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While previous studies have described structural, process and social aspects of the healthcare communication space there is no overall model of it. Such a model is an essential first step to improving the operationalization and management of healthcare communication. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper used a case study approach to study team-based communication on a palliative care unit. Non-participant observation, interviews and documents were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

The analysis developed an overall model of the healthcare communication space that consists of five stages: purpose, practices and workflows, structures, implementation, and the development of common ground to support team-based communication. The authors’ findings emphasized that implicit communication remains a predominant means of communication and workflow issues at the individual level are a frequent cause of unnecessary group communication tasks.

To improve team-based communication we first need to develop protocols that support team communication needs such as loop closing of group communication tasks in order to minimize unnecessary individual communication tasks. We also need to develop common ground at the protocol, document and terminology levels as part of supporting team-based communication.

The purpose of this paper is to compare different employee perceptions of the success of one change: a move to new offices and an open-plan design.

In sum, 25 interviews were carried out in a New Zealand law firm that six months earlier had moved to new premises.

Contrary to academic and practitioner reports that open-plan offices are disliked, participants appreciated the new office space. A well-planned and highly participative program of change management led to positive perceptions of aesthetic design, open communication, collegiality, egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

Given the small sample used in one organization, the study highlights the need for more research into the processes and outcomes of office space changes.

The roles of communication and culture, in particular, collegiality and egalitarianism, were salient factors in a complex web of causes and consequences in this context of change.

Utilizing creative campus partnerships, alliances, and mergers, libraries can move from a traditional support role to a more participatory role that actively engages a university’s academic mission. Libraries, as centralizing, politically neutral hubs for information, can serve as catalysts for collaborative planning that paves the way for creating innovative campus spaces and services in conjunction with other academic or general campus units. By forging alliances and merging services and resources with campus partners, such as Information Technology (IT) and the English and Communication departments, the library can address student need and initiate transformational changes—changes that are broader in scope than those within traditional library functions. The case study in this chapter provides an exploration of the merging of library services with a writing center, an effort which was enhanced by adding an oral communication support service. It provides examples of what can be accomplished through visionary leadership and teamwork in 21st-century academic libraries, focusing on how student need and library use prompted institutional change at a mid-sized regional comprehensive university. The authors highlight the essential structural and operational mergers and alliances involved in integrating existing and developing library and campus initiatives to create a unique integrated service point for research, writing, and oral communication in the heart of the university’s main library. The case study also identifies continued partnership and collaboration, and briefly outlines methods through which libraries might initiate similar transformational changes and mergers at their own institutions, serving as a model for similar alliances in other settings.

Building on the “Great Divide” thesis (Goody, 1977; Ong, 1982), this study analyzes the conceptual relationships between the two main communication modes (orality/literacy) and cultural values.

The study adopts a purely conceptual approach to connect orality and literacy with nine cultural dimensions adopted from Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s (1961), Hall’s (1976) and Inglehart’s (1997) frameworks.

The analyses suggest that orality is associated with values such as high-context communication, poly-chronic time, public space proxemics, collectivism, hierarchical social structure, subjugation, past orientation, religiousness/traditionalism and survival cultural dimensions. Literacy is associated with opposing values, including low-context communication, mono-chronic time, private space proxemics, individualism, egalitarian social structure, dominance, future orientation, secularity/rationality, and self-expression cultural dimensions. The paper relies on modernization theory to explain the socio-economic implications and organizes the nine pairs of cultural dimensions according to the great divide between orality and literacy.

Theoretically, this study conceptualizes orality and literacy, analyzes their salient differences and examines their relationships with cultural values. While many studies have tried to explain the differences in cultural values from an economic perspective, this study offers an alternative view of cultural values’ variations across the world.

Recognizing the existence of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and more precisely a social impact related to diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI), organizations today are confronted with the question of what is considered as good. How is the good life created and communicatively constructed inside an organization? Who (agent) is responsible to realize, secure, and manage the process of value creation and social change, or moral agency? I offer a new perspective on the ethical duty of public relations (PR) practitioners to be revolutionary, to be communicative rebels. I conceptualize PR from a critical theoretical perspective as process of problematization, as process of cracking open common sense and underlying systems of power and norms in an organization. Then I offer strategies for creating shared (communication) spaces in which to imagine and experience transformation and social change. In these spaces (huddles), good life is courageously problematized to offer a new narrative of sustainability including DEI as communicatively codesigned. The aim is to highlight opportunities and tools for PR practitioners and PR scholars to be revolutionary – more than an organization's conscience, but an agent of change for exciting, innovative, and transformative communication practices at the core of the discipline.