Organizations and Unusual Routines

Ronald E. Rice is Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication and Co-Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which include The Internet and Health Care (with Monica Murero, 2006) and Media Ownership (2008). Stephen D. Cooper is Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Marshall University, where he teaches courses in business and professional communication, computer-mediated communication, group communication, organizational communication, and research foundations. He is the author of Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate (2006).

• List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Crazy systems, Kafka circuits and unusual routines; 2. Causes, symptoms, and subroutines of unusual routines in six computer information/communication systems; 3. Getting personal - unusual routines at the customer service interface; 4. A multi-theoretical foundation for understanding unusual routines; 5. A detailed case study of unusual routines; 6. Summary and discussion of the case study results; 7. Individual and organizational challenges to feedback; 8. A multi-level and cross-disciplinary summary of concepts related to unusual routines; 9. Recommendations for resolving and mitigating unusual routines and related phenomena; 10. summary and a tentative integrated model of unusual routines; References; Index.

“Rice and Cooper’s book brings together the personal experience of organizational routines that leave us frustrated and puzzled with how such practices could possibly happen in the first place. The authors couple these experiences (some personal, some from case studies) with a range of theoretical ideas that helps us make sense of them. This book serves as a door opener for coding and understanding exasperating and common bureaucratic problems.” –Larry Browning, Professor of Organizational Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, and Adjunct Professor of Business at the Bodø Graduate School of Business, Bodø, Norway