graduating with a Ph.D., they join the ranks of the 45-50% of
doctoral students who finish their course work and never finish their degrees (See for example: https://www.statisticssolutions.com/almost-50-of-all-doctoral-students- dont-graduate/).
97
2. Theoretical Framework and Case Studies
2.1 Fundamental Attribution Error
Faculty and
program directors often commit the fundamental attribution error to explain
this pattern. Attribution theory
focuses attention on whether we use individuals’ situations (external causes)
or their personal qualities (internal
causes) to explain the individuals’ choices and actions, including their successes or failures (e.g., Kelley &
Michela, 1980). The fundamental attribution error overestimates “the importance of personal or
dispositional factors relative to environmental influences (Ross, 1977, p. 184). In other words, in this situation,
we typically blame these students for becoming lost souls and failing
to finish their
degrees while ignoring
situational factors. We say things
like, “The students
would not settle on a dissertation topic.” “They settled on the topic,
but never wrote anything because they
were in an endless cycle of reading the literature.” “They were perfectionists
who never showed what they had done
because they never felt it was quite ready.” Attributing their failures to internal causes allow advisors, programs, and
universities to excuse themselves from responsibility for these abysmal
statistics. After all, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t
make it drink.”
There certainly
are multiple reasons why students
get lost once they reach their A.B.D. status. Some
graduate
students are largely responsible for their failure to finish. However, as
attribution theory suggests, there
are often significant external influences that cause students to join the status
of A.B.D. permanently. For example,
there are advisors who are simply difficult to work with and who rarely successfully mentor a student to degree
completion. They do not provide enough direction, or they are slow to read drafts and provide helpful
feedback to students, and so, after a number of delays and a general lack of progress, the students
simply stop trying probably due to situational factors. Those situational factors might include factors
like the busy lives they are leading—such as earning a living wage to pay off student loans, taking care
of family commitments, and those sorts of things. If a faculty member
has not guided
any Ph.D. student
to degree completion in 10 years,
the faculty member
is likely at least part of the problem.
Students are
frequently victims of other circumstances largely beyond their control. For
example, their advisors retire
suddenly or take jobs at other universities midway through the students’
programs and decide not to continue
working with students
from that university
after retiring or leaving. Whatever
the reason for the departure, often the students discover there is no
longer a good match for their interests
within the remaining faculty in the department and none of the remaining
faculty are willing to work with
them on their topics. If faculty members only work with students who align with
their very narrow interests, they limit the opportunity for graduate students
in this situation to succeed.
Regardless of the circumstances that bring their progress to a halt, if we continue making the fundamental attribution error, we conclude
that, yes, circumstances worked against the students, BUT they had free will or agency to change
their situation instead of becoming lost and drifting aimlessly, and so ultimately, the students are
responsible for their failure to graduate. “They could have changed their topic.” “If they showed more diligence
someone would have worked them.” If you have taught in
a PhD program,
you recognize these different types of “lost soul”
Ph.D. students.
2.2 Changing Personal Resources
One way that
advisors attempt to provide A.B.D. students with the ability to successfully
finish their dissertations is to
provide them with additional resources. A common practice is to encourage (or require) students to read one of the many
advice books for finishing a dissertation published over the years (e.g., Becker, 2007; Joyner, Rouse,
& Glatthorn, 2018; Sternberg, 1981). These books generally include chapters on choosing topics,
choosing advisors and committee members, working with the Institutional Review Boards, and making
timely progress among others. The title of one suggests that you can finish your dissertation as long
as you commit to working on it for 15 minutes a day (Bolker, 1998). Other resources may include writing
programs and support groups on campus or during the summer. Certainly, these additional resources have helped many
graduate students complete their degrees and providing them to students
is important. But in the end, if the students
do not finish, we can still commit the fundamental
attribution error and blame them for not taking advantage of all the resources
we provided them.
2.3 Changing the Situation
I am not
convinced that these lost souls are to blame. After all, even when it seems
like the students’ actions or inactions are to largely
to blame, it does not make sense to make the student
solely responsible; the
system must also take some of the blame. But, rather than discussing this
irresolvable philosophical question
further, I’d like to discuss ways to change the situations faced by these lost
soul situations so that they can
eventually graduate. I’ll use an analogy to S. D. Salinger’s (1951) The Catcher in the Rye to make my point.
Depending on your age, demographic, and location, you may have read Salinger’s book in junior high or high school. I don’t remember much about it except for the main character’s explanation of his role in
life which explains the book’s title. In Chapter 22, the main character, Holden
tells his sister: "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little
kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's
around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody
if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're
running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but
that's the only thing I'd really like to be.” (Salinger,
1951, pp. 224-225)
That image
represents how we need to address lost soul graduate students. They are headed
toward the cliff that represents
falling into the abyss of eternal A.B.D. status. Someone has to catch them and
stop them. Catching them involves
changing their situation and sending them back into the field
of rye where they can succeed. A couple of personal examples of catches
illustrates this point. During my career
at two Ph.D. granting programs, I have caught a number of students who became
stuck largely through no fault
to their own and was able to prevent
them from falling
over the cliff.
2.4 Being Process Experts
In one case, the
two members of the student’s committee with similar interests to his both left
the university over two years. This
occurred in part because he was a non-traditional student working full time as a faculty member at another
institution while being a part-time student at ours. As a result, it took him longer to complete his course
work and some of the faculty members he had for some of his early coursework, including
his chosen advisor,
were gone when he was ready to work on his dissertation. When he approached me as the
director of graduate studies to become his advisor, I urged him to find someone else more suited to
his topic, a content expert. The newer faculty members in his area of interest rejected his requests
since they never had him in class and so he returned to me with a second request a few weeks later. His
topic was unrelated to anything I ever studied, but I knew the steps needed to write a defendable
proposal and dissertation and so I became his advisor as the process expert, not the content expert. I simply
made him work on the proposal until it seemed logical and complete to me. The rest of his committee
served as content experts. I remember being anxious at his proposal meeting because the topic was
completely outside of my area of
expertise. I was relieved when a young committee member, a content
expert, reported his literature review was one of the best she had read. I realized that an advisor
who is good at the process of completing a degree is perhaps more important than one who is a content
expert. After defending his dissertation, he continued his career at his institution and has become a director of a program and a full
professor.
In two other cases,
students began working
with faculty members
who were content
experts. Both
students soon found it too difficult
to progress due to their advisors’ poor (slow) work habits and lack of mentoring (unclear or non-existent
advice). The advisors were failing as process experts. After floundering for a year or more, each
approached me, apparently due to my reputation as a process expert, and I guided them through the
process although both took somewhat longer to graduate than it should have taken. One went onto a career
at a liberal arts college where she was eventually promoted to full professor. The other went on to a
successful career in a statewide government agency (Success stories do not always have to end with
careers in academics). Both of these cases suggest that if more faculty focused on becoming process
experts instead of content experts, the percentage of A.B.D. students
who graduate would likely
increase.
Perhaps the
most extreme lost soul I worked with faced this situation. She had already
defended her dissertation proposal
when her advisor retired suddenly. The secondary advisor took a job elsewhere
at the same time. Both decided not to
work with students from my university anymore. I respect those decisions, but the student was left with a
committee of three and no advisor. She approached me even though I was not on her committee and I
eventually took on the dissertation in a topic that was unfamiliar to me with the proposal already approved. Although
the study design was in good shape, the rest
of the proposal did not meet my standards for writing and so the student ended
up rewriting large portions of the
literature review until it satisfied my standards. Then she finished the data
collection, wrote and defended the
dissertation, and went off to her
first position at an international university. She
bounced around from adjunct position to adjunct position
for a while before pursuing
a career outside of university
settings. Again, she needed a
process expert to be able to finish, not a content expert. I was able to be
that process expert.
Of course, it
would be ideal to have an advisor who was both a process and content expert.
Reading some of those same books
mentioned earlier can help advisors become process experts. But if you have to choose,
it seems like a process
expert might be the better choice.
By now you might think I am rather prideful about my ability
to prevent students
from falling into the
A.B.D. abyss, for
being the catcher in the rye. You might bright. I like to think I made a
difference for these students, but I
have seen other advisors do the same thing and so someone else might have
caught these students instead of me had
I not been available. After all, the students did the work. Each was capable
of writing a reputable dissertation when the roadblocks got removed. All their dissertations were comparable to the others I advised or approved as a
committee member. They needed someone to step in as a process expert
to prevent them from falling
off the metaphoric cliff. It did not have to be me.
2.5 An Extended Counter
Example
It is important
to note that being a process expert does not always lead to success. In another
case, I became aware of another lost
soul. The advisor the student originally selected left the university suddenly.
She replaced him with one of those difficult to work with faculty members.
When I found out about her,
she had completed her courses except for two incompletes. She had not even
filed her plan of study for her
degree due to poor mentorship by her new advisor. She had no plan for when she might take her comprehensive exams. She had only
one more year of support coming from
the department. That meant it was
imperative that she at least be A.B.D. before the end of the academic calendar
so she could finish her
dissertation long distance.
I approached
her about her progress early in the Fall semester. She clearly felt lost. She
did not know what to do about her
situation or her advisor. I volunteered to be her advisor instead of waiting
for her to ask me, perhaps a mistake
on my part. I remember telling her that it did not matter that I was not an expert in her area of interest. I was good
at getting students through the process. If she was willing to work, then
I would help her achieve her goal.
She took me up on the
offer.
The first
step was identifying her committee members and filing a plan of study. Within a
week or two, we pulled together the
committee meeting. It was not really a plan of study; it was more of a record
of completed coursework. Her
committee accepted the plan recognizing that she still needed to finish the two incompletes. By the end of the
semester in December, she turned in the two papers, received grades,
and was ready
for her comprehensive exams. She had turned back from the cliff.
With her
assistantship running out in May, we selected dates for the written exams and
oral exams before the end of the
semester. She studied. I checked back periodically. She studied more. When she announced that she was ready, she took her
written exams. Her written exams were quite good and her oral exams went well. The committee had no major concerns and she passed both her written and oral
exams with unanimous approval. She had avoided the cliff for now.
As part of the
oral exams, her committee asked about her dissertation topic. She explained
that she was going to examine how one
university responded to the scandal that led to the departure of a respected coach (There are enough such examples that
I can leave you guessing which coach, which sport, and which year. Let’s just say it made national news). The committee
responded enthusiastically to the idea for the study.
During the
last week of the semester, the student and I talked about the topic. We talked
about how to access the news stories
for analysis. We talked about getting multiple sources including print and television news. We talked about the
method of analysis she would use. Since the story was ongoing, we discussed
some of the latest developments as well.
When she left
at the end of May, it seemed like she was on the right path. She had a plan.
She just needed to execute the plan.
She would begin writing, sending me drafts and she would gradually finish a proposal
and then the whole dissertation.
And then it didn’t happen.
I sent her an
email asking about progress. Because she no longer had an assistantship, she wrote that she was busy looking for employment, but she assured me that she
would get to work on the proposal once
things settled down. A few weeks later, I sent her another email about some
breaking story related to the case
when it made it in the news again during the summer. This time there was no
response. I figured she was
still busy settling in and so I
did not give it too much thought.
During the fall semester
I emailed her and asked
her for an update. Again,
no response.
At the beginning
of the next semester, progress reports for all graduate students were due. I
sent her another email.
I was not surprised that there
was no response.
In fact, I
never heard from the student again. It has been several years. Obviously, I had
incorrectly congratulated myself for
keeping her away from the cliff. I had kept her in the field for a while, long enough to reach the A.B.D. status, but she
still managed to get past me to fall off the cliff and become another
permanently A.B.D. former graduate student.
3. Discussion and Conclusions
So, what can we
learn from these examples? It has been far too common for faculty, programs,
and universities to commit the
fundamental attribution error and blame students and not the situations for the poor completion rate of students who
reach A.B.D. status. These examples point to a number of situational factors that contribute to this low success rate. The factors
include faculty turnover,
ineffective advisors who poorly manage the process, or faculty who will
only work on a very narrow area of
research with students, among other external causes for low completion rates.
Some of these factors are situational
factors that can be addressed. Faculty
can focus on being process experts instead
of content experts. Being a process expert means knowing the steps but also
recognizing the importance of timely progress. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a faculty member
suggest that
it is no big deal if it takes another year for the student to finish because
they will be better prepared or get a
better job. If you are living on a TA salary or adjunct pay at a community
college, another year is very costly,
and another year does not guarantee better preparation or a more prestigious job. A process expert will work to
reduce time to completion. And of course, it is important to note that even if we address situational factors
and remove barriers so that the student can succeed, not all will. Some will still find their way off the
cliff and fail to finish. We need to be sure that we have done what we can
to remove the situational barriers.
I am
currently working with another lost soul student. Her advisor put a roadblock
in her way, refusing to work with her
for a semester because he was too busy
preparing to teach a new class. That postponement
would have delayed her degree completion by at least 6 months, but probably a
year. He was a content expert, but
not a process expert. She came to me for help and I agreed. My hope is that the outcome will be positive
again this time and that I can help keep her from going over the cliff.
There are
similar lost souls in undergraduate and master’s degree programs, not just in
Ph.D. programs. The students come
close to graduating but never make it. When they apply for jobs, they fall into
either the category of “some
college course work” or “some graduate coursework.” Some of these students do not have the ability to complete these
degrees. Others genuinely change their minds and decide not to complete the degrees. But in other cases,
there are situational barriers that can be addressed to enable them to finish their degrees.
I am confident that there are many faculty members,
advisors and administrators who have helped changed
situations so the students can graduate and who continue to do that
for many students
at all levels. We need more of these catchers
in the rye for students
at all levels.
References
Becker, H.
S. (2007). Writing for social scientists:
How to start and finish your thesis, book, or article (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226041377.001.0001
Bolker, J. (1998). Writing
your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: A guide to starting, revising, and finishing
your (doctoral Thesis). New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Joyner, R. L., Rouse, W. A., & Glatthorn, A. A. (2018). Writing the winning thesis or dissertation:
A step-by-step guide (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin,
a Sage Publication.
Kelley, H. H., & Michela, J. L. (1980). Attribution theory and
research. Annual review of psychology, 31(1),
457-501. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.002325
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings:
Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol.
10, pp. 173-220). Academic Press.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60357-3
Salinger, J. D. (1951). The catcher
in the rye. New York,
NY: Little, Brown,
& Company.
Sternberg, D. (1981). How to complete and survive a doctoral dissertation. New York, NY:
St Martin’s Griffin.
The Year
of the Newborns: A Department Chair's
Reflections
Michael W Kramer University of Missouri
In September
2006, a newly hired tenure track faculty
member informed me that she was expecting a child in
March. During the next few months, three more faculty members
told me that they were expecting in May, June, and August. Fully two-thirds of the
faculty women were pregnant at the same time. We jokingly
wondered if it was the water.
I understood the importance of supporting these
faculty members during this
time. Research suggests that a combination of the
amount of time spent at work
(rational model) and the perceptions
of control of the workplace and support from the institution Uob strain model)
impact faculty members' stress
(O'Laughlin and Bischoff 99). I
expected that by following university work-family policies, it would be a simple matter to assist each of them in managing their situation. I discovered
the situation was much more complex. The policies were not
universally known, they created
a range of responses from individuals directly
and indirectly affected
by them, and they were part of broader set of family-work issues to consider.
It started simply
enough. I was aware that our university ''stop
the clock" policy allowed faculty
members to extend their "probationary period" by a year for family-related
issues including pregnancies. I fully supported a recent policy change
that made approval of requests for probationary period extensions due to
childbirth or adoption automatic for primary
caregivers. Clearly while parenting a newborn, faculty members experience a confluence of the three major
types of work-family conflicts identified:
time-based (time used on one activity detracts from the other), strain-based (mental effort on one
activity interferes with the other), and behavior-based
(behaviors appropriate for one activity are inappropriate for the
other) (Greenhaus and Beutel.I 77-81).
As noted elsewhere (Sulli-
Michael W.
Kramer (PhD, Texas, 1991) is
professor and chair of the Department of Communication al the
University of Missouri. This essay
complements his interest in the i□te
ract io n of employees with their organizations as part of the organizational assimilation/socialization process. He wants to thank his cooperative faculty
for making
the year of the newborns
a positive experience
for him as chair.
van, Hollenshead,
and Smith 25), allowing additional time for promotion and tenure is a simple and essentially cost-free way to support new parents. If a faculty member achieves promotion and tenure with an additional year, the department and university retain a valuable
faculty member at no cost. If a faculty member fails to achieve promotion even with the additional year, the department and university still
receive the faculty
member's services for the year. The only "cost" is a
one-year delay in searching for a new faculty member who may or may not be more likely to gain tenure. In full suppor1 of the policy, after congratulating each faculty
member, I informed
her of this option.
Two expectant faculty members
were not affected
by the policy me
was in a non-tenure track position and the other was already
up for promotion. I was a bit surprised at the reluctance of one of the two eligible
Like situations documented elsewhere (Kirby and Krone 71), she was
con cerned that taking
advantage of the policy might label her negatively and ultimately hurt her promotion and tenure chances. I assured her that she would not be forced to wait another
year because she requested the extension, and that
she might even
go up early if her record of
teaching and scholarship
continued as it had so far. Despite my assurances, she did not request an extension-I believe in part because of her fears.
The other faculty member
asked for and received an extension.
My pride in my awareness of the stop the
clock policy was shattered when I found out that the College of Arts and Science has a phantom
maternity policy. The policy provides a new parent with a reduction in teaching of one course
for one semester surrounding the birth or adoption of a child and includes an option for the reduction of a second
course if the professor teaches
an overload another
semester or a
summer course without
the usual additional compensation. I call it a phantom
policy because although
it was posted on the
college's Web site at one time,
it was removed in a dispute
among college and
university administrators over the appropriateness of individual colleges
developing their own maternity/paternity
policies. As a result, I was unaware of the policy. I was embarrassed when the second expectant
faculty member told me about the policy, which we
could not locate on the
college's Web page, but she eventually
was able to show me. After
verifying the policy
with the Dean, I went back to the first expectant
faculty member to tell her that she was due a reduced
teaching load in addition to the stop the clock policy. At
least
with the final two birth announcements I was able to inform faculty members
of both policies.
Of course, the policy also left
me with a major problem.
Suddenly I had four additional sections of teaching to cover
during the year, and it turned into five sections
when one faculty
member took the additional course reduction option.
In a large department, this might not be a problem, but in our department, it created a major instructional shortage. When I met with the
Dean and his staff, I started to
give them a piece of my mind about my embarrassment at finding out
about a phantom
maternity policy from a
faculty member, and the difficulty I faced trying to provide the necessary instruction. They blamed the removal of the policy on a higher level administrator and assured me that they would stand
behind their policy.
Then they quickly
addressed my problems
by providing additional salary to hire adjuncts to teach all five sect io ns .
Having
the funding to pay adjuncts to teach the sections only partially solved my problem; it was going to be a
problem if I had to find someone willing
and able to teach 4-5 sections in one semester and nothing the next semester. Here, my expectant faculty
members demonstrated cooperation that made the policy and the funding solution workable. With their consent,
I was able to spread the reduced
teaching loads over three semesters, which eliminated the hiring problems. A positive outcome of this
was that I was able to provide some advanced graduate
students with additional teaching
opportunities for three semesters with the adjunct pay. J felt fortunate to have such cooperative faculty members.
The
due dates for three of the faculty
members meant that only one gave birth during a semester when she had teaching
responsibilities and so needed actual maternity leave. The Dean's office
also provided funding to hire a
teaching assistant to team teach her class and to then teach the class for as long as needed until the faculty member returned, until the end of the semester if necessary.
This faculty member came back to
teaching after about four weeks rather than taking as many as twelve weeks until the semester ended. I would like
to attribute her quick return
entirely to her commitment to teaching, but l suspect
that two other factors inAuenced
her . She
was the one who feared taking advantage of
the stop the clock policy, and so I suspect she feared staying
out longer might reAect poorly on her. In addition,
had given
birth to their daughter during spring
break
and
returned
to
teaching
without missing a day. It's a
remark that once it's out about all you can do
is damage control. Despite privately
assuring her that the remark was inappropriate
and there were no expectations that she return until she was ready, I'm sure the comment put undue pressure on her to return quickly.
I suspect that she perceived (incorrectly in my opinion) problems identi |
|
fied elsewhere: a "chilly climate" that discourages using family leave |
|
policies and pressure from "workaholic peers" that made her feel she |
|
would be judged as unprofessional if she took more time off (Sullivan, |
|
Hollenshead, and Smith 26). Ten months
later, she admitted to me that she |
|
should have waited longer,
but by then
there was nothing
to be done. |
|
I could probably stop here, claiming some success in managing
"The Year of the Newborns"
based on college policies, extra funding from the Dean, and a cooperative faculty, and perhaps I should. However,
it is not the end of the story.
Discussions of family leave policies typically focus only on how the policies benefit those directly affected, as I
have done so far. The focus is on the impact on families, typically married couples
with small children, and only occasionally other family situations, and rarely on the implications for others. Certainly for the individuals involved, I
was pleased that the two policies
benefited the faculty members and their fam
ilies.
When I look at the policy's impact on the
department though, I also consider
its impact on other
faculty members. Our policy is to provide a reduced teaching load to new tenure track faculty sometime
during the first two years to assist
them in jump starting
their research agenda.
I wanted to provide a reduced load to our new hire during 'The Year of the Newborns," especially since she was
going to teach a large service course one semester. However, I didn't feel that I could
add that strain
to the schedule and so in the
hiring negotiations, I informed her that she would have to wait until her second year for her reduced load. I am
not convinced this was fair to her.
However, she agreed to wait, and it seems unlikely that it
will have an adverse effect on her career in the long run. Her cooperation helped
smooth out the problem.
As I reflected on the policies
from an organizational
perspective, I admit that at times I felt some mild dissonance. It is difficult to justify
paying a full-time salary to
someone who is fulfilling 75-80% of their job duties. There are few organizations that provide this type of benefit in our country.
Some countries provide
more extensive maternity benefits as part of their social system
, but it is far from the
norm here. For example, in
2004, only 18% of surveyed
universities offered this type of full-pay,
modified duties benefit
(Sullivan, Hollenshead, and Smith 25). Other university staff members
are not eligible for a reduced-load, full-pay policy; they
only receive unpaid leave. Elementary and secondary educa tors do not receive this benefit. As a tax and tuition
funded public university, I can imagine many taxpayers
and tuition-paying parents or students
questioning these policies if they were aware of them, since most of them do not receive this kind of
benefit in their workplaces. They likely see
this as another policy they are stuck paying for that benefits faculty members whom they perceive as
underworked and overpaid. I am glad that I do not have to defend the policies
to them. It seems unlikely
that they see the long-term
benefits of retaining talented faculty members as a compelling argument for what
they would see as full-time pay for less than full-time work.
We are fortunate that universities have more flexible work
settings for faculty, but I also have
to wonder about the equity of policies that favor faculty parents of newborns.
I recently had a discussion with a male faculty member who considers many
family-friendly policies discrimina tory
because they provide benefits to some employees but not to others; due to gender or lifestyles, some
employees will never be eligible for a spousal
accommodation, reduced teaching for maternity, or stop the clock benefits. Further, when faculty parents
receive first choice in scheduling to accommodate
small children, other faculty are often left with limited and less desirable choices. So the policies
seem right to me from a human compassion perspective for faculty members who benefit,
but they also can create
resentment and inequities for others.
I also wonder about
the fairness of making accommodations related to childbirth without making similar accommodations for other types of nonwork
issues. Should I expect a reduced
load with full pay if I choose to provide home care for my aging parents
even though I could choose to hire
someone instead? And if an
organization should support
faculty members when the
situation involves immediate family, why not other relatives, close friends, or partners? And if it is reasonable
for faculty to expect accommodations
for situations involving other people, why not for other nonwork complications in life. Can I expect accommodations
so that I can oversee the
construction of my new house? I know this is a slippery slope argument, but there does seem to be a question of how to
balance an organization's interest in
supporting an employees' nonwork activities to
retain them with the employees' obligations to provide services to their organizations. Although I am supportive of our university's current poli-
cies, I'm not sure where we draw the line on
accommodating and sup porting nonwork
ac ti vi tie s.
I
also wonder about our own willingness to blur the lines between work and family. We seem to be moving from
relying on our own resources to manage family and nonwork
issues to expecting
organizations to be involved
and accommoda ting . Certainly at times this seems quite
positive when flexible work hours and
working at
home
eliminate some family problems
and issues for emp lo yees . But what is the cost of this blurring? The negative side of this is that the same employees who benefit from such policies are often implicitly expected to be accessible via cell phones and e-mail almost 24/7. If we allow or expect this type of accommodation
and integration of family and work, what is the eventual impact on our nonwork/family lives?
Joanne Martin describes an organization with very
generous work family policies. When a high-ranking woman who was instrumental in developing a new product chose to have a
Caesarian birth early to be sure to
be available for the product launch, the organization insisted she stay home, but arranged closed-circuit
television from her home during her "maternity
leave" so she could participate in
its launch (35). This can be viewed
either as an example of
extraordinary accommodation and inte gration
of work and family, or as an example of
extreme intrusion of work on family.
I am personally appalled by this story,
but the people involved apparently thought
that it was a mutually beneficial accommodation. Again,
it's a slippery slope issue, but how much do we want organizations involved in helping us manage our nonwork time, our families, and our other activities, and what are the hidden costs of that involvement?
The
"Year of the Newbo rns" was quite an experience for me as chair.
It was easy for me to be
excited for each new parent. From my perspec ti ve, we collectively managed the issues fairly well. A combination of cooper ative faculty,
flexible policies, and financial support from our dean allowed everything to
work out reasonably well. Clearly in the future, family-work policies, whatever they are, must be more adequately communicated than they were
at my university. Frequent
and periodic communication of policies
is necessary in light of the frequent turnover of department chairs in most
institutions (Su lli van, Hollenshead, and Smith 26). In addition, the policies must be flexible as they balance
the interests of those directly benefiting from them , such as new
parents, and those indirectly affected
when
they receive less desirable work schedules
or are ineligible for
benefits because they are single or not part of a traditional family. Policies
must balance individual needs with organizational needs. Finally, policies must be designed to actually improve the quality of faculty members' work and family lives and not simply create additional stress and conflict by blurring the distinctions between them. I wish I had the magic policy that resolved the complexity of the situation.
Managing multiple group roles: an autoethnography of communication and perceived role incompatibility
Michael W. Kramer
Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma,
Norman, OK, USA
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 20 June 2017
Accepted 27 October 2017
KEYWORDS
Boundary theory; autoethnography;
role management; stress
Waking up, I consider the various roles I will play today. First, I will attend church with my wife, my son, and his fiancé, a weekly
activity to renew my faith and make me feel secure in who I am. After the service, I will talk to other church members. I hope they don’t ask what I’m doing this afternoon
because I worry what they would think if they knew. After a quick
lunch, I will head to the university’s theater
where I will don a costume and assume the role of an old man who drinks excessively and swears at his two adult children
birthed by promiscu-
ous behavior with different women and who blame him for their incestuous relationship. I enjoy acting in the production because it is well produced
and I feel good about being able to portray
someone so different
from me even if I feel compelled to keep it secret from my church
leaders. After the performance, I will speak briefly to audience members.
I am torn between a desire that other faculty
members see me perform and a concern
about how they might evalu-
ate me as chair of the Department
of Communication after seeing me in this role. Then I will go
home, talk to my wife, and write fieldnotes for a research study I am
conducting based on my participation in the production. I will enjoy the day full of the multiple
roles I juggle, but at the same time, I feel anxious about my ability to manage them all effectively. Later I will respond to a variety of emails to get a head start on my Monday morning duties as chair. We all assume multiple
roles in our daily lives. For the most part, we move seamlessly from work roles to family
roles to leisure
roles, although we also experience stress due to
CONTACT Michael W. Kramer mkramer@ou.edu
© 2017 National Communication Association
these multiple roles. Scholars such as Greenhaus and
Beutell (1985) identified three major causes of role stress:
(1) Time-based stress
in which time spent on one role or on thinking about
one role takes
away from time for another
role; (2) Strain-based stress in which
the attitudes and stresses of one role spill over into other
roles; and (3) Behavior-based stress
in which behaviors that are effective and appropriate in one role are
inappropriate in another role.
Although
informative, this typology
did not describe the stress I experienced during my participation in a university theater production in which I portrayed a character that embodied a significant number of characteristics that I abhor, such as promiscuity and vulgarity. The stress that I experienced did not fit into these categories: I had the time to be involved,
could separate the attitudes of the character
from my other roles, and did not carry the role behaviors
into my other roles. I experienced stress this time over possible
negative repercussions if I communicated my participation in this particular theater role to members of my other role sets. A stigma is a blemish of individual character
(Goffman, 1963). Stigmas are constructed through
communication based on perceptions of both the non-stigmatized and
stigmatized individuals (Meisenbach, 2010). I was con- cerned that I would need to manage the perceptions of some people who would stigmatize and evaluate me negatively and as less desirable for my portrayal of this particularly offen- sive character.
I did not feel this potential for negative evaluation
or being stigmatized when I participated in other productions, such as when I portrayed
Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, because that character
was admirable and compatible with my other roles.
Instead, I was concerned about other people’s ability to accept my portrayal of this particular
character as consistent
with my other life roles. As I considered this issue, I realized that there are other times I experience this type of stress between my roles.
I chose autoethnography to explore the stress I
felt over the difficulty
of communicating my multiple
roles as consistent and appropriate for my self-identity to those around me because
in autoethnography, a scholar engages
in self-reflection to examine personal
issues that have potential broader
cultural implications (Adams,
2010), I anticipated that analyzing my experiences could assist others who experience similar role stress. As I considered this issue, I began to see my anxiety in this situation
as more than simple role stress; it involved issues of identity
and impression management. And so, this study’s central question explores how one individual communicated to maintain role con-
sistency while recognizing that others may perceive those
roles as incompatible.
So I’ve provided a rationale for the study that satisfies the researcher in me by identifying the study as unique
and stating its purpose. It is not even a post-hoc rationale like some studies. My
motive for this autoethnography from the beginning was to consider how I com- municated to maintain roles that seem
consistent to me, but which I recognized would be evaluated negatively as incompatible by some others. Now I had
better review some relevant literature.
Roles and identity management
Multiple roles
As I read the scholarly
literature on stress resulting from conflict between multiple roles, I found it did not directly
address my concerns.
Typical textbooks identify
a variety of role
conflicts people experience as they balance
multiple roles (Daniels, Spiker, & Papa, 1997). For example, people experience inter-role
conflict when the demands of one role (e.g. pro- fessor) interfere with another role (e.g. actor) or intra-role
conflict when sub-roles within a single role interfere with each other,
such as a professor’s sub-roles of teacher and coau- thor working with a graduate student. However,
these types of role conflicts
were not like my
concern that others would evaluate me negatively because they perceived two of
my roles as incompatible.
Other research
that I found explored the interplay of behaviors and attitudes involved
in multiple roles. For example, there is spillover of work and nonwork
moods (Michel, Clark, &
Jaramillo, 2011; Williams & Alliger, 1994),
and attitudes (Ilies, Wilson, & Wagner,
2009; Staines, 1980). There is a reciprocal
relationship between work to family and
family to work conflicts (Byron, 2005; Frone, Russell, &
Cooper, 1992). There is a relationship
between the type of communication experienced in the workplace and at home (Golden, Kirby,
& Jorgenson, 2006; Ritchie, 1997). This research failed to address
my concerns as well. My work and nonwork attitudes, moods, and communication con- tinued
much as before. My concern related to anxiety I felt from communicating to
others who might feel I was enacting an inappropriate role by being involved in
this particular theater production.
I found some useful ideas about managing multiple
roles when I read about boundary theory
(Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000;
Michel, Bosch, & Rexroth, 2014). Boundary theory emphasizes that people simplify and order their
environment by socially creating and
maintaining boundaries between roles. Although they are permeable, role boundaries designate certain times and
places for particular roles, such as professor or amateur actor. Role
identities explicate the appropriate and inappropriate behaviors for
various roles. When individuals move
from one role to another, they generally use one of two main strategies to manage role transitions: (1)
they can segment or separate roles, resulting
in less role blurring but more distinct
transitions; or (2) they may integrate or combine
roles, resulting in fewer role transitions, but more role blurring. The choices actually
vary along a continuum rather than as a dichotomy
and are subject to change
over time (Cruz &
Meisenbach, 2017). Individuals attempt to minimize the
difficulty and fre- quency of role transitions.
This theory provided
some insight into my situation. I like to segment roles. For example, I rarely read work-related emails
in the evening or on weekends; it is equally
rare for me to receive family phone calls at work. I realized that by
conducting research while
participating in the leisure activity of acting, I was intentionally blurring
role distinc- tions, but I simultaneously wished to segment this role from people at
church to avoid possible negative
reactions and was ambivalent about allowing my university peers and administrators to see me in this role. So
although useful, the theory provided no insight into how I should communicate while simultaneously wishing to
integrate and segment my roles.
Another limitation to boundary theory has been its focus on work to home or work to work transitions (Ashforth et al., 2000).
Most of the research has made no more than passing
reference to transitions from work to third place or life enrichment groups, such as professor to amateur actor, and
omitted discussion of home to life enrichment
transitions or transitions between life enrichment activities, such as
actor to church member. Recently,
scholars have begun to recognize
the importance of examining how
individuals communicatively manage these boundary
passages as well (Cruz & Meisen- bach, 2017). My own examination of how community
theater members managed
the ten- sions
between work, family,
and life enrichment groups addressed this (Kramer, 2002). I found that people managed
these time-based role conflicts by limiting their participation in certain roles, for example, by
avoiding overtime at work or by letting chores at home go unattended temporarily. They communicated
to others about these role conflicts by telling friends they would be too busy
for social activities during a production. They reported time-based stress in managing role conflicts, but most did not
experience stress in com- municating to others about their roles in the production.
I began to feel I
was perhaps unnecessarily anxious over my situation except that I reported
instances in which the play’s content
created communication problems
for par- ticipants (Kramer, 2002).
Particularly relevant to me was the fact that a church elder voiced disapproval to one actor about his
and his son’s participation in that
particular play; the actor wished he
had more carefully considered announcing their involvement in that production. Here very
specifically was the stress I was experiencing. I was reluctant to announce
my participation in this production to people at my church
in anticipation of similar
negative reactions to my role. Because the performances were on campus rather than in a community theater, I also had
concerns about how some faculty members might react if they discovered how I spent my leisure
time.
I found another link to my concern in the discussions
of the role management problems people
face when they are in stigmatized occupations considered ‘dirty work’ (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Meisenbach, 2010). Dirty work may be physically dirty (garbage collector), socially tainted by dealing with stigmatized others (prison
guard), or morally tainted (exotic
dancer). Unlike visible stigmas such as physical characteristics (Goffman, 1963), occupational stigmas can sometimes be
concealed, and so some individuals managed the
stress related to their roles by keeping their occupations secret even from
family members or friends. My
situation involved a leisure role that could be concealed, but I imagined that if they found out, certain
people might stigmatize me as morally tainted
for portraying this character. Given the long history of churches
viewing acting in general as morally
tainted, I was particularly concerned with how people from my church might evaluate me for portraying a
morally tainted character. I felt that they would
not be able to separate the inauthentic emotions and behaviors I would portray as this character, a form of emotional
labor involved in acting (Hochschild, 1983), from my personal emotions
and values. My desire to keep this hidden from some people
indi- cated that I faced identity
and impression management concerns and so I examined
some of that literature.
Roles and identity
The literature on identity reinforced the importance of studying how
people manage their identities while maintaining multiple roles as a
communication issue. We communicate our unique identity through
the idiosyncratic way we align ourselves with certain groups,
organizations, or ideas,
while at the same time, distancing ourselves from others (Cheney, 1991). Symbolic
interactionists (e.g. Mead, 1934) emphasize that our
identities are not individually
created, but are socially constructed through interactions with others (Holstein &
Gubrium, 2000). We learn our identities in part by understanding
what others think of us through communication,
which is not just the identity that we choose to project.
This reiterated for
me that communicating our identities to ourselves and others is challenging enough when our multiple roles
seem largely compatible with each other. When stress results from conflicts between
compatible roles, we manage our identity by explaining
how we balance our multiple roles. Because the roles of worker and family member are viewed as normal and
compatible, managing those roles involves demonstrat- ing an appropriate balance
between work and family, not convincing others
that the roles
are compatible. However, when we align ourselves simultaneously
with two groups whose members may perceive the other group as
incompatible or stigmatized, the communi- cation about roles becomes
more complex and risky. For example, Olson
(2005) suggests this problem when she mentions her concerns about how revealing
her experiences as an abused spouse might affect her
professional colleagues’ evaluations
of her. Managing her identity became an impression management issue. This impression management of iden-
tity becomes even more complex if we may want to simultaneously
reveal our group mem- bership to one
set of acquaintances while keeping it secret from others. Through selective disclosure, we become
involved in covering, in which we tone down one disfavored iden- tity to fit into one group (Yoshino, 2006), but reveal it to fit into others.
Impression
management
I found that impression management scholarship in interpersonal
relationships reinforced many of these ideas on identity. For example, the
ground-breaking work of Goffman (1959)
emphasized that individuals attempt to create a certain impression through
their performances in social
interactions, but that the impression is also created by others’ reac- tions.
Some of the elaborate theories of impression management dissect an impression management episode into separate
components such as self-concept, relevance, goals, message strategy, and evaluation (e.g. O’Sullivan, 2000), but did little to
address my concern.
Goffman’s (1959, 1963)
works gave me a number of useful ideas. When individuals manage a differentness or stigma that is not obvious, such as my
incompatible theater role, they have the option to manage their image and maintain flexibility by choosing to reveal their differentness to some
groups and concealing it from others. However,
when individuals choose to present separate performances to different
audiences, it is important to keep
the audiences separated. These ideas reinforced that it is through verbal and nonverbal communication that we
accomplish impression management, but provided
little insight into the communication strategies used to reveal
or conceal identity
to multiple audiences. In addition, the literature rarely
considers situations in which work, family, or different
leisure roles may create perceptions of incompatibility or inconsistency.
To summarize, the literature on role conflict,
identity, and impression management was interesting and informative although it never
specifically addressed my situation. Role conflict
research focused on managing conflicts between roles, not the stress created by concerns over how others might
evaluate me negatively over perceived role incompatibil- ities. Identity scholarship
emphasized the importance of communication in creating an identity,
but seemed to assume that the roles would be perceived as compatible to
members of various role sets.
Impression management scholarship mentioned problems of impression management to multiple audiences, but provided no
real insight into the com- munication strategies to use in such situations
except to keep the audiences separated. Finding
little that addressed my concern, in this study I explored two areas that have received limited attention. First, I
examined how communication created stress for me concerning potential role incompatibilities. Second, I explored
how I communicated to manage the potential role incompatibilities.
There. I’ve satisfied my communication scholar role by providing a theoretical frame
(boundary theory) and conceptual development (role
conflict, identity, and impression man- agement)
in a literature review. Now I need to present my research method. Some autoeth- nographers seem to feel a need to justify
their methods. Oddly, although I will explain my method, I don’t feel that need to justify it.
The approach I chose to take seemed appropriate given the subject matter and I had a systematic plan for
gathering data from several sources to satisfy me as a social scientist.
Method
Autoethnography combines
characteristics of biography, in which an individual reflex- ively and selectively writes about
personal experiences, and ethnography, in which an indi- vidual participates in and
observes a culture to write about everyday interactions to understand its assumptions and values
(Adams, 2010). Autoethnographers write reflex- ively and selectively about their
experiences to connect them to larger cultural issues, but also must distance themselves from the experience to be able to apply the theoretical lens of scholarship in analyzing the experiences (Adams, 2010).
I used several data sources for this autoethnography to increase my reflexive thinking
about perceived role incompatibility. First, I consulted my
theater-program file I have maintained
since I was in junior high. It contains programs for nearly every theater pro- duction in which I appeared on stage, directed,
or worked backstage–over 70 productions. I used these programs
as a systematic method for prompting me to recall
conversations, events, and
memorable messages surrounding my participation in those productions.
Memorable messages
are communication interactions that are remembered for a long
period of time and are perceived as having an important influence on the
course of a person’s lifetime (Stohl,
1986). They are typically brief conversations, often with someone of higher status than the recipient,
that addressed some important issue or point
in a person’s life and provided some
guidance for dealing with it based on certain
cultural norms or values (Knapp, Stohl, & Reardon, 1981).
Previous research suggests that
memorable messages have a positive bias where the message source is percieved
as trying to benefit the
recipient, but some memorable messages are negative (Barge & Schlu- eter, 2004).
Because they are remembered for a long time period of time, memorable mess- ages are associated with self-reflection as recipients consider
how the messages impacted their
lives.
Not all the conversations and events I recalled from reflecting on these artifacts exem- plified all of these characteristics, but they addressed a range of temporary and long-term concerns. For example, I recalled a
director scolding me for delivering a line differently which she felt caused me to break character during a
performance. I remember feeling angry about that conversation because I was sure I delivered it the same as always;
it
was that audience laughing much more than other
audiences that caused me to break character.
Although I remembered that conversation, it did not have a long-term influence on me like a memorable message.
By contrast, some
conversations occurred at important turning points in my pro- fessional or theater life. Based on
those memorable messages, I constructed a 26-page nar- rative that divided my 40+ years of theater
experiences into six periods: (1) An introduction to acting (grade school to junior
high); (2) An
identity and passion is born (junior high through early college); (3) Transitioning out of acting
(end of college); (4) Directing
and producing (directing high school and college productions);
(5)
Denying an identity
(finishing my Ph.D. and becoming
a communication scholar);
(6)
A
rebirth of an identity (doing participant observation research on theater
productions).
In addition to systematically reconstructing memorable messages of my theater
experi- ences this
way, I consulted fieldnotes from three theater group ethnographies I conducted over a
six-year period for evidence of role incompatibility concerns. Olson (2005)
also suggested that autoethnographers
should talk to people familiar with them to gain an understanding of the topic of interest. To accomplish this,
during this particular theater ethnography,
I included fieldnotes from informal interviews of colleagues, family, and friends concerning my theater activities.
Then I reflected on how I managed communi-
cation about my theater role. Finally, I considered other situations
where I faced similar communication challenges
concerning my roles.
Autoethnography does
not rely on coding data systematically to make claims about important themes or topics based on the
frequency that they occur in the data. Instead, I selected memorable messages, in some cases 35 years
after the events, that had significant long-term influence on my theater participation.
Findings
Communication creating perceived role incompatibilities
The perception that others might view my theater role as incompatible with my other life roles
came primarily from two conversations. I recalled a conversation with my father,
a professor turned
dean turned seminary president. A 24-year-old high school teacher at the time, I called him to seek his advice in
selecting a Masters Degree program. The conversa- tion went like this:1
I’m looking into two Masters
degree programs, one in speech and one in theater. I’m trying to decide which would help me the most in the
long run. I might want to be a principal someday or if I teach at a college, a
dean or something. I guess I’m wondering what you think: do drama directors ever get considered
for administrative jobs?
It’s not impossible for a director to become
an administrator, but it’s pretty unusual. They more likely come from some other area of study.
As I recall, this conversation solidified my perceptions of role incompatibility between theater participant and administrator. I
suspected that theater people were considered
too creative or artsy for administration. Since I had never met a
theater person turned administrator, my father’s comments confirmed my suspicions. This conversation, in
part,
led to my decision to pursue an M.A. in speech and later a Ph.D. in communication rather
than theater.
As I completed my Ph.D., a second conversation communicated to me that my theater
background was incompatible with the role of communication scholar. I
remember this conversation
sitting in my adviser’s
office as I began applying for university jobs. He com- mented on the vita I showed him that I was about to send out with job applications.
You really should
remove these references to being the director of drama if you want to be seen as a serious organizational communication scholar.
I’m just trying to give a complete
picture of what I’ve been doing.
Well, unless you want a job that includes
directing, you should take it out.
I don’t want to direct. But I’m concerned
that if I take it out, people wonder what I’ve been doing these last few years.
You’ve been doing plenty–teaching classes, working
on a Ph.D. They won’t miss it.
I did not want to hurt my job prospects by having theater
on my vita. I did not want a position
that involved theater;
teaching and research
were enough. I felt a little dishonest because I was withholding important information about myself,
but I deleted ‘director of drama’ before sending
out my vita, thus removing
theater from my projected professional identity. For many years, my vita did not mention that I directed
plays at the college level.
These conversations were pivotal moments
in my theater identity. Each led to decisions that seemed quite practical
at the time. I was far too busy teaching,
directing plays, and coaching the speech team at the high school. I felt relieved when I let go of directing and focused on speech. After returning to directing when I taught at a small college,
I again felt relieved when I gave it up because I was consumed
with writing my dissertation. Both conversations contributed to my decision to deny the theater identity
I embraced during
my education and early teaching.
I did not regret the decision to delete theater
from my vita at the time, nor do I retrospectively. However,
doing so removed theater from my public,
professional identity. Much later, after I was well-established in my
career, I decided I had nothing to lose by adding it back to my vita.
Because theater was still a part of my private
identity, I continued to attend theater reg-
ularly. During some performances, I wished I had tried out and imagined
myself playing certain roles. When my
children reached high school age and I had published enough to be on my way to full professor, I suddenly
had more free time. When I saw an ad for tryouts for a play I once directed and always wanted to be in, I revived
my public theater role by trying out.
I was excited when I was cast in my first leading role ever but anxious about telling
my colleagues. Unaware
of my past involvement, I felt that they would think it was odd that a middle-aged professor
was acting. I justified the activity when I told them I was cast in the play.
I got a part in the community theater
production. I’m playing one of the lawyers in Inherit the Wind.
Congratulations. I didn’t know you liked
to act.
I used to do
a lot of it. I enjoy
it. But I want
you to know that I’m
not just having fun. I’m going to do an ethnographic study as part of being in it.
By mentioning that I was doing research
on the production, I was framing the activity
with positive values (Ashforth, Kreiner, Clark, & Fugate,
2007).
I participated in during the coming years even if I did no research.
I felt that framing it made my theater role part of my serious
scholar role and so would be perceived as less
incompatible than it might have otherwise and less likely to be evaluated negatively.
Two specific
conversations communicated to me that certain theater roles were per- ceived as incompatible with my church
member role. In that first production of my revived
theater role, I played Henry Drummond, an agnostic lawyer who defends the right to teach evolution in Inherit
the Wind, a fictional version of the Scopes Monkey Trials. One Sunday when I was standing in the back of the church, my pastor approached me and said in a challenging and negative tone, ‘I hear you’re playing a heretic.’ I immedi- ately
felt tense. I was not sure how he heard about my part, but clearly, he was
unhappy about my role.
Remembering my unsuccessful attempt a number of years earlier to defend presenting
the same play at a Christian college to a narrow-minded pastor, I recognized the futility of defending playing the ‘heretic’ to this person.
As a result, I said, ‘I realize the play might upset some of our church
members and that’s why I’m not telling people I’m in the production.’ Clearly, in his mind, my role in that play and my role as
president of the congregation at the time were incompatible. I quickly changed
the subject and was thankful
the topic never came up again.
The same production brought about a different
concern after my department chair saw my performance. Her comments after the show concerned me.
Good job. I enjoyed
the performance. Thank you. And thank you for coming.
I have to tell you that I had trouble getting
used to you swearing.
What? Did I emphasize the swearing too much? (Inexperienced actors often do this.) Not that. It’s
just I never heard you swear before and so it surprised
me.
This comment caused me to consider whether playing that role was
incompatible with my role as an active Christian. I was pleased
that I had effectively modeled
behaviors so that
swearing seemed inconsistent with my values to her, but concerned I was
negating my carefully managed image
by swearing in a production, even if it was an infrequent part of the role. However, I decided my chair
could separate the inauthentic swearing I did
for the character from my personal values.
This series of conversations over the years
represented memorable messages that con- cerned
me as I considered and accepted
this particular role in a university production. It was one thing to perform a positive role
like Juror #8, Henry Fonda’s
famous role, in Twelve Angry Men,
or Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music in
a community theater. It was another
thing to play a swearing,
drunk, promiscuous old man in a campus production. I expected some church members
would not be able to separate the inauthentic swearing from my personal
values. Of course, participation in the pro-
duction represented some of my other values. I value the enjoyment I
receive from partici- pation in creative theater productions. I value the research I conduct when participating in
theater. As a result,
I was involved in a change in footing (Goffman, 1981). I framed
my participation in ways
that aligned it with my leisure values and my values as a researcher and scholar, not my religious
role.
It also bothered me
that during the production, my physical appearance would be incompatible with my administrator role. After allowing
my beard and hair to grow unat-
tended for two months for the role, I looked very un-administrator-like.
As a result, my unkempt appearance made my theater
role visible and difficult to mask. Unaware
of the research component
involved, administrators and other faculty might be critical of my appearance as inappropriate for an administrator or of the time I wasted on the pro- duction instead
of dealing with various department chair activities. Since
this production was on campus,
the risk of being observed
was greater than when I participated in com- munity theater productions off
campus. As with all theater productions, there was the risk that the performance would be substandard. As an actor in one of my ethnographies said, ‘I don’t want people to come and
go, lot of guts.’ I
wanted audience members to praise the production and my performance, not thank me for trying hard. I remember being embar- rassed by one production I was in. I
worried that I would be embarrassed by this pro- duction or my role in it, although knowing the director this was not a major concern. In the end, I decided to take the role
despite the anxiety I felt about
how others might
nega- tively evaluate my participation. This meant I needed to communicate in such a way that
my roles appeared compatible to others.
Communication managing role incompatibilities
My field notes indicated that
nsistent with Goffman’s
(1963) idea that stigmas occur within relation- ships,
the communication tactics I used varied according to my social relationships
and whether I expected the other
person would judge me negatively for my role. My tactics involved a range of those identified by Meisenbach (2010)
including avoiding, framing, and minimizing
the offense when I feared being stigmatized by a particular
individual or group. By
contrast, I also unapologetically invited others to performances when I had no fear of being judged negatively by
them. For example, I communicated nothing about
my role in this production to the majority of my church acquaintances. Because many church members were aware of my
involvement in some summer theater pro- ductions,
they sometimes asked, ‘Are
you doing any theater this summer?’
Since this pro- duction was in the winter,
it was easy to remain silent because
none of my casual church
acquaintances asked me about theater during the production. If
they asked me about work, it was easy to leave out references
to the production.
T
I was not alone in using strategic silence. The student
male lead in this same play informed me that he did not invite
his grandparents to the production as he usually
did because he knew that the play’s content and his role would offend them.
I
was also part of a smaller group ministry of about 10 church members that met
bi- monthly at someone’s home. It was not feasible to use strategic
silence with them
because of our more active involvement in each other’s lives. Rather than avoid
the subject, I told them about the play, but also warned
them about its content. My wife told me that when one group member
said that the play’s title sounded
like fun, she told them that the play
was about a dysfunctional family and might not appeal to them. We thought they would choose not to attend, but in the
end, seven of them decided they could handle
the adult content and made an
evening out of it. We worried about their attendance, but felt they had been given fair warning.
we approached the perform- ances, I became quite proud of the
production’s quality despite any dubious
merit of the play. As a result, I
minimally publicized my participation in the play with posters in the department. However, anytime I had the
opportunity to discuss the play with someone,
I worked two topics into the conversation. First, I warned them about the language
and situation of the play and the
role I portrayed. Here it was not so much that I was concerned that they would be offended or
stigmatize me for my part in the pro- duction,
like some church members might. Rather, I wanted to make it clear to them that
I was
playing a role that was quite different than my professional and personal
identity. Second, I always mentioned that I was doing research
in connection with the play. Con- tinuing the pattern from other
productions, I felt this framing partially justified my par- ticipation to the people who valued scholarly publication.
Some friends and acquaintances received full disclosure and invitations to
attend. My wife and I attended
a community theater
event one afternoon. We ran into people I knew
from other productions. I communicated openly to these people about my partici- pation in this production. I would briefly
comment about it being a strange play, but cer- tainly did not attempt to dissuade them from attending. Instead
I hoped the description might
actually increase their interest. I did not expect that these individuals would
perceive any role incompatibilities or evaluate my participation negatively. They viewed theater
as an opportunity to portray
others and so they have no difficulty separating an individual from their
character. They also knew me primarily through my community theater activi- ties, not as a professor.
With a few close friends and family, I not only openly discussed
my participation in the play, but I also used them as sounding
boards about my concerns. My wife and I had numerous
conversations about the play and my role. She understood my reservations, but supported my participation. She said
she always liked the actor part of me since back in college. However,
because of our shared concerns, she did talk her mother,
who had seen all my other recent shows, out of coming to see this particular show.
A conversation with a retired
business executive and close church
friend significantly impacted my participation. While he was barbequing dinner
for us and our wives,
I told him about the play and my part. Then I added:
My character swears a lot. I’m concerned what people from church might think about that.
Oh, I don’t think you need to be concerned.
I mean, when I worked, I used to swear some- times for effect.
I’ve heard there are executives
that are good at that and some that aren’t. Actually,
I never used God’s name in vain. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
When he clarified that he never actually swore
(i.e. called on God), I wasn’t
sure how he would feel about my role.
This concerned me because I didn’t
want to offend him or others with
my role. As a result of this memorable message, I changed all my ‘god damns’ in the play to ‘damns,’ a strategy of reducing the offensiveness of the stigmatized behavior (Mei- senbach, 2010).
It was a small change that maintained the character’s crude behavior while decreasing my anxiety
about how others might react to my portrayal. I was relieved
that the director did not
notice the language change the first time I did it or any other time. After my friend saw the show, he said ‘I don’t think your language
would have bothered anyone from church,’
but my wife disagreed, and he did not know I made language changes after
our conversation. I felt good about managing
a middle ground position by portraying the character’s crudeness without offending
my friend.
to
avoid any percep- tion that as
chair I was either not busy enough or wasting time having fun. At a large university, the true risk that
administrators will attend theater productions is minimal. They are simply too busy or disinterested.
However, when the director and I were standing in the buffet line at a college
luncheon a week before opening,
he informed my dean of my participation, much to my
dismay. Later, I had a private conversation with the dean:
What do you think about a department chair being in a play on campus?
I think it’s great. It’s always interesting to see someone doing something
in a context that you usually don’t see them.
You should know that I’m also doing research as part of
my participation. That’s good that you’re getting some extra credit out of it.
Once again, I carefully framed my participation to my dean by mentioning
that I was doing research.
It is not clear whether that justification mattered
to him.
Communication for understanding my image
In the previous section, I described
how I attempted to manage my communication to
minimize others’ perceptions of
role incompatibilities. I also used interactions with various people to find out what impact my participation had on
their image of me, that is,
their perception of my identity. I was selective in whom I queried, primarily
asking indi- viduals I thought
would be at least neutral
if not supportive of my participation. Still,
the results surprised me.
Not surprisingly, my two children uniformly supported my acting even in this play. My daughter was only able
to read the
play during Christmas
break because she was attending college, but she had no concerns about
it when we sat in the living room
discussing it merits before I tried out. She actively encouraged me to audition:
It seems like a good thing and
you do a good job. Maybe it’s a passion of yours. Besides
people are more than just their work and their families.
They have hobbies
and interests and this is one of yours.
She and my son easily separated
my portrayal of inauthentic emotions
and values as a par- ticular character from my personal values.
The closest I came to getting a negative reaction
was from one woman of my church group who started to say something
during the social
part of our group meeting
but was cut off before she had a chance to finish.
Michael, about that play, why …
It was an excellent performance and you did a terrific
job. Thank you.
When the second woman
cut the first woman off, it seemed to silence her and she did not
bring
up again whatever
concerned her. She may only have had a question
about the plot,
but her tone of voice made me think it was criticism. In a way, I was thankful
I did not have to address any concerns
she had because of the interruption.
A colleague
told me she thought it was great
that I am involved in theater because
it is so contrary to my image as a quantitative scholar and
department chair. She called it my ‘image bomb.’ Her idea of an
image bomb is something you drop on people when they think they have you figured
out which makes you more complex and interesting. She
keeps a few image bombs handy to surprise people. One surprised
me
when she told me my participation in
plays ‘inspired’ her. She worried that earning a Ph.D. and becoming
a professor made you too narrowly focused.
Knowing I did quanti- tative research and participant
observation ethnographies of theater productions made her believe that she could maintain a broad focus and balance
in her life instead of being a
workaholic professor. A few who saw the production enjoyed it, but
thought it was rather mild after my warnings. However, said
he would not have played my character
due to the language and situation, but
that it did not bother him that I played the role because he knew me outside of that role.
I almost concluded that no one perceived any role
incompatibilities between my role in this particular play and my roles as family member,
professor, administrator, and church member. I began to think I had agonized
over nothing. I was quite please momentarily.
Then after recalling the woman who responded negatively, but was
silenced by a group member and the religious
graduate student
who would not have played
the role, I realized that I had not informed
people who I thought would see role incompatibilities about my participation. Those most likely
to have evaluated my role negatively never heard about it and could not voice an opinion on
it. I knew little more than that I was a pretty good judge of who might not be offended. I can only assume I was equally
accurate about those who would be bothered.
Communication surrounding other role incompatibilities
Since most people are not involved in
portraying despicable characters in theater pro- ductions, I wondered
if the concerns I faced over being
evaluated negatively transferred to other situations. To explore this, I considered other areas
in which perceived role incompatibilities
exist for me. Two in particular came to mind, one of which I explore here, my strategic communication about my
political views and affiliations. At work, I
attended a meeting
prior to 11 September 2001 in which a late comer asked rhetorically, ‘Is there anyone
here who doesn’t believe Bush
is an idiot?’ Political
commentary from other colleagues is usually subtler,
but the underlying assumption is that professors
embrace a liberal agenda
and the Democratic Party. Although polls suggest these assump- tions are true of professors in general, the assumptions do not apply to everyone. In con- trast to these assumptions, at
church, a friend of mine who is an outspoken Democrat told me that
a church member once said to him, ‘I don’t know how you can vote for baby killers.’ Both conversations made me cringe inside. A recent survey to select
church elders clearly conveyed that a
conservative, Republican agenda was the only acceptable viewpoint to be considered for a leadership position.
Participating in both of these worlds
but embracing neither one, I am content being an independent because I do not see either party
as correct on all issues,
not because I am undecided on issues. As an inde-
pendent, I am often too conservative for many people
at the university and too liberal for many at church.
I was surprised that even my independent status was attacked once when a political science
professor said that ‘You have to be an idiot to be an independent.’
With few exceptions, such as telling the political
science professor I did not think I was an idiot for being independent, I have used
strategic silence and strategic ambiguity to
manage these perceived role incompatibilities. I communicate ambiguously
by asking questions rather
than stating views, by commenting on both sides of an issue during a con- versation, or by reporting the political views
of others without
stating my personal
view. To maintain
ambiguity one year, for election day I baked what were allegedly recipes from the wives
of the two candidates and placed one of each of them in baggies
in the depart- ment
office in a box labeled ‘Bi-Partisan
Cookies.’ I wore an ‘I Voted’ sticker without indi- cating
my vote. In the past, after leading class discussions of presidential candidate credibility, students have claimed that
they could tell whom I favored, but they were
often wrong, usually
projecting their own views onto me. This suggests that through stra-
tegic ambiguity I was able to maintain a sense of cohesion or unity with
my audiences (Eisenberg, 1984). I
am aware that some colleagues would appreciate this neutrality, while others would criticize me for it. However, I am actually
proud that I have avoided perceptions of role
incompatibility through my strategic communication. Most people at work and church do not see me as outside their
political views because they project their own views onto me and are unaware of my actual views.
I have come to the end of my
analysis. I think it is clear. I think I have provided evidence to support my
points. Perhaps I will find that I am not alone in experiencing stress over potential negative
evaluations due to perceived role incompatibilities and that others
also use silence, ambiguity,
and selective self-disclosure to manage these issues. Now, I need to write a
discussion section. It should summarize what I have written and show that I have addressed
an important topic that provides new insights that will address communi- cation scholars’ theoretical and applied
interests.
Discussion
I began the self-reflexive process that
led to writing this autoethnography because I
believed I would be evaluated negatively or stigmatized due to
perceived role incompatibil- ities between my portrayal of a reprehensible, vulgar character in a university theater pro- duction and my image as a
scholar, administrator, and church member. I discovered that a number of pivotal conversations caused me to think that others would
see this particular character as incompatible with my other work and nonwork roles.
I explored how I com- municated strategically to maintain a certain image with members
of my various role sets.
My
communication strategies included strategic silence to those most likely to
evaluate me negatively for participating in this production, strategic disclosure
with warnings or caveats to other
individuals, and complete disclosure to selected individuals who were unlikely
to perceive any incompatibilities. The result of managing my communication in this manner was that I largely
experienced support for my participation in the play from the people who were aware of it. However, by strategically
avoiding people most likely to
evaluate me negatively for my role, I can only speculate as to whether their reactions
would have been as negative
as I anticipated. Finally, I explored how I commu-
nicated in similar
strategic ways to deal with similar perceived
role incompatibilities about
politics.
In this study, I focused on a type of role stress that has not been identified in most pre- vious
research. The conflict was not over the stress created between roles due to
time, strain, or behavioral stressors
(Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Instead, the role conflict occurred
because I felt that others
would perceive my roles as incompatible and evaluate me negatively or stigmatize me
(Goffman, 1963). Defining perceived role
incompatibilities as another role
stressor may assist others in coping with similar experiences. For example, after a conference presentation of this paper,
an audience member
shared how a group of women
at her fundamentalist church conducted secret readings of plays because they
per- ceived that they would be criticized by other members.
Another audience member,
a new assistant communication professor, shared that he feels
uncomfortable discussing his pre- vious
theater work because it seems incompatible with his new role, the view voiced
by my advisor. Hopefully, this study
will help other individuals become aware of a broader set of perceived
role incompatibilities that create stressors in their lives or the lives of
those around them, such as hiding their social-economic class upbringings that seem incompa-
tible with their current status. For example, Dougherty described her
efforts to hide her lower, social-economic background from peers in college
and early in her career because
such a background was perceived as incompatible with an expected middle to upper-middle class background (Dougherty, 2011).
Practical applications
In addition to identifying the issue more clearly, the study provides
some practical sugges- tions for managing
perceived role incompatibilities through communication. When roles are perceived as compatible, impression
management is largely a matter of creating an
image of competence in each role. For example, the role of coach for my
daughter’s soccer team was simply an addition to my parent
role, not something
incompatible with a parent or
academic role, and so I simply needed to convince people that I was a competent coach. However, convincing
someone I can portray a crude, immoral man on
stage and still be a committed, caring family member, academic scholar, and
church member is a different issue,
or at least I perceived it would be with some members of my role sets.
This analysis
suggests various combinations of communication strategies individuals can use to manage perceived role
incompatibilities. I relied on strategic silence, strategic self-disclosure with caveats and framing
to manage my image while performing my role
in the play. Similarly, Olson (2004) writes she was
concerned that revealing her past would create image problems
for her due to perceived
role incompatibilities between
being a victim
of spousal abuse and a competent academic scholar. She used strategic silence
about her past until she wrote her article. In her article,
she used strategic disclos- ures with
explanations to minimize being evaluated negatively. Like the individuals who hide their ‘dirty work’ occupations as
exotic dancers or garbage collectors from others by withholding information (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999) or
recovering alcoholics who keep their past behaviors
secret, strategic silence
can be a primary strategy
for managing role incompatibility stress. If
others don’t know
about some of our roles, they cannot per- ceive incompatibilities between the roles or
evaluate us negatively. Strategic disclosures
and framing can minimize image
problems by limiting those who are aware
of our roles to those unlikely to see
them as incompatible and provide explanations that might mitigate any possible
negative or stigmatizing effects.
I also used
strategic disclosures and strategic ambiguity to manage my perceived role incompatibilities over politics. By
selectively disclosing my political views to other inde- pendents or by using strategic ambiguity so that others are unaware of my actual
political views, I can maintain
relationships with individuals from a wide range of political views. My ambiguity
allows others to perceive me as in agreement with them (Eisenberg, 1984). Similarly,
these same strategies allow me to maintain collegial relationships with
individ- uals who may have quite
different views when it comes to evaluating our dean or the merits of a particular university
policy or program. Strategic ambiguity allows me to main- tain relationships in the face of potential role incompatibilities that might be disrupted by clarity (Eisenberg, 1984).
Limitations
I was surprised
to learn that the individuals I included, both by inviting
them to the per- formances and by discussing my role with
them afterwards, were uniformly supportive,
even enthusiastically so, and did not perceive
incompatibilities between my professional, religious, and theater roles.
But if we only disclosed
to those we think will be supportive, like I did, it is impossible to judge whether our perceptions
that others will evaluate us negatively
by viewing some of our roles as incompatible are illusions. Perhaps we waste time
worrying and managing
our communication about our roles.
It may be that my stra- tegic
disclosures and careful
silence actually prevented
me from developing new relation- ships
and experiencing support
for my theater role from others, like I received
from my ‘image-bomb’ colleague. In future research, I could explore
whether the unanimous support for my
participation in the play was
the result of careful
self-disclosure in which I successfully remained
silent with those who
would have seen my role as incom-
patible or if I simply fail to give people credit for being able
to separate the role of the char- acter I portray from my professional and private image.
Regardless of how supportive individuals were
concerning my acting role, this does not necessarily
mean the same would transfer to the other perceived incompatibilities individ- uals experience, such as political
views. Many roles
are not temporary and cannot
be put on and taken off like an acting
role, thus making managing perceptions of role incompat-
ibilities in those areas more complex. My sense is that concerns
over being evaluated nega- tively for
perceived role incompatibilities are quite common. For example, certain
students report feeling they must
keep their social and political views silent in the classroom or risk receiving
lower grades. This is often true for individuals who practice sexual behavior that
is
inconsistent with the beliefs of other family members or their chosen religious
affiliation (e.g. living together outside of marriage, same-sex attraction). In
ongoing perceived role incompatibilities,
disclosure even with caveats is not likely to be uniformly viewed as posi- tive.
Withholding information and ambiguous communication are possibly necessary, although these strategies incur
certain costs, such as missed opportunities for relationship development.
This autoethnography
is about a rather mundane activity, managing everyday work, life, and leisure roles. Most
autoethnographies seem to be about life-altering events like suffering
spousal abuse (Olson,
2004), discovering sexual
identity (Adams, 2006), revisit-
ing parental abandonment (Herrmann, 2005), suffering from depression (Jago,
2002), or responding to tragedy (Miller,
2002). It may seem that including this mundane activity
as possibly stigmatizing
makes Goffman’s definition of
stigma so broad that it becomes uninformative
(Cahill & Eggleston, 1995). Still, I think that the topic meets the criteria of writing autoethnography to give voice to a previously ignored experience (Boylorn
& Orbe, 2014). It explored how people manage perceived incompatible role identities in the midst of multiple roles and
multiple audiences. Others, like the two conference attendees who talked
to me about similar concerns after I
presented the paper, can learn
from my experience because it involves a much more mundane, everyday event. We all practice covering to hide
disfavored identities from one audience or another (Yoshino, 2006). Understanding how we communicate in such circumstances can benefit others.
Conclusion
I wrote this autoethnography to explore
how I managed my own perception that others
would perceive my participation in playing a reprehensible character in
a theater pro- duction as
incompatible with my roles as scholar and church member. I discovered the communication strategies I used to manage
the situation and found I used them in another situation
I face. Additional exploration into how and why individuals communi-
cate strategically through silence, ambiguity, disclosure with
caveats, or full disclosure may provide a richer understanding of how people
accomplish impression management of their
roles when they experience stress from perceived role incompatibilities.
Hmm. Have I presented
new insights into an important
and complex communication
issue? Have I relied too
heavily on a traditional social science research organization for this article instead of a more free-flowing, narrative
style that some people use for an auto- ethnography?
Should I have written in a more dramatic script style to express a more crea- tive approach?
Have I revealed too much about myself? What if
I wrote about another role incompat- ibility of mine – no, too risky, I better keep that to myself –
for now.
Note
1.
The conversations throughout this manuscript represent
reconstructions of actual conversa- tions
based on field notes and/or recollections. They represent my memories, not
transcripts, of those conversations.
They represent the socially constructed meanings I attributed to those memorable messages
and the influence that they had on my attitudes
and behaviors.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Tony Adams and Debbie Dougherty
for their helpful
feedback on this manuscript and to Howard
Kramer and Carla Kramer for proofreading previous versions of the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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