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This essay registers the intimations of narrative and dialogue I perceive in G. H. Mead's account of social becoming developed in Mind, Self and Society (1934). I examine interrelationships of narrative and dialogic temporality and describe how dialogue and narrative activity potentially shape and reflect social responsibility, creativity, and imagination. I argue that the ongoing communicative achievement of social relationships can embody a dialogue of narratives and a narrative of dialogues (Rawlins, 2009).

This letter to David R. Maines celebrates our friendship over the last 35 years. I read his voice in emails, handwritten letters, and recollected phone conversations to display the meaningful exchanges of our scholarly friendship. I thank Dave for teaching me how to retire from the academy and grow older with purpose and grace. Highlighting his expert mentoring of my book Friendship Matters (1992), I recall how his suggested revisions for the chapters on aging anticipated a poignant array of our own experiences as friends in our later years. Finally, I appreciate his cultivated interests in drawing, writing poetry, and playing guitar, and thank him for encouraging my music. I am grateful for his dedication to esthetic endeavors, which warmly shaped our friendship during our later years.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the cause–effect relationships between workplace friendship and knowledge-sharing behavior, from a static perspective. Furthermore, it investigates the bi-directional relationship between the increase in both workplace friendship and knowledge-sharing behavior over same time periods, and also endeavors to identify whether there is a significant negative lagged effect of the increase in both workplace friendship on knowledge-sharing behavior, and vice versa, across time from a dynamic perspective.

The study conducts a three-wave questionnaire survey to test the research model. A latent change score approach was used to test the direct relationship between changes in workplace friendship and changes in knowledge-sharing behavior.

The findings reveal that knowledge-sharing behavior fosters workplace friendship and workplace friendship promotes the emergence of knowledge-sharing behavior. An increase in workplace friendship promotes an increase in knowledge-sharing behavior over same time periods. However, an increase in workplace friendship will lead to a lagged decrease of knowledge-sharing behavior across time, and vice versa.

The time interval in this study is a little short to capture the full changes in workplace friendship. Some important control factors and mediating mechanisms are not included in the research model.

This study guides managers to focus on various motivators to better strengthen workplace friendship and knowledge-sharing behavior and to consider and effectively respond to the negative side of workplace friendship and knowledge-sharing behavior across time.

This study emphasizes the predictivity of one important interaction patterns, namely, knowledge-sharing behavior on friendship at the workplace, from a static perspective. This study also shows the benefits of an increase in workplace friendship for the development of knowledge-sharing behavior in the same time period. Furthermore, the study presents a counterintuitive finding when taking the lag effect into consideration in exploring the relationship between changes both in workplace friendship and knowledge-sharing behavior, and identifies a negative side of both when viewed over longer periods.

This chapter discusses the impacts of David Maines's scholarship in communication research. The utilities of Maines's scholarship in communication research were first identified in a 1997 session in the annual convention of National Communication Association (NCA) by many leading scholars. This chapter documents the applications of Maines's scholarship in communication research in recent years when communication researchers utilized concepts and arguments constructed by Maines to investigate narratives in relations to Donald Trump's presidential election as well as the COVID-19 pendemic.

The essays composing this special partial issue grew out of a program featuring and honoring the work of Peter M. Hall that was presented at the 2001 Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) in Atlanta. The session was entitled: “Social Organization, Power, and Communication: The Contributions of Peter Hall in Organizational and Interpersonal Communication Inquiries.” Since the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) became an affiliate of NCA in 1997, spotlight sessions like this one have been sponsored to recognize the work of distinguished scholars of symbolic interaction who have made important contributions to communication inquiry, as well as to promote further conversation and engagement with the featured scholar’s ideas. The participants in these panels are accomplished scholars in their own specialties who are well-credentialed to address and exemplify the value of the featured scholar’s work. Accordingly, the authors of the essays appearing here are fellow Symbolic Interactionists and include former and current colleagues and students of Peter Hall, as well as his students’ students.