Karen Lee Ashcraft
Biographic Data
| ID | 1316981 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Lee Ashcraft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen Lee |
| FAMILY NAME | Ashcraft |
| SIGNATURE | ASHCRAFT K L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 330 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Business as unusual
Purpose Responding to the current anti-DEI movement, most practitioners and scholars seem to follow two strategies, refine the case for DEI and/or disguise DEI in benign packaging. We argue that both strategies operate in an “anti” mode. The anti can be a powerful force of resistance; however, it also tends to exacerbate rather than diffuse polarization. We develop and enact an “alter” mode, which bypasses direct confrontation in favor of novel o…
Ready to detox from neoliberal publishing? Let’s write for ‘translation’ together
When I picture academics writing for ‘translation,’ I can’t help but smile at the image of scholars straining to crack their own code. Sure, expertise needs its tongue, but how did ours get so ... en
Communication as Constitutive Transmission? An Encounter with Affect
Affect theory has met with an uneven welcome in communication studies, although attending to affect (i.e., the fluctuating intensities of encounter) could enhance the scope and impact of communication inquiry. This article makes a case for sustained engagement at the field level, across subfields. I argue that affect confronts a premise at the heart of our discipline today: the claim that communication is constitutive as opposed to mere transmiss…
Feeling Things, Making Waste
In contemporary capitalist societies, disorganization is a shameful state of affairs. Nowhere is its threat epitomized so vividly as in hoarding—the act of amassing an excess of material things with little or no apparent value. This chapter works across three available narratives of hoarding to build a novel alternative, which holds that addressing hoarding is a communicative practice that enacts and circulates the affective boundary between huma…
Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors
Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called ‘promiscuous coding’,…
‘Submission’ to the rule of excellence
In an unusually direct style of address, the article moves toward a novel critical practice stimulated by affect theory: inhabited criticism. This more-than-representational approach enacts vigilant attunement to the lively scenes, bodies, and trajectories of ordinary affects. I cultivate the practice by staging successive encounters with the contemporary labor of scholarship and, specifically, with an assemblage condensed as The Rule of Excellen…
Knowing work
While knowledge theorists give attention to knowing in practice, two common habits in the empirical literature, which we call knowledge inherency and skepticism, serve to re-center certain practitioners. The sites in which we study knowing thereby remain limited, hindering a fuller practice turn. We argue that this enduring tendency is problematic because it inhibits our understanding of ‘communicative knowledge’ – a form of knowing central to th…
The Glass Slipper
Management scholars have long separated the study of work and diversity, assuming that the nature of work itself is not affected by race or gender. Research on occupational segregation invalidates this assumption, confirming that we judge the nature of work in large part by the social identities aligned with it. Management theorists have yet to digest this evidence because of a unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation (i.e., people deriv…
Professionalization as a Branding Activity
The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversity problem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explains the exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative ‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclusion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historical interdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a path towa…
Organization Studies
Gender and Diversity
Constitutional Amendments
This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational…
Appreciating the ‘work’ of discourse
This article pursues two central goals. First, I seek to advance the sustained study of occupational identity as a pivotal mechanism for organizing work and, thus, as a productive means of integrating the aims of two scholarly movements: 1) the ‘dislocation’ of organization (i.e. beyond container metaphors of site) and 2) the renewed emphasis on work (i.e. ‘bringing work back’) in organization studies. Specifically, I propose the study of evolvin…
Considering "The Professional" in Communication Studies
This essay positions contemporary “professionalism” as a contested term and a nexus of important theoretical and practical concerns for communication scholars, including, for example, those engaged in the empirical, interpretive, and critical examinations of culture and the self. We advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professionalism as a complement to the predominantly sociological conceptions of the rise …
Identity Matters
Key tensions underlying much of the identity literature; we foreground identity matters as encountered by individuals, understood as social; durability of identity; identity in its various conceptualizations offers creative ways to understand a range of organizational settings and phenomena while bridging the levels from micro to macro
Organizational Communication Studies and Gendered Organization
Feminist-Bureaucratic Control and Other Adversarial Allies
This paper reconsiders the usual contrast between “old” and “new” organizational forms, exploring what happens when postbureaucratic control meets bureaucratic formalization. It develops earlier work on “organized dissonance,” first, by recasting postbureaucratic practice as a hybrid of contrary forms. The paper then situates feminist bureaucracy as a usual, rather than exceptional, case of postbureaucratic practice. Through qualitative analysis,…
Resistance Through Consent?
Recent theories underscore the indefinite, conflicted, and discursive character of labor identity and resistance, highlighting local practices and meanings. This article examines an empirical and political dilemma provoked by such models: what to do when once-dominant voices resist a loss of control. Drawing on interviews conducted with commercial airline pilots, the author examines how privileged professional men engage gendered threats. The ana…
Reworking Gender
'Reworking Gender' examines the place of gender & feminist scholarship in contemporary critical organization studies. The authors reposition feminism in a communication-centred model that integrates recent developments in feminist, critical & postmodern organizational studies
Organizing a critical communicology of gender and work
The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication
Scholars of organizational communication have begun to focus diligently on organization as gendered, yet we continue to neglect the ways in which it is fundamentally raced. With this article, we seek to stimulate systematic attention to the racial dynamics of organizational communication. We argue that the field's most common ways of framing race ironically preserve its racial foundation. Specifically, our analysis of core organizational communic…
Slaves with white collars
Recent trends in popular culture suggest an emerging discourse of professional masculinity in crisis. This essay examines two illustrative films, Fight Club and In the Company of Men, whose characters bemoan the impending demise of the masculine businessman. To revive him, they (re)turn to what we call a "civilized/primitive" masculinity, embodied by the hardened white man who finds healing in wounds. This subjectivity shrouds the race and class …
Self-direction or social support? nonprofit empowerment and the tacit employment contract of organizational communication studies
In organizational communication studies, empowerment has come to connote flatter structures, participation programs, and other techniques thought to enhance member competence and control through increased self-direction. We contend that this model-and, arguably, organizational communication studies more broadly-presumes a particular employment contract. We report a study of a different contract: staff-volunteer relations at a nonprofit organizati…
Identity Matters
Key tensions underlying much of the identity literature; we foreground identity matters as encountered by individuals, understood as social; durability of identity; identity in its various conceptualizations offers creative ways to understand a range of organizational settings and phenomena while bridging the levels from micro to macro
Professionalization as a Branding Activity
The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversity problem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explains the exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative ‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclusion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historical interdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a path towa…
Feminist-Bureaucratic Control and Other Adversarial Allies
This paper reconsiders the usual contrast between “old” and “new” organizational forms, exploring what happens when postbureaucratic control meets bureaucratic formalization. It develops earlier work on “organized dissonance,” first, by recasting postbureaucratic practice as a hybrid of contrary forms. The paper then situates feminist bureaucracy as a usual, rather than exceptional, case of postbureaucratic practice. Through qualitative analysis,…
Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors
Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called ‘promiscuous coding’,…
Considering "The Professional" in Communication Studies
This essay positions contemporary “professionalism” as a contested term and a nexus of important theoretical and practical concerns for communication scholars, including, for example, those engaged in the empirical, interpretive, and critical examinations of culture and the self. We advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professionalism as a complement to the predominantly sociological conceptions of the rise …
Self-direction or social support? nonprofit empowerment and the tacit employment contract of organizational communication studies
In organizational communication studies, empowerment has come to connote flatter structures, participation programs, and other techniques thought to enhance member competence and control through increased self-direction. We contend that this model-and, arguably, organizational communication studies more broadly-presumes a particular employment contract. We report a study of a different contract: staff-volunteer relations at a nonprofit organizati…
Knowing work
While knowledge theorists give attention to knowing in practice, two common habits in the empirical literature, which we call knowledge inherency and skepticism, serve to re-center certain practitioners. The sites in which we study knowing thereby remain limited, hindering a fuller practice turn. We argue that this enduring tendency is problematic because it inhibits our understanding of ‘communicative knowledge’ – a form of knowing central to th…
Slaves with white collars
Recent trends in popular culture suggest an emerging discourse of professional masculinity in crisis. This essay examines two illustrative films, Fight Club and In the Company of Men, whose characters bemoan the impending demise of the masculine businessman. To revive him, they (re)turn to what we call a "civilized/primitive" masculinity, embodied by the hardened white man who finds healing in wounds. This subjectivity shrouds the race and class …
The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication
Scholars of organizational communication have begun to focus diligently on organization as gendered, yet we continue to neglect the ways in which it is fundamentally raced. With this article, we seek to stimulate systematic attention to the racial dynamics of organizational communication. We argue that the field's most common ways of framing race ironically preserve its racial foundation. Specifically, our analysis of core organizational communic…
Organizational Communication Studies and Gendered Organization
Communication as Constitutive Transmission? An Encounter with Affect
Affect theory has met with an uneven welcome in communication studies, although attending to affect (i.e., the fluctuating intensities of encounter) could enhance the scope and impact of communication inquiry. This article makes a case for sustained engagement at the field level, across subfields. I argue that affect confronts a premise at the heart of our discipline today: the claim that communication is constitutive as opposed to mere transmiss…
Organizing a critical communicology of gender and work
Self-direction or social support? nonprofit empowerment and the tacit employment contract of organizational communication studies
In organizational communication studies, empowerment has come to connote flatter structures, participation programs, and other techniques thought to enhance member competence and control through increased self-direction. We contend that this model-and, arguably, organizational communication studies more broadly-presumes a particular employment contract. We report a study of a different contract: staff-volunteer relations at a nonprofit organizati…
The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication
Scholars of organizational communication have begun to focus diligently on organization as gendered, yet we continue to neglect the ways in which it is fundamentally raced. With this article, we seek to stimulate systematic attention to the racial dynamics of organizational communication. We argue that the field's most common ways of framing race ironically preserve its racial foundation. Specifically, our analysis of core organizational communic…
Slaves with white collars
Recent trends in popular culture suggest an emerging discourse of professional masculinity in crisis. This essay examines two illustrative films, Fight Club and In the Company of Men, whose characters bemoan the impending demise of the masculine businessman. To revive him, they (re)turn to what we call a "civilized/primitive" masculinity, embodied by the hardened white man who finds healing in wounds. This subjectivity shrouds the race and class …
Reworking Gender
'Reworking Gender' examines the place of gender & feminist scholarship in contemporary critical organization studies. The authors reposition feminism in a communication-centred model that integrates recent developments in feminist, critical & postmodern organizational studies
Organizing a critical communicology of gender and work
Resistance Through Consent?
Recent theories underscore the indefinite, conflicted, and discursive character of labor identity and resistance, highlighting local practices and meanings. This article examines an empirical and political dilemma provoked by such models: what to do when once-dominant voices resist a loss of control. Drawing on interviews conducted with commercial airline pilots, the author examines how privileged professional men engage gendered threats. The ana…
Organizational Communication Studies and Gendered Organization
Feminist-Bureaucratic Control and Other Adversarial Allies
This paper reconsiders the usual contrast between “old” and “new” organizational forms, exploring what happens when postbureaucratic control meets bureaucratic formalization. It develops earlier work on “organized dissonance,” first, by recasting postbureaucratic practice as a hybrid of contrary forms. The paper then situates feminist bureaucracy as a usual, rather than exceptional, case of postbureaucratic practice. Through qualitative analysis,…
Appreciating the ‘work’ of discourse
This article pursues two central goals. First, I seek to advance the sustained study of occupational identity as a pivotal mechanism for organizing work and, thus, as a productive means of integrating the aims of two scholarly movements: 1) the ‘dislocation’ of organization (i.e. beyond container metaphors of site) and 2) the renewed emphasis on work (i.e. ‘bringing work back’) in organization studies. Specifically, I propose the study of evolvin…
Considering "The Professional" in Communication Studies
This essay positions contemporary “professionalism” as a contested term and a nexus of important theoretical and practical concerns for communication scholars, including, for example, those engaged in the empirical, interpretive, and critical examinations of culture and the self. We advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professionalism as a complement to the predominantly sociological conceptions of the rise …
Identity Matters
Key tensions underlying much of the identity literature; we foreground identity matters as encountered by individuals, understood as social; durability of identity; identity in its various conceptualizations offers creative ways to understand a range of organizational settings and phenomena while bridging the levels from micro to macro
Gender and Diversity
Constitutional Amendments
This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational…
Organization Studies
Professionalization as a Branding Activity
The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversity problem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explains the exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative ‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclusion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historical interdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a path towa…
The Glass Slipper
Management scholars have long separated the study of work and diversity, assuming that the nature of work itself is not affected by race or gender. Research on occupational segregation invalidates this assumption, confirming that we judge the nature of work in large part by the social identities aligned with it. Management theorists have yet to digest this evidence because of a unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation (i.e., people deriv…
Knowing work
While knowledge theorists give attention to knowing in practice, two common habits in the empirical literature, which we call knowledge inherency and skepticism, serve to re-center certain practitioners. The sites in which we study knowing thereby remain limited, hindering a fuller practice turn. We argue that this enduring tendency is problematic because it inhibits our understanding of ‘communicative knowledge’ – a form of knowing central to th…
‘Submission’ to the rule of excellence
In an unusually direct style of address, the article moves toward a novel critical practice stimulated by affect theory: inhabited criticism. This more-than-representational approach enacts vigilant attunement to the lively scenes, bodies, and trajectories of ordinary affects. I cultivate the practice by staging successive encounters with the contemporary labor of scholarship and, specifically, with an assemblage condensed as The Rule of Excellen…
Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors
Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called ‘promiscuous coding’,…
Feeling Things, Making Waste
In contemporary capitalist societies, disorganization is a shameful state of affairs. Nowhere is its threat epitomized so vividly as in hoarding—the act of amassing an excess of material things with little or no apparent value. This chapter works across three available narratives of hoarding to build a novel alternative, which holds that addressing hoarding is a communicative practice that enacts and circulates the affective boundary between huma…
Communication as Constitutive Transmission? An Encounter with Affect
Affect theory has met with an uneven welcome in communication studies, although attending to affect (i.e., the fluctuating intensities of encounter) could enhance the scope and impact of communication inquiry. This article makes a case for sustained engagement at the field level, across subfields. I argue that affect confronts a premise at the heart of our discipline today: the claim that communication is constitutive as opposed to mere transmiss…
Ready to detox from neoliberal publishing? Let’s write for ‘translation’ together
When I picture academics writing for ‘translation,’ I can’t help but smile at the image of scholars straining to crack their own code. Sure, expertise needs its tongue, but how did ours get so ... en
Business as unusual
Purpose Responding to the current anti-DEI movement, most practitioners and scholars seem to follow two strategies, refine the case for DEI and/or disguise DEI in benign packaging. We argue that both strategies operate in an “anti” mode. The anti can be a powerful force of resistance; however, it also tends to exacerbate rather than diffuse polarization. We develop and enact an “alter” mode, which bypasses direct confrontation in favor of novel o…
Sociology (19 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (16 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)